Lebowski’s great friendship test
“Then, we should LobowskiOr we should not Lobowski? “I asked my friend Alex while we finished our pizza and came on a recent night.
I felt that I was asking if I wanted to distinguish. The great LebowskiThe 1998 Coen-Brothers film about bowling, marijuana and wrong identity, is one of my favorites, and I was nervous for introducing her to her. I like to use Lobowski Quotes as a way of affirming me while, like the character of Jeff Bridges, “the guy”, not taking things too seriously. There is a Lobowski-Theism for practically all difficult conditions: was you asked to work on a Saturday? “Not roller in Shabas.” Does anyone do something scandalous? “This is not ‘Nam … there are rules!” Do you disagree with something? “That is simply your opinion, man.” Every time life has been especially difficult, I have returned to the film and I have found comfort in his spirit of “whatever, man.” When I was acquired by postpartum depression and my baby cried non -stop, I saw Lebowski clips on YouTube and savor a strange laugh.
But it is a strange movie, and I have met Alex for just a couple of years. I worried that she would dislike her so much that she dislikes her me Also, through osmosis. Or that I would realize that we have completely different senses of humor, and that perhaps we are not very close. In terms of Lebowski, would you fulfill our friendship? Or would we be out of our element?
Jitters like these are quite common. “If something really cares,” Beverley Fehr, a psychologist at Winnipeg University, told me, “there is a vulnerability when sharing it with another person.” When we declare a favorite book, movie or album and introduce it to others, Jeffrey Hall, a communications study professor at Kansas University, told me: “What we are doing is:” This is an aspect of my identity that I voluntarily put so that other people know me. And if you reject this, you reject me. ” You may also likeHe said that recommending something to someone can be like giving a gift, since “says something about you, but you are also trying to anticipate what they would like.”
Often, our friends will like what we like: several researchers told me that the friends of most people are extremely similar to them in terms of age, level of education, political attitudes and leisure activities. These similarities tend to include cultural tastes. Researchers who have shown groups of people Clips let’s say, Food, Inc. and The most fun home videos in the United States They have discovered that people whose brains responded similarly were more likely to become and follow friends. We tend to like people who like the same things as us because they validate our worldview: “I must be right because there is this other person who sees it exactly the same way“It’s how Fehr explained this line of thought (largely subconscious) for me. And then, once people become friends, they tend to adjust to the tastes and preferences of the other. If you like it, we must also like it, after all, we are very similar!
The problem is, Fehr told me, we generally want our friends to be even more similar For us who are actually. “When we present something to a friend and we do not know if the friend will see it in the same way as us,” he said, “one of the fears is that we will realize that we are not as similar as we think we were.” Fehr once had a group of friends to see NebraskaA movie that loved and remembers “not having too much reaction.” This type of disappointment can be a threat to their perception of friendship: don’t you know them as well as you thought? Fehr remembers feeling a little hurt, before letting him go. But she has not planned another film with that group of friends since then.
If a friend does not love our favorite cultural artifact, we could try to solve the discomfort resulting in some ways. We could change our own minds about it, telling ourselves Nebraska’S not so good after all; We could try to change my mind about it; Or, potentially, we could change the way we thought about friendship, Angela Bahns, a psychologist at Wellesley College, told me.
If a disagreement about a dear book or film causes friction in friendship, Bahns said, it depends on how well you know the friend; What else do you have in common? And how important that book, movie or program in particular for you. Sometimes, this type of difference can cause an unexpected level of tension: when Lidia Wiens, a 39 -year -old girl in Seattle, invited her friend Julia to watch her favorite movie, Somno in SeattleHe thought Julia, a pleasant woman with whom she shared a similar taste, would love. But for his dismay, he realized that Julia was looking a lot at her phone, and occasionally, Julia would make negative comments about the characters. Wiens felt uncomfortable, and the two had a little fighting about it. Both finally apologized, but Wiens thinks that in the future, she will not put so much emotional stock by sharing her favorite books and movies with other people. “I don’t know why he became so personal,” Wiens told me. He felt that he wanted his friend’s genuine response to the film, but also wanted the genuine response to be positive.
As for me, good news: Alex agreed Lobowski! But I did not get less nervous since the film staggered in its plot, as it is. At the time of Lebowski launch, The guardian called The movie “A lot of ideas got into a bag and allowed random to spill”, and it was difficult for me to refute that evaluation. In the film, an exhaustion called Jeffrey “The Disee” Lebowski is hired by a millionaire with the same name to rescue his kidnapped wife. The hijinks occur when the best friend of the type hatches a plan to keep the rescue money of Lebowski richer for the guy and himself. It also presents a group of nihilists, a king of porn, a bowling of bowling and a story about the search for the millionaire adult daughter to get pregnant. Actually, I wondered when Alex and I shared a bag of corn popcorn, Why are there so many characters? Is this a good movie? I irritated myself for its free, as exemplified by a scene in which a woman in topless bounces in a springboard outside the house of the porn capo. I was not sure how Alex is imparting without a word that this is not the kind of things that I, a good suburban mother, would tolerate.
Alex didn’t seem to laugh much, and stopped the movie several times to assure him that we didn’t have to finish it if he didn’t want to. When she finished, I quickly noticed how tired she was, and that she must also be, giving her the opportunity to make a quick exit without many comments. That she did. Lebowski is not for everyone, and it’s fineI tried to calm down as I padded the stairs to bed.
But my concerns about if at least slightly appreciated my small strange comfort watch that resolved a few days later. I brought the mail to discover that she had sent me a monkey for my son, stamped with the words. Little Lebowski Urban Achievers. Run, after all.