Coen Brothers Midterm - Day Two: Incongruities

4. Discuss the use of incongruity in the Coen Brothers' films - for example (in Barton Palmer's words), the "incongruity between revelation and reaction" in Fargo, or the opposition of the depraved and stupid crimes committed by the thugs and the bewildered reaction of the "normal" folks. Film scholar Douglas MacFarland suggests that there is a "generic incongruity" in the Coen films - for example, the frequent juxtaposition of horror and comedy... There are numerous examples in the films we have viewed so far. Choose several and explicate them.

The incongruity of characters, plots, and locations are a consistent motif in the films of Joel and Ethan Coen. Much of the humor in their films is derived from the juxtaposition of a conventional narrative and unorthodox locations or characters that seem inconsistent with the “reality” that governs other films.

Take, for example, the fascination of juxtaposing “genre” pictures – notably film noir – into locales for which they appear wholly unsuited. Miller’s Crossing, like The Man Who Wasn’t There after it, takes film noir to the suburbs, where the conventions audiences are accustomed to come under closer scrutiny. On top of this, the film is also punctuated with violence more at home in “gangster” pictures of the 1930s, which further compounds the black humor of the film. During on an assault at Leo’s suburban home, Albert Finney fires an impossibly high amount of ammunition as his would-be assailants without ever reloading. At a certain point, the coupling of the story’s overly serious tone with cartoonish violence in a typically “quiet” setting serves as a point of release for the audience. The ludicrous nature of this incongruity is cause for laughter at exactly the point Miller’s Crossing needs it.

Raising Arizona, on the other hand, creates an incongruity of character type with story: H.I. McDunnough and Ed are basically good people who go out of their way not to harm anyone, and yet the Coen brothers place them at the center of a kidnapping scheme. While they fail to reflect the ideals of a greed-driven 1980s culture, the “apocalyptic biker” Leonard Smalls represents a different kind of incongruity. A Leone-esque warrior of the wastelands, the Coen brothers present Smalls as an articulate and knowledgeable reflection of the “Free Market” capitalist. Despite his appearance, Smalls is better at negotiating the terms of Nathan Arizona’s ransom than Arizona is.

The Big Lebowski is constructed of incongruities, each designed to comment in one way or another on the “plot” (if there is one to speak of). The Chandler-esque narrative is transposed to the Los Angeles of 1991, carrying on a revisionist shift made by Robert Altman in The Long Goodbye, but none of the characters reflect a post-Reagan mentality. The Dude is a relic of the counter-culture movement of the 1960s; Walter Sobchak is his hawkish counterpart, a Vietnam enthusiast. The “Big” Lebowski is a throwback to the morally bankrupt “millionaires” Phillip Marlowe dealt with; his daughter Maude seems stuck in the avant-garde 1970s and his wife Bunny a precursor for the Valley Girl revival of the late 1990s. Donny is a man out of time and context; the Nihilists don’t quite seem to know when they came from; and our narrator seems to be a cowboy plucked out of a John Ford film. And yet, Sam Elliot insists that “Sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there,” even though The Dude – and for that matter any other character – does not.

Admittedly, it is not merely the characters that are incongruous with the story in The Big Lebowski; the Los Angeles of 1991 that Joel and Ethan Coen fixate upon is not the same Los Angeles of Barton Fink. The mansions are somehow always just out of reach for most of the characters, and when visited are somehow always filled with the scurrilous and untrustworthy. While The Dude seems perfectly at home bowling or driving around in his perpetually damaged Gran Torino, he sticks out like a sore thumb in the back of a limousine or spread out on Jackie Treehorn’s couch. The appeal of the film is built around the anachronistic qualities of a character like The Dude ever being involved in a Chandler-esque kidnapping scheme. The film therefore becomes a perfect storm of incongruities.