The Coen Brothers 1998 film THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998) is a post-modern fever-dream, now a classic. As a comic retelling of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, the film wiggles through multiple genres with an underlying message that narrative spins as communication is distorted by desire and expectation.

Discussants:
Seth Alt, PhD is an independent cultural theorist and interdisciplinary researcher who explores the intersections of museums, digital technology, and audience studies. He holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from Claremont Graduate University, with a dissertation titled, “The Pervert’s Guide to the Museum.” In 2025, Seth published with Oxford University Press inside their forthcoming volume, Videogames For Mental Health. Seth has curatorial and archival experience from working for both The Autry Museum of the American West and the California Botanic Garden. He is a member and the current delegate of the California Forum of the Lacanian Field— the west coast anglophone chapter of the international school of Lacanian psychoanalysis in Paris.

Joseph Aguayo, PhD is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of California in West Los Angeles. He is a Guest Member of the British Psychoanalytical Society in London and holds UC LA doctorates in both Clinical Psychology and European History. He specializes in publishing in Bionian and Kleinian studies. His most recent projects are co-edited publications, including Wilfred Bion: Los Angeles Seminars and Supervision, (Karnac Books, 2013).