The Big Lewbowski was on yesterday. And I spent my afternoon watching it, despite the fact that I had other things to do. Or so I imagined. However, after watching the movie for a while I realized that all of those chores and important tasks weren’t really that important. After all, the Dude has no job. He does no tasks nor chores nor pays any attention to the stock market. Yet his life is full of flavor, surrounded by Russians, and ferrets and half-crazed Vietnam vets who would as soon poke their own eyes out as let someone Tread on Them. His life is also full of bowling.

Not surprisingly, much has been made of the symbolism in The Big Lebowski. What does the movie mean? Is it a critique on the materialism that has come to dominate our modern lives? Does it reprimand the “artistic” elites who have nothing to do but make weird art and spout sophistry under the guise of wisdom? Who, or what, does Sam Elliot’s cowboy represent? Does the character Jesus- played by John Turturro- make a mockery of the real Jesus?

All interesting questions. But the answer to these questions is simple. It is nihilism. The movie says simply that nothing has a real existence. Not rugs, or pornography, or Vietnam, or modern art, or having a lot of money. There is as much joy in bowling and drinking White Russians as in any of these things. And a bowling tournament is as important in the great scheme of things as a million dollars. Maybe more so. After all, you can drop dead of a heart attack in a parking lot at any time, even while battling nihilists. Drink up.

Perhaps you are not convinced. After all, a comfortable house and health insurance seem like nice things to have. Of course, houses come with payments which mean going to work for somebody you probably can’t stand to do something that, even if you like it, brings a lot of stress to one’s life. Certainly more stress than an afternoon buzz and a few rounds of bowling. And while health insurance doesn’t hurt, we are all only one freak accident from taking that last roll to oblivion.

Before you start prattling on about purpose and gods and living one’s life for others, let me say that the movie says the Dude has a purpose. It’s just that you don’t like his purpose. He wants to bowl and drink and shoot the shit with his friends. And people like the Big Lebowski can’t stand it. Because if somebody like the Dude is happy, then everything the Big Lebowskis have been doing somehow loses its meaning. If the world was full of Dudes, there would be no Jeff Bezos. He’d be just another weird bald guy. Like Joe Rogan, but without the combat skills.

Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe the movie is really about the rise of guys like Walter Sobchak as Walter annihilates the nihilists in the end. (Say that three times fast). In that case, The Big Lebowski is prescient, foretelling of the rise of the Sobchakians, paranoid delusionals who see the use of force as the means for forwarding their Libertarian ideals. Perhaps Walter Sobchak is the New American, ready to rise from the quagmire of extremist Liberal narcissism and the emptiness borne of a materialist society.

Then again, it might just be about what a bunch of vapid, self-absorbed assholes Americans are. It doesn’t matter if someone is rich, poor, ambitious, lazy, a Veteran, a porn star, nihilist, capitalist, cowboy or Dude. Everybody is just a jackass. Just an annoying fucking jackass who can be just as happy being an unemployed drunk as a captain of industry.

Since I see Trump is leading in the polls right now, I am going with the jackass theory. And then I’m going to see if there is any Kahlua in the house. I’d piss on a rug, but my wife would kill me. You’ll notice that none of these characters are happily married.

Just a sidebar.