The Trickster in Contemporary Film

Helena Bassil-Morozow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136625251
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book discusses the role of the trickster figure in contemporary film against the cultural imperatives and social issues of modernity and postmodernity, and argues that cinematic tricksters always reflect psychological, economic and social change in society. It covers a range of films, from Charlie Chaplin's classics such as Modern Times (1936) and The Great Dictator (1940) to contemporary comedies and dramas with 'trickster actors' such as Jim Carrey, Sacha Baron-Cohen, Andy Kaufman and Jack Nicholson.

The Trickster in Contemporary Film offers a fresh perspective on the trickster figure not only in cinema but in Western culture in general. Alongside original film analyses, it touches upon a number of psychosocial issues including sovereignty of the individual, tricksterish qualities of the media, and human relationships in the mercurial digital age.

Further topics of discussion include:

• common motifs in trickster narratives
• the trickster and personal relationships
• gonzo-trickster and the art of comic insurrection.

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Employing a number of complementary approaches such as Jungian psychology, film semiotics, narrative structure theories, Victor Turner's concept of liminality and Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the carnivalesque, this book is essential reading for students and scholars of film, as well as anyone with an interest in analytical psychology and wider critical issues in contemporary culture.

Chapter 1

Common Motifs in Trickster Narratives

Trickster narratives share a number of common motifs which point at a single psychological root and outline the archetypal features of the trickster. Some of the motifs pertain to the structure of the narrative, and some to the trickster figures themselves (cf. Jung’s distinction between archetypal patterns (‘events’) and archetypes (‘figures’)). Structural elements determine the starting point, progression and outcome of the narrative, and include the trickster or the trickster protagonist being trapped (physically, emotionally or mentally), the trickster or protagonist crossing the dangerous boundary, and the final dissolution of the trickster (his symbolic or physical death). The essentially tripartite structure of trickster narratives matches van Gennep’s ‘rite of passage’ triangle – separation, transition and incorporation.

Elements that serve as building bricks of the trickster’s figure are his licentiousness, love of freedom, dislike for all types of boundaries, fragmented/flexible body (symbolising his transformative powers), propensity to lie and general dislike of truth, lack of stable identity (for instance, having no name or several names) and erratic behaviour. Other narrative elements are the carnivalesque atmosphere (which indicates the absence of the boundary between ‘nature’ and ‘civilisation’, a ‘festive’ form of Jungian participation mystique), scatological references and the invariable presence of animals and pets. Let us have a closer look at these essential ingredients of the trickster narrative.

Being Trapped

The starting position of the trickster in literary and cinematic narratives is always that of imprisonment, constraint and limitation. When being trapped is one’s default position, breaking free becomes the principal goal. Folklore tricksters have to endure various kinds of ‘trappedness’, from being glued to a tar baby (Brer Rabbit from the Uncle Remus stories) to being turned into a pig by a feminist witch (Odysseus and Circe). In many tales, rogues are overpowered by someone with god-like, or in the very least exceptional, abilities. It requires a Zeus to capture a Prometheus lest the structure of the world should be upset. Prometheus, in Hesiod’s version, is riveted by Zeus with shackles and fetters on a pillar, while a ‘long-winged’ eagle is sent to devour the titan’s liver (Hesiod, 2004: 24).

In Scandinavian folklore, the infamous Loki is captured and tied up for arranging the murder of Balder, the second son of Odin. Balder’s death is the first sign of Ragnarök approaching, and the gods have to act quickly to stop the onset of chaos. They place a snake above Loki’s head, its venom dripping onto his face and causing pain. Although Loki’s wife Sigyn is holding a bowl to catch the poison, occasionally she goes off to empty it, and the drops make the prisoner writhe and shudder. His powerful convulsions cause earthquakes (Rosenberg, 1994: 223). As in the case of Prometheus, the victim is immobilised, and the punishment is long, slow and torturous. These are unchanging, monotonous, endless situations, in which, in fact, the core metaphor is immobilisation, and the supporting, peripheral symbols, the venom and the eagle, stand for the pain of unrealised ambition. The lack of opportunity to move, progress, change or somehow alter the situation is the actual source of torment here.

The Arabic trickster, Sakr al-Jinni from One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, is subjected to a conceptually similar type of punishment. He is an ifrit (an infernal jinn, a cunning fire spirit) who rebels against King Suleiman,¹ is defeated and stuffed into a small bottle, which is then sealed and hurled into the deep ocean. The Jinni is trapped in the bottle for two thousand years, during which time he is ‘washed and swashed like a lake squeezed into a cup or a whale squeezed into an egg’. His lengthy entrapment makes him angry indeed. He describes his despair and rage to the poor fisherman who has accidentally caught the copper jar in his net and broken the seal:

For the first hundred years I swore that if anyone freed me from the copper bottle I would grant him three wishes - however greedy.

But nobody came.

For the next two hundred years I swore that if anyone freed me from the copper bottle I would give him and all his tribe everlasting riches. But nobody came.

For the next five hundred years I swore that if anyone freed me from the copper bottle I would make him ruler and owner of all the people of earth!

But nobody came.

For the next thousand years I swore … and I swore, but now my oaths were terrible. My patience was gone, my fury was bigger than the ocean I was floating in. I swore that if anyone freed me from the copper bottle (unless, of course, it was the all-powerful lord Suleiman) I would make him the first to feel the scourge of my revenge! My old enemies are long since dead. You will have the honour of standing in their place while I cut you to atoms! I have sworn it.

(McCaughrean, 1999: 35−36)

Sakr al-Jinni’s intentions sound serious, but he has no opportunity to realise them. The trickster is tricked by the cunning fisherman into jumping back into the jar, which is then resealed and thrown into the waves. ‘The Terror of the Lower Hemisphere’, as the Jinni boastfully calls himself, is returned to the underworld where he belongs.

Literary tricksters go one step further than their mythological and folkloric colleagues: instead of portraying and embodying physical immobility (which is a valid but very vague and general metaphor), they accentuate the trickster’s desire to progress socially or to break free of social conventions. For instance, the most well-known type of literary trickster is servus callidus – the cunning slave, examples of which include Plautus’s Pseudolus and Tranio, Carlo Goldoni’s Arleccino and Beaumarchais’s Figaro. The clever slave/servant has a low position in the social structure, and is forced to stay in his little ‘underworld’ which is far too constraining for his abilities, projects, and most importantly – for his social ambition.

Similarly, our cinematic tricksters are kept in stifling environments where they accumulate explosive energy: Stanley Ipkiss’s green alter ego resides within a mask, Beetlejuice (Beetlejuice, 1988) is locked inside a small model of a town, and Chip-Larry-Ricardo, the Cable Guy, is altogether shunned by the civilised world. The one who finds the bottle or picks the mask containing the trickster spirit, acquires powerful, but potentially dangerous, abilities. The metaphorical release of the Jinni equals the release of the human potential.

Far from battling a Wotan or a Zeus, contemporary cinematic tricksters clash with more progressive (and secular) incarnates of the principle of determinism, which range from government structures and pernicious ideologies to oppressive bosses at work and despotic family members. For instance, Stu Price (Ed Helms), the unfortunate dentist from Todd Philipps’s hit The Hangover (2009), becomes accidentally ‘enlightened’ about his personal life after being drugged by a foolish relative of a friend during a stag trip to Vegas. All aspects of Stu’s life are controlled by his domineering girlfriend Melissa (Rachael Harris). Stu is a ‘nice guy’ who usually avoids risqué Â things and certainly does not do drugs. The stag night in Vegas turns out to be a complete disaster when the inept brother of the bride, Alan (Zach Galifianakis) spikes the company’s Jagermeisters with Rohypnol, mistaking them for ecstasy pills. The next day the groomsmen wake up to a tiger roaring in their bathroom, a baby crying in the ward-robe, and a completely trashed hotel room. Stu is missing a tooth and is wearing a wedding ring. Phil (Bradley Cooper), an immature high school teacher, has a hospital band on his hand. The subsequent quest to find the missing groom, return the tiger to its rightful owner (who happens to be none other than Mike Tyson), and the baby to its mother, transform Stu’s views on personal relationships. The tricksterish accident (or Rohypnol, or Alan in the role of the trickster) wrecks his life but eventually proves to be life-changing. When the ordeal is over and Doug is finally married, Stu announces to Melissa that he is leaving her. There are hints in the narrative that he might start a relationship with Jade (Heather Graham), the prostitute he married in Vegas when under the influence of the drug.

Jim Carrey’s characters raise their voice against big corporations, media moguls, mafia bosses, police departments and the US legal system. They take on, and often crush in tragicomic battles, the very pillars of modern society: representatives of business, industry, politics, law, media and other creators of rules and imposers of structures. Tim Burton’s prominent tricksters – two antagonists (Beetlejuice and the Joker) and a protagonist (Jack Skellington – The Nightmare Before Christmas, 2003) – are deeply concerned with the issues of confinement, freedom and power. All three are sketched around Burton’s favourite fabula – a man confined in a town which is far too small for his plans and talents. Like the Jinni imprisoned in the bottle, they accumulate the repressed, and therefore tricky and explosive, power of the unconscious. When the time comes, they jump out and wreck enormous havoc on the neighbourhood by pouring their entire reserves of ambition on it at once.

The living space of Beetlejuice, for instance, is limited to a small model town, complete with a cemetery, spooky trees, white suburban houses, grassy lawns and a local saloon. The Maitlands – the couple who were unlucky enough to become ghosts – decide to use his services as a ‘bio-exorcist’, i.e., they want him to get rid of the annoying Deetzes family who are now occupying their house. The ‘undead’ Maitlands expect him to ‘exorcise’ the annoying living intruders. In order to release the ‘bio-exorcist’, they have to pronounce his name three times. In doing so, they, speaking symbolically, ‘announce’ his arrival into the world and ‘legitimise’ the marginalised outcast who is too radical both for the boring land of the living and the bureaucratic world of the dead.

Rik Mayall’s character Drop Dead Fred (Drop Dead Fred, 1991) lives in a battered music box, which Lizzie Cronin’s evil mother eventually wraps in sticky tape – so that Fred cannot escape. When, 20 years later, Lizzie (Phoebe Cates) comes to stay with her mother and opens the locked box, the green spirit jumps out and immediately renews the partisan war against the oppressive and controlling parent. He wakes Lizzie at night and makes her participate in a secret operation which consists of smearing dog mess (any trickster’s favourite weapon) over her mother’s freshly-cleaned white carpet. He makes her ruin her immaculate bob haircut by chopping off one side – because the haircut had been chosen for her by the mother. Certain ‘possession’ scenes in the film refer to William Friedkin’s notorious film The Exorcist (1973) – for instance, when Lizzie starts laughing involuntarily or suddenly swears at Mrs Cronin. However, the film eschews pure horror moments, because Lizzie is the principal focaliser and the audience is allowed to ‘see’ the parallel poltergeist world. The viewer knows what has caused the laughter or the swearing fit: the words ‘piss off’ were actually meant for Drop Dead Fred, whom Mrs Cronin, unfortunately, could not see. Meanwhile, the evil mother refuses to pronounce the trickster’s name, apparently thinking that one can exorcise a spirit by ‘forgetting’ about him (i.e., repressing him – which can only aggravate the problem and allow him to accumulate more destructive energy).

Drop Dead Fred also raises his voice for the freedom of the human spirit from social constructs and conventions. Under his influence, Lizzie completely disgraces herself at a restaurant by pouring water onto the table, then dropping the glass on the floor and throwing a plateful of spaghetti over her head – and onto some unfortunate woman. Here, the trickster hijacks a (so familiar to everyone) situation in which the crisp, tightly structured restaurant discourse is stifling the natural flow of communication. Focalised mostly through Mickey’s eyes (who is Lizzie’s love interest), the scene represents Lizzie as doing something devilishly unpredictable (when her hand disobeys her, starts shaking and spills the water) – but nevertheless funny.

The most obvious and most basic explanation of the metaphorical ‘trapped’ state is ‘unconscious repression’. Because of his ‘repressed’ position, the trickster principle (‘unconscious contents’) accumulates intensive potentiality, which explodes upon contact with ‘conscious reality’. He also generates mad creativity by sublimating repressed contents. Lizzie’s music box jumps and shakes because Fred cannot wait to be released. Upon his release, Beetlejuice takes the shapes of various hideous monsters; and the Loki mask is so powerful that it can ‘suck in’ Stanley Ipkiss. The king of delight makers, Jack Skellington becomes ‘depressed’ when he realises that his native Town of Halloween is too small for his ghoulish creativity. Jack feels stifled and acquires a ‘longing’ for something new. When his scary artistry explodes all over the Town of Christmas, little children get showered with ugly presents in the form of snakes, bloodied ducks and angry pumpkins. The Joker harbours grandiose plans to ‘swallow’ the entire Gotham City and control its inhabitants via advertising and media. The feeling of being suppressed in trickster films is often related to metropolitan (the city is too big and makes you invisible) and suburban (the town is too small and does not allow you to develop) issues. Thematically, the motif of being trapped has to do with the imbalance between the size of the living space and the proportions of the protagonist’s ambition (cf. Hamlet’s ‘prisons’ and ‘nutshells’ in which he cannot feel like ‘a king of infinite space’).

Boundary-Crossing

All tricksters have an issue with borders and impediments. Trickster stories are traditionally preoccupied with various ways of transgressing and trespassing – because the archetype designates the budding psyche for which the border between the self and the outer world does not yet exist. For instance, Beetlejuice grabs and kisses Barbara in front of her husband, and then asks him: ‘Am I overstepping my bounds? Just tell me.’ William Willeford notes that literary and mythological fools love to transgress social and cultural boundaries (Willeford, 1969: 132). Seen in this light, the fool is a borderline figure that ‘holds the social world open to values that transcend it’ (1969: 137). Morality and politeness belong to the world of human beings, with which the mad and bedraggled anarchist Beetlejuice is not yet fully acquainted. His behaviour is a rebel’s way of trespassing the borders of emotional and physical contact, and thus challenging the tyranny of the etiquette.

The trickster’s task in narratives is to drag protagonists through a series of transformations, which involve pushing them over the threshold and into the liminal zone, then guiding them through the liminal zone, and, finally, restoring their ‘normality’ by shoving them over the boundary and into the world of ‘reality’. For the duration of the liminal period protagonists have no or limited control over their minds and bodies. They are ‘possessed’. Boundaries depicted in trickster films and narratives can be both physical and hypothetical (purely metaphorical).

The trickster principle ‘likes’ freedom and fluidity, and therefore ‘disproves’ of partitions separating fantasy from reality (and, when it acts as a creative impulse, it ‘removes’ the partition between fantasy and reality, the unconscious and consciousness). Charlie Chaplin’s films contain good examples of physical borders, erected by society to protect itself from antisocial elements. In A Dog’s Life (1918) the character of the Tramp lives inside an open air enclosure separated from the rest of the social world by a rotten wooden fence. Chaplin uses the idea of the fence creatively, making this boundary the centre of the conflict between the Tramp and the policeman. In the finale of The Pilgrim (1923) the Tramp is left by the sheriff on the border between Mexico and the United States (Turner’s ‘betwixt and between’).

For Carrey’s character Carl Allen in Yes Man (2008), the threshold separating him from his previous life is his decision, prompted by a self-improvement guru Terrence Bundley (‘therapist as a trickster’), to say ‘yes’ to every opportunity and experience awaiting him in the world. The guru presses him into making a covenant with himself and stop being a ‘No Man’ (cf. Odysseus telling the Cyclops that his name is ‘No man’). During the liminal period of saying ‘yes’ to everything, the previously reclusive and cautious Carl takes flying lessons, learns Korean language, uses the services of a Persian dating website and accepts an offer of oral sex from his elderly neighbour, Tillie. Saying ‘yes’ and taking chances seem to be doing magic to Carl’s life. His career prospects at the bank improve, he keeps making new friends, and even saves a suicidal man by singing him a song using his newly-acquired abilities to play guitar.

One of the adventures – agreeing to take a tramp to Elysian Park – leads to an acquaintance with a beautiful biker Allison (Zooey Deschanel) who eventually becomes his girlfriend. However, after saying ‘no’ to his ex-wife’s offer of ‘getting back together’, Carl’s luck disappears. Meanwhile, Allison learns about Carl’s covenant and begins to doubt the sincerity of their relationship. The film climaxes with Carl hiding in the backseat of Terrence’s car, accosting the guru after his ‘Yes’ seminar and demanding to remove the curse. Carl’s behaviour causes a car accident, and both end up in hospital. Both survive the crash (the ‘rebirth’ motif), and Terrence explains to Carl that the covenant does not exist. The protagonist eventually gets back with Allison – not as a man compelled by a covenant to agree to her offer of moving in together, but as an individual capable of making independent decisions. He explains to her that he loves her but is not ready to move in with her yet. The covenant serves as a threshold into and out of the liminal zone and encircles a mad but positive experience which turns the protagonist from a ‘no man’ to a man with a name, a motivated human being capable of changing his life. Like this, Carl is reborn.

The ability to cross the dangerous boundary between the world of the living and the realm of the dead is one of the trickster’s most notable qualities. In classical mythology he is even appointed an ‘official’ psychopomp, a mythical conductor of souls to the nether regions. The Greek Hermes and the Roman Mercurius are psychopomps; in many other trickster stories the right to cross the boundary between life and death is designated as immortality, as the priceless capacity to be reborn many times; as an in-built physical...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Common Motifs in Trickster Narratives
• 2. The Trickster and Personal Relationships
• 3. The Trickster and the Economic System
• 4. The Trickster and Contemporary Powers
• 5. Gonzo Trickster and the Art of Comic Insurrection
• Conclusion
• References
• Film references
• Index