What is your favorite portrayal of the trickster archetype in popular culture?

[ChildOfEru]

Question is all in the title.   What is your favorite portrayal of the trickster archetype in popular culture?   If you want to explain why character fits; that is all bonus material.

 

[Bill the barbarian]

Bugs and Wiley for the win... the coyote from Grant Morrison for honourable (?) mention. Shit, I almost forgot Wesakechak who I was introduced to in American Gods.

Edited October 2, 2022 by Bill the barbarian

[mfbrandi]

The Monkey King, Great Sage Equal to Heaven?

[EricW]

The Saint - he steals from criminals, usually by deception, lies a lot, rarely kills people. Sometimes nice to people, tries to give money to victims, sometimes harsh, like when he branded a rapist on the face with a red hot iron.

The Stainless Steel Rat - a criminal who rarely kills, who is sometimes persuaded to help hunt worse criminals. Married to one of those worse criminals, a murderous lady who had a conscience surgically implanted, after a career of mayhem. The implanted conscience wears thin every time she thinks he is looking at other women.

 

Edited October 2, 2022 by EricW

[mfbrandi]

This seems to be a category in which women are short-changed. Maybe the problem is drawing boundaries around the type. There are tricky, clever, appealing, and dangerous women who leave a trail of destruction — like the unnamed protagonists of We Who Are About To … and What Did You Do During the Revolution, Grandma? — but do they count even as Jacks? Are they, anyway, too rational. Is it a phallic category?

John Clute is quite good on the Trickster:

Quote

Throughout these archaic tales, the trickster – inconsistently – does two things supremely well: he creates the world through Transformations and through seedings; and he sticks his voracious head (or huge penis) into the workings of the world, sometimes deranging the gods and mortals he butts against, sometimes dismembering himself, sometimes destroying everything … Brer Rabbit becomes Bugs Bunny (many of whose early cartoons were filled with gay slang – “Oh Prunella!” being drag-queen slang in particular: Bugs is notorious for dressing in drag)

Do characters like Simon Templar and Raffles really count? They break the law, but they seem to have codes of honour and to be unlikely to burn the whole shithouse down. But, as I say, I am uncertain how far we can push the category.

“Ronin Hood” made me laugh, but it looks like Image Comics actually did it.

[Eff]

Fujiko Mine from assorted pieces of Lupin III media. Potent enough to flirt with metafictionality, as mutably flexible as any of the Lupin characters, everyone wants to be her/with her. 

[mfbrandi]

9 hours ago, Eff said:

everyone wants to be her/with her

Thanks for the suggestion, though maybe this would count against her as a Trickster: you wouldn’t want to be or be with Wile E./Crafty Coyote, or Eurmal, or Loki, or Donald Duck.

Bugs is maybe the outlier.

[JRE]

Just looking at his children, I would say almost everybody and everything wanted to be with Loki. Marvel's Loki has his moments, but is too tame. The same with TV Lucifer.

Roger Zelazny has a lot of trickster characters, including Conrad Nomikos / Kallikantzaros to Loki to Sam (Lord of Light), with the plus of showing Buddha as a trickster character for a fake Hindu pantheon, and including a good part of the Amber series characters. Mostly male, however.

As I indicated in the Eurmal series, James Bond is a quintessential trickster, with widespread destruction and a license to kill, lie and seduce. Modesty Blaise could be her female analogue, but she is mostly forgotten now. Interesting how he is alternatively shown as a psychopath and a sociopath.

In the first season of Fargo, Lorne Malvo acts as a trickster most of the season, doing both good and evil (though it all ends badly) almost at random.

 

[jajagappa]

2 hours ago, JRE said:

As I indicated in the Eurmal series, James Bond is a quintessential trickster, with widespread destruction and a license to kill, lie and seduce.

I do not see him as a Trickster.  Blue Moon Assassin or Dart Warrior, yes, but I don't see him initiating any transformative change through his actions.

 

[JRE]

I refer mostly to the Hollywood version. In most cases Bond does something that puts the world in danger, and he solves it by killing and bedding (or both) most people he meets. An uncontrolled loose cannon, which he is called several times in the films, certainly not what you want in your dart warriors or your sacred assassins.

Seen from the point of view of the other characters, he is just a force of nature changing the world, often in huge ways, from sinking lands to destroying the livelihood of millions of people, most of the time inadvertently, and usually for selfish reasons.

Sometimes he reacts to some danger that is not his fault, or disrupts an ancient conspiracy, in most cases getting involved by accident, but often he is the source of the problem he has to solve.

And considering the amount of destruction and loss of life, I would say it is clearly transformative.

[Eff]

5 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Thanks for the suggestion, though maybe this would count against her as a Trickster: you wouldn’t want to be or be with Wile E./Crafty Coyote, or Eurmal, or Loki, or Donald Duck.

Bugs is maybe the outlier.

As a force of transformative destruction and creation, desire is very potent. All the Lupin characters are some degree of tricksterish, in that they're constantly transforming the situations they end up in, they frequently cause problems for themselves with their desires, but in the end they're able to achieve great deeds. 

[mfbrandi]

2 hours ago, JRE said:

In most cases Bond does something that puts the world in danger … And considering the amount of destruction and loss of life, I would say it is clearly transformative.

I recently got rapped over the knuckles for suggesting one couldn’t slide a fag paper between the hero (Orlanth figure) and their supposedly external trickster, but reckless, world-endangering, transformative — doesn’t all this fit Orlanth, too? Sooo … are we playing fast and loose with the concept of the Trickster, or … ?

[svensson]

Coyote.

Trickster, teacher, and fool all in one.

[Baron Wulfraed]

5 hours ago, JRE said:

Just looking at his children, I would say almost everybody and everything wanted to be with Loki. 

Well, it was a deliberate "seduction" by Loki that resulted in Sleipnir. Haven't studied the lore enough to know what led to Fenrir...

 

[g33k]

9 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

I recently got rapped over the knuckles for suggesting one couldn’t slide a fag paper between the hero (Orlanth figure) and their supposedly external trickster, but reckless, world-endangering, transformative — doesn’t all this fit Orlanth, too? Sooo … are we playing fast and loose with the concept of the Trickster, or … ?

Orlanth is kind of a problem to pin down.  He's all of them, good and bad -- the noble & wise king, the selfish & foolish king, the bold adventurer, the cunning thief, the conquering sexual patriarchy... and the trickster.  One could almost treat the Orlanthi as something of a monotheism, with everything being aspects-of-Orlanth (sometimes cast as "bff" or "son" or "brother" or "lover" or "rival" &c ... but the wise understand that it's all Orlanth).

[Bill the barbarian]

19 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

This seems to be a category in which women are short-changed. Maybe the problem is drawing boundaries around the type. There are tricky, clever, appealing, and dangerous women who leave a trail of destruction — like the unnamed protagonists of We Who Are About To … and What Did You Do During the Revolution, Grandma? — but do they count even as Jacks? Are they, anyway, too rational. Is it a phallic category?

 

Nicely spotted! Is Dr. Harleen Quinzel one of the few woman representing mayhem and chaos and sheer way over the top tricksterism?

Edited October 3, 2022 by Bill the barbarian

[mfbrandi]

25 minutes ago, g33k said:

Orlanthi as something of a monotheism, with everything being aspects-of-Orlanth (sometimes cast as "bff" or "son" or "brother" or "lover" or "rival" &c ... but the wise understand that it's all Orlanth

Yes, this has occurred to me, too, but has anyone suggested that Ernalda is part of Orlanth, yet? We are supposed to think of the religion of the Orlanthi as embracing Air and Earth, right?

[mfbrandi]

7 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Dr. Harleen Quinzel

But a consciously re-gendered Harlequin, no? And for that we also have Moorcock’s Una Persson — but she is not such a psycho, which brings us to the Temporal Adventuress and Woolf’s Orlando and Russ’s Alyx. They are transgressive (just by being women with agency), but not IMO Tricksters, so sadly, we must rule them out — but not your Harleen!

[Martin Dick]

17 hours ago, g33k said:

Orlanth is kind of a problem to pin down.  He's all of them, good and bad -- the noble & wise king, the selfish & foolish king, the bold adventurer, the cunning thief, the conquering sexual patriarchy... and the trickster.  One could almost treat the Orlanthi as something of a monotheism, with everything being aspects-of-Orlanth (sometimes cast as "bff" or "son" or "brother" or "lover" or "rival" &c ... but the wise understand that it's all Orlanth).

Ernalda might disagree 😁

[Ormi Phengaria]

I'll offer Kino from Kino's Journey. A perpetual outsider who travels with only her motorcycle, Hermes, for companionship. She learns and teaches, probes boundaries, respects the customs of the places she visits on their own terms, destroys entire countries, draws out the unconscious and provokes the shadow. Violence and change often accompany her visits despite her placid nature.

 

 

[Rodney Dangerduck]

On 10/3/2022 at 9:04 AM, svensson said:

Coyote.

Trickster, teacher, and fool all in one.

Here is the Pacific Northwest that's Raven.  But same idea.

[svensson]

12 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Here is the Pacific Northwest that's Raven.  But same idea.

Very true.

Otter is also a local trickster, but is more concerned with comforts and family than the clever teacher role

[JRE]

In most of western Europe it was the fox, with different local names. Ravens are wise, but they seldom part with their wisdom.

[PhilHibbs]

I liked Mad Sweeney in American Gods, he had some lovely come-uppance scenes when he lost his luck. Although those weren't really his own tricks backfiring, just perversely bad fortune and potentially the sign of an abusive GM!

Edited October 6, 2022 by PhilHibbs

[jajagappa]

13 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

I liked Mad Sweeney in American Gods

He would fit, though Odin and Loki in American Gods maybe more so.

The Joker is one that comes to my mind is really embracing the psychopathic Trickster.