In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Etymologically, the dude has no origin, but is a transitive figure peculiar to American Modernity. Webster’s has him as “fastidious in dress,” especially as in the case of an adventurous urban dandy out of place in the filthy American West. The dude is also a “city man” whose inappropriate manners and geographic mobility, despite the term’s unknown origin, reveal his class status and an originary moment of sorts. The dude surfaces in the Wild West as the curiously dandified mascot of manifest destiny. This ahistorical notion of a performative fate, a residue of Calvinist logic, is also that which means to justify a specifically American sense of entitlement . It has been argued that the United States often conceives of its expansion as the fated end of Western Europe’s teleological progress. Having severed itself from the paternal origins of the Old World, the United States imagines the space of the new nation as the Promised Land. The Wild West is a future utopia made possible by the mobilized heroics of dandies and pioneers. 1 Unhindered mobility, of course, is reserved for men of means whose entitlement is always predicated on privilege. Thus the “dude” as Webster describes him is the embodiment of American progressivism, antipaternalism, and masculine entitlement. In allegiance with Michel De Certeau’s suggestion from The Writing of History (1988) that “the past is the fiction of the present ,” we are in the process of constructing an imaginary history, one whose invention may illuminate the narratives of contemporary dude cinema within the context of American modernity. If the dude is a liminal subject, simultaneously at ease and out of place in the New World, then his adventures may be understood as allegorical imaginings of America’s awkward adolescence, replete with age-appropriate anxieties. Themes of parental rejection, the forma14 slack,slacker,slackest Homosocial Bonding Practices in Contemporary Dude Cinema John Troyer and Chani Marchiselli 264 Homosocial Bonding Practices in Contemporary Dude Cinema 265 tion of sexual identities, and the recuperation of lost memory are entrenched in the haphazard heroics of dude cinema narratives. The dudes of today are not the dandies of yesterday, but socioeconomic products of progressivism. By birthright, they are white middle-class Californians, the brothers of surfers and other Western go-luckys. They have forgotten their Eastern fineries and the manners that once distinguished them. New dudes are slobs, slackers, idiot savants whose achievements are fated and manifest. The obliteration of history that is always implicit in dude films works to obscure the gender and class privileges that new dudes share with their predecessors. Paradoxically, in fact, the films call for the recuperation of history in order for dude heroes to achieve the utopic end of progressivist teleology, the saving or remaking of the universe. Exemplary “dude” narratives frequently involve anxious and sometimes literal recollections of lost memories and historical pasts. Yet simultaneously the dude is always in the process of rejecting his origins. He defies expectations produced by his socioeconomic status and shuns the advice of his progenitors, fathers, or other configurations of the patriarch. Like the dandy, the dude is a man on the make, a larva in the process of coming into being through a break with tradition and paternal authority. Exemplary dude films such as Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) and Dude, Where’s My Car? (2000)—not to mention Animal House (1978), Up in Smoke (1978), The Jerk (1979), Meatballs (1979), The Blues Brothers (1980), Caddyshack (1980), Porky’s (1981), Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), The Adventures of Bob and Doug McKenzie: Strange Brew (1983), Bachelor Party (1984), Weird Science (1985), Young Einstein (1988), Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991), Slacker (1991), Encino Man (1992), Wayne’s World I and II (1992; 1993), Dazed and Confused (1993), Tommy Boy (1995), Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996), Black Sheep (1996), Kingpin (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998), Half Baked (1998), Deuce Bigelow, Male Gigolo (1999), American Pie I and II (1999; 2001), Road Trip (2000), Saving Silverman (2001), and Not Another Teen Movie (2001)—or protodude films like Easy Rider (1969) are akin to the boy’s adventure tale. As with other juvenile heroes, the new dude’s subjective awakening always takes the form of an epic quest, the pursuit of some Holy Grail: missing objects such as cars, guitars, and historical figures may stand in for the otherwise elusive powers of the phallic [13.58.39.23] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 15:56...

Share