The Dude’s Rug in The Big Lebowski
The Coen Bros. are also fans of the MacGuffin,and often include more than one in each movie. Their greatest MacGuffin movie, however, is undoubtedly 1998’s The Big Lebowski, in which Jeffrey ‘The Dude’ Lebowski (a peerless Jeff Bridges) just wants his rug back.
The Dude becomes a victim of mistaken identity and is attacked in his home by a group of thugs, angered by Jeffrey Lebowski’s wife’s sizeable financial debt to their employer. Despite The Dude’s protestations that he is not the ‘Jeffrey Lebowski’ that they seek, one of the thugs urinates on his favourite rug. This angers The Dude – because that rug “really tied the room together” – so he investigates and pays a visit to the millionaire Jeffrey Lebowski, who was the intended victim. Finding no sympathy there, The Dude steals a replacement rug from Jeffrey Lebowski’s home and goes about his day.
Unfortunately for The Dude, the tale does not end there and he finds himself drawn into a complex web of manipulation and double-cross, which sees his new, replacement rug stolen, his sperm desired by Lebowski’s daughter, and a group of German nihilists pursuing him and his friends. Throughout the events that befall him, he never loses his conviction that this whole thing is simply because some people messed with his rug – and it is that unrelenting determination that sees him ultimately painted as a fascinating Zen Terminator, of sorts.
The rug itself is inconsequential – these thugs could easily have broken in and messed with a vase, or a favourite book. The nature of the MacGuffin is meaningless here – the meaning comes from the fact that The Dude’s inner peace has been shattered by a violation of his personal space, or home, and he wants it put right.
