The Big Lebowski (1998) is a classic of American cinema, in large part because of its iconic protagonist, the Dude, whose religio-philosophical allegiances have been popularly framed by Buddhism and Daoism. While such readings are not unfounded, they tend to assume a direct line of influence from those traditions to the Dude. I argue instead that the Dude is best understood through the mediation of Beat Buddhism, particularly as articulated in Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums. After situating the Dude within the existing scholarship of Buddhist and Daoist imaginaries in American popular culture, I examine Beat Buddhism as a distinctive mode of American Buddhist modernism. I then argue that the Dude represents a post-beat figure whose Beat Buddhist sensibilities are detached from their original literary contexts. Reading the Dude as a dharma bum thus illuminates how Beat Buddhism continues to circulate within popular culture as a style of being rather than a path of practice.
Jack Hamblin (Thu,) studied this question.