Dead Flowers

 

In an early episode of Dead and Gone, the writer Dean Budnick claims that Deadheads "were widely disparaged in a way lost to history." I think that The Big Lebowski may have have captured just a little of this and given us insights into the ideologies behind it.

"The Bums Will Always Lose!"

Like Ebenezer Scrooge and Henry F. Potter, the character of The Big Lebowski personifies an ideology still prevalent among some, if not many, in the U.S. today. Those sympathizing with this ideology back in the 80's would probably have seen Deadheads the way Lebowski sees the Dude—as bums who hadn't yet realized that the revolution was over, and that it ended in failure.*  Many in the straight world would have thought Deadheads just needed to grow up and do what their parents did—get a job.  They needed to get out there and put their talents to work, and achieve, and make something of themselves.  Be responsible!  Lebowski yells at the Duder, "[E]very bum's lot is his own responsibility regardless of whom he chooses to blame."  And that, my friends, would probably have been the way some in the straight world would have thought about the "bums" living in Rainbow Village back in '85.

I'll venture to guess that when they got on the bus in '85, Mary and Greg probably did not aspire to be counted among "Lebowski's Achievers"... 

I did aspire to be one.  In August of that year I was about to turn 18 and begin my senior year in high school.  I was preppy, in much the same way that Alex P. Keaton was preppy.  At the end of the upcoming school year I'd finish my 12 years of Catholic school education, and in the fall  of '86, I'd enter a private, all-male college hoping to major in chemistry or be pre-law.  All that Catholic schooling—the cliques, the logos, the parties—prepared me to be an achiever.  I'm embarrassed to say that, although I in no way bought into the whole ideology, I aspired to be a yuppie—one of Lebowski's young urban achievers—after graduation.  I was ready to sell my soul to the Potters of the world.  After years of living in austerity so that my parents could afford to give their children the education they wanted for them, I was tired of driving old Chryslers and doing without.  There was no way I was getting on the bus.  Not an option.

A "poacher, thief, and bum"

It was an option for Christopher McCandless (aka Alexander Supertramp), who definitely was on his way to being one of Lebowski’s achievers when he graduated from Emory in 1990.  But instead he decided to go on the road, first by car then as a hobo exploring the west.  After about two years of exploring American rugged individualism, McCandless ventured north to Alaska to test his mettle in a way he'd not yet tried.  In April of '92, he packed into the bush near Healy, Alaska, happened upon an abandoned municipal bus in which he found shelter, then lived deliberately in a way that Thoreau never did, hunting and gathering his food on his own for over 100 days.  In the end, Christopher McCandless lacked the wherewithal to get back to civilization and he died of starvation, alone in the bus he'd made his home.  He was 24 years-old.

I think the way some have reacted to this story might also give us some idea of how Deadheads were disparaged back in the 80’s and early 90’s.

Many have found the story of  McCandless's life as it's told in Jonathan Krakauer's book Into the Wild (and in the film of the same title) to be inspiring.  Before it was airlifted from its site in 2020 and installed in the Alaskan Museum of the North at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, some made what might be called pilgrimages to the bus in which he died.  Others have not found the story inspiring; rather they've found it to be the story of a foolish bum.  For me, a standout among the critics of Krakauer and others who've celebrated McCandless's adventure is the Alaskan journalist, Craig Medred.  Medred's scathing criticisms of Krakauer seem to boil down to something like the following: McCandless was a "poacher, thief, and bum"—not some heroic figure—so he should not be held up as some sort of exemplary figure for today's youth to follow.  But Medred concedes that when he was around the same age, he himself deserved to be called a poacher and a bum.  In 2013, he wrote:

"Just to stay alive I did a little poaching when I first arrived in Alaska in 1973, though I never wasted anything in my life.  And I confess to having abandoned a Volkswagen van along the Alaskan Highway in Canada when I was near McCandless's age, and to having taken advantage of few friends, and to getting into a couple Fairbanks bar fights, and to engaging in some bad behaviors involving controlled substances." ("The beatification of Chris McCandless: From thieving poacher into saint," Anchorage Daily News, September 20, 2013)

But Medred got right with the ideology and adopted its sanctimonious hypocrisies.  He grew up and became a responsible citizen—an achiever.  He's redeemed. “Bums” like McCandless who didn’t grow up, get straight, and become responsible citizens don't deserve veneration; they deserve contempt.  Or so the orthodox claim.  But let's try to remember that that "bum” was a human being—someone's son, brother, and friend—who tried to create meaning for himself in a demonstrably absurd world.  Some see this absurdity sooner than others, while some just don't.  Some see it and pretend it doesn't exist.

Dead Flowers

The Coen brothers give us a way to think about the contempt people like The Big Lebowski have for the “bums” in their use of the symbol of dead flowers at the end of the film.

Townes Van Zandt's cover of "Dead Flowers" plays over the credits.  Here the dead flowers symbolize the disdain that the achievers have for the "bums":

And you can send me dead flowers every morning
And you can send me dead flowers by the mail
You can send me dead flowers to my wedding
And I won't forget to put roses on your grave

Heap your scorn upon me all you will, I will not respond in kind.

Actually, the song sustains the use of this symbol.  It's alluded to in the mortuary scene.  While he and the Dude wait to receive the remains of their dead friend Donny, Walter appears to be reading from a Bible.  I like to think that he’s reading Psalm 103, verses from which are written on the marble wall in front of him:

The life of mortals is like grass,

they flourish like a flower of the field;

the wind blows over it and it is gone,

and its place remembers it no more.

But we remember the dead, and what's more, we get to chose how we remember them.

Let us be mindful of the absurdity and remember that life is precious.

*Potter'd call them 'suckers' and Scrooge would deem the whole scene 'humbug.'