Apropos of Nothing: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, and the Coen Brothers

Everything you wanted to know about the Lacanian critique of deconstruction, but were afraid to ask the Coen Brothers.

The Coen Brothers' films are rife with figures of absence. In The Big Lebowski, the Dude does nothing. He is put on the trail of a kidnapping that never happened, and solves the crime when he realizes that he paid the ransom with "a ringer for a ringer." The Hudsucker Proxy features a dupe who draws zeros throughout the film, enthusiastically proclaiming, "You know, for the ...