Critchley and The Big Lebowski

I watched The Big Lebowski this week despite having seen it before, yet I realized how many different types of humor it executes throughout for the first time. In fact, studying humor this week in my philosophy class has explicitly pointed this out; I feel that we watch comedies often times to get our minds off of serious matters and therefore we often overlook different types of humor. Instead of critiquing the type of humor, we either find the joke funny or we don't. I find this interesting and reading through Simon Critchley's text on humor, I was able to explore the topic even further than I had ever thought before. Critchley makes the claim in his text that "Joking is a game that players only play successfully when they both understand and follow the rules". I would like to argue, however, that The Dude (the main character in The Big Lebowski) is hilarious because the strangers he meets throughout the film do not understand him in the least. While all of The Dude's friends obviously understand him, hence the name he is given, The Dude still operates in the same type of humor around everyone that he meets. These moments are often the funniest simply because the people that he meets do not understand the 'game', as Critchley calls it. For instance, towards the beginning of the film during the scene where The Dude's rug is urinated on, one of the culprits is holding a bowling ball and poses the question, "What is this?". The Dude remarks, "Obviously, you are not a golfer". This joke works so well because the culprit is not playing the game. The same man has just been dunking The Dude's head in the toilet and is in no way ready to be joking in any shape or form. It is The Dude's calm personality that makes him able to pull off this joke despite the fact that the recipient has no idea a joke has even been played. He does not laugh, yet the audience loves it. In other words, my argument here is that certain types of humor exist without two people having to play the game.

Critchley goes on to describe this game as throwing a ball: "It's as though there were a custom amongst certain people for one person to throw another ball which he is supposed to catch and throw back; but some people, instead of throwing it back, put it in their pocket". Critchley claims that when the ball goes in the pocket, the joke is lost or the 'game' is unsuccessful. My second argument is that sometimes it is indeed the fact that the recipient puts the ball in their pocket that makes the joke funny in the first place. To explain, if the culprit above laughed in response to The Dude's remark, then it would not have been nearly as funny. It is the fact that the culprit and The Dude are not on the same page that makes the joke successful in the first place. Besides, if the culprit had laughed, then it would be assumed that he actually did know the object was a bowling ball, rendering the joke useless. Also, to counter the fact that someone could claim the 'game' is being played in this sense between The Dude and the film's audience - it still works in the same way. The movie has just begun and we do not yet know The Dude well enough to know his sense of humor, same as the culprit. We laugh simply because we know what a bowling ball is, not because we are any more invited to play any sort of 'game' than the culprit himself. To conclude, Critchley does a fine job describing certain types of situations in humor, but does not cover all of them with this particular theory.