On Saturday night my parents, my sister, her husband and I played Scene It?, a DVD-empowered game of cinema and pop culture trivia. One of the poser clips was of character The Dude's dream sequence from The Big Lebowski. Now, The Big Lebowski's antiheroism doesn't exactly jive with my straight-laced sensibilities. I instead find a lasting bond to the respective guilelessness, audacity and refinement in characters Data, William Wallace and Paladin from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Braveheart and Have Gun - Will Travel. Flaws are okay; I like my heroes on the right side of things.
But that's beside the point. There was Lebowski, dancing among Viking maidens of the bowling lanes. I've only seen the movie twice; the first time I panned it as junk and the second time I reluctantly marked it as unassuming, cynical brilliance. Yet only twice, so before Saturday night I had not remembered the most jarring entrance in the dream sequence: to the Dude's horror, the man renting out bowling shoes is none other than Saddam Hussein.
Lebowski hit theaters five years before the ex-strongman crawled out of his rathole, whose mock cameo left most moviegoers and critics baffled — at the time. In his current lot, Baghdad's deposed dictator would be lucky ending up hawking shoes in an alley. And then, of course, consider all the business with overjoyed Iraqis beating effigies of their fallen oppressor with footwear. Lebowski: Providential?