Trickster archetypes exist in many human cultures, with a very defined set of characteristics. He is charismatic, funny, but utterly undependable, a little bit of a thief, but moving the story forward, making change happen, blasting away the status quo.
Joanna reads from Jay’s book, Nemesis, My Friend: “He bends the truth till your head hurts. Trickster is shameless. The quiet, inner voice of conscience, or of honour or truth has no place. Win some, lose some, happy go lucky, slippery as an eel gone pickpocketing in a slimy fishmarket. Boastful as a raccoon snorting cocaine off a tycoon’s bald patch. Double-duplicitous as a fake ferret on the filchy-filchy. Trickster lives entirely in an amoral world. Indigenous cultures often consider the Dominant Culture to be the Younger Brother and something of a Trickster, noting its selfish immaturity, its appetite and greed, its technical cleverness but lack of wisdom, its refusal to take the long view.
Although he disturbs the status quo, arse over tit, bouleversé, crucially, the mythic Trickster is never in power. Rather he is on the edge, marginal, outside the tent pissing in. Because he doesn’t have power, we are sympathetic to him. But never give the clown a gun.”
From Commedia dell’arte, to Shakespearean fools to the Monkey King, Jay, Joanna and John discuss the Trickster in drama, comedy and satire, the role of the Lord of Misrule in the Saturnalia, and the necessity of turning the world upside down for a while.
But the Trickster, given power, can become dangerous, as Jay reads: “Trickster is transactional, loves cutting deals and ensuring commerce, he is there in double-entry book-keeping, often using deceptive or fraudulent business practices, always needing money and near-constantly in debt. ‘I do deals,’ says Trump, mired in debt.
“He is a wheeler as well as a dealer, and prefers to be portrayed on the road, always on his way somewhere, often to rallies, Road-Runner whizzy. Trump portrayed himself as the plucky outsider taking on the establishment, using slippery Trickster speech he incited the lethal insurrection at the Capitol, in January 2021, on the back of his pants-on-fire lie that the election was stolen from him.”
She goes on: “I want the real Trickster back. I want to be able to laugh at the daft lies and ingenuity of the ‘little guy’ rather than fearing the ‘strong men.’”
But we must always remember that the Trickster often gets caught in his own clever traps…
