The Trickster: A God's Evolution from Ancient to Modern Times

"I want you to hit me as hard as you can." Tyler Durden said and smiled mischievously. A trembling Jack coiled his arm back and unleashed an awkward punch that bounced off of Tyler's ear (Fight Club) . When Jack punched Tyler Durden he began a long struggle with the modern trickster, a struggle that we would discover was really with no one but himself.

Dreams and mythology are important to the survival of humans. Without dreams or mythology, one cannot help but become disconnected from that which makes living as a human desirable. Dreams and myths have distinctly different qualities that distinguish one from the other and at the same time keep each in harmony. The difference between a dream and a myth is that a "...dream is the personalized myth...

Dreams represents the hopes and fears of one particular human while mythology symbolizes the universal fears and hopes of all humans. As humans spread themselves throughout the world they have carried with them their own unique stories of self-identification. Within those stories have arisen many symbols that describe universal qualities of experience that belong to a "...whole peoples or period of history..." that Carl Jung termed "...an archetype" (Campbell, The Masks of God, 32).

The most well known of the archetypes is that of the hero, a protagonist who strives to overcome the will or actions of an antagonist. Another archetype that is perhaps lesser well known is the trickster. Tricksters in mythology represent the chaotic nature and the unpredictability of life. The role the trickster serves in mythology and storytelling is to act as a catalyst for change. Without change, mankind would become stagnant, life would cease to evolve, mature, or improve. For it is only when man is tested that he can truly judge his mettle. Trickster are neither good or evil, but purely chaotic. They appear in mythological tales often to upset the balance between two characters, or to generate an imbalance in the community or world that demands rectification by humans or the gods. The trickster's skills of lying, sleight-of-hand, bawdy, and impish behaviors (Allen 1304-05) are often amusing and result in the plot of a story being driven forward.

If mythology truly does represent the generalized people of a time as Jung asserted then the ancient mythological archetype of the trickster has certainly evolved to meet tensions and anxieties that have become present in today's population during the recent expansion of globalization.

Tricksters such as Hermes in the Greek tradition and Coyote in the Native American tradition have appeared in practically every mythological and cultural pantheon known to exist. They rarely exhibit force and often achieve all of their goals by means of deceitfulness or cleverness. (Leeming, 163) Many of the tricksters in ancient mythology are able to change and bend the rules of reality to suit their needs. They usually appear as male in gender (Hyde 8) but often shape-shift from one sex to the other whenever it would be more beneficial for them to do so. In the tales, the trickster often bestows gifts upon mankind that are both a blessing for human advancement and a cure that usually carries unforeseen consequences. These gifts are generally not given as acts of goodwill but rather out of a compulsive need for the trickster to amuse himself by manipulating the interactions between gods and mortals. Consequently, the tricksters are often entirely loyal to no one but themselves.

Tricksters in ancient mythology arose from an agrarian and hunter gatherer society, thus many of their stories are about or involve animals, farming, and ranching. Hermes, for example, was responsible for the protection and expansion of commerce. A story included in David Adams Leeming's anthology The World of Mythby Robert Graves states that -- when Hermes was young, he stole some of Apollo's cows. When his crime was discovered, he used cunning and trickery to avoid punishment and when it came time for Hermes to face punishment from Zeus, his father, he used further sharp wit and skillful deceit to convince Zeus that it would be in his best interest to appoint Hermes as his personal representative and messenger. Furthermore, Hermes was granted godhood and admitted to Mount Olympus (164-165).

Zeus gave Hermes specific duties regarding commerce: "...your duties would include the making of treaties, the promotion of commerce, and the maintenance of free rights of way for travelers on any road in the world "(Leeming 165). Benevolence, particularly with respect to commerce and the welfare of the people is also exhibited by the Navajo Native American trickster Coyote. He is represented in the stories as being "interested in games and amusements, and as favoring , and ordaining dances, promulgating laws, introducing industrial pursuits...and... various other things for their welfare and happiness" (Bagley 21). Each shows an objective that was common among the ancient mythological tricksters, to assist and further trade and commerce amongst the people, while maintaining morale and peace. The result of these actions by the ancient mythological trickster brought the thinly distributed people, who likely lived many miles away from one another to share fellowship in community venues such as the local village market, places of worship, and sporting events. Each of these, in their own way, became a foundational block in the ancient world's efforts at community building. The Olympic games, overseen by Hermes, became a way for disparate nations to lay down arms and to forgive, or ignore injustices briefly while citizens tested the athletic abilities of one another during bouts of competition held in a spirit of universal brotherhood.

This sense of serving the best interest of society as a whole, and denying the wants of the individual which was a staple in the ancient mythological tricksters has largely ceased to appear in the character traits of the modern mythological tricksters.

Modern trickster mythology serves a modern society that is represented increasingly by dense populations of urban sprawl. Technology is king. Humans cannot escape the presence of one another. Those who grow up in dense cities cannot help but feel the pressure to become technologically literate so they can assimilate into the globalized world, lest they become obsolete. It is a world in which all the great adventures have been had. All of the heterogeuous cultures have been absorbed the by homogenizing presence of advertising and marketing. Such pressures, have caused an evolution of the ancient mythological trickster into the modern day tricksters characters such as Tyler Durden, Captain Jack Sparrow ("List of Modern Day Tricksters", 1), and Ferris Bueller. These modern day tricksters have come to represent the yearnings of those who wish to regain their individualism, liberty and freedom. The modern day tricksters meet the hopes of the modern audience by engaging in ploys that outwit political powers, overcome financial needs, and luxuriate in the freedom and liberty of an adventurous, self-realized individualistic lifestyle that may or may not serve the needs of society as a whole but certainly serve the whims of the modern trickster as an individual.

Tyler Durden, from David Fincher's film Fight Club, epitomizes these qualities. His creation of the anarchic group Project Mayhem and their objectives differentiates himself from the classical mythological trickster Project Mayhem acts very much like a dystopic, male, blue-collar cult. Project Mayhem members are encouraged to dispose of their value systems by performing politically, commercially, and socially deviant behavior which culminates with the destruction of the credit bureau databases in the United States. The motive of every action in Project Mayhem is to remove oneself from the fold of society, and to further extricate themselves from any and every system. The members are under the mistaken belief that the destruction of such databases would return everyone to a universal equivalence, and thus grant all citizens the liberty and freedom from what Project Mayhem members interpret as a corrupt and enslaving system. When Tyler Durden fights with Jack,who is a symbol of the conventional and the commercialized, Durden is a modern trickster who is destroying the very qualities that the ancient mythological trickster valued and built.

Captain Jack Sparrow, the swashbuckling captain from the 2003 surprise hit Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, the first film in the Pirates of the Caribbean film trilogy has no grand objective to encourage others to reject a system of government or convention. He simply wants to indulge his gluttonous desires of women, rum, and gold. But according to screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, the character of Captain Jack Sparrow was indeed conceived and written using the trickster archetype as a guide. "There's a certain moral ambiguity to the pirate genre which seemed perfect for the kind of trickster character you see in folklore all around the world...You've got the Jack tales (Appalachian folk stories), the Navajo Indian's Coyote legends, the spider god from African Mythology. Shakespeare's Puck is another" (Hart). Sparrow is similar to Tyler Durden in his quest to find liberty and freedom, but he is not as driven to change society as Tyler Durden, but as a pirate he disrupts the flow of commerce. Sparrow maintains the appearance of an androgynous trickster unlike Durden's hyper-masculinity, but like Durden he is a master at playing tricks and at the skill of situation inverting, which is the ability to a dire situation to his advantage

Ferris Bueller, the truant hero from John Hughes 1986 film Ferris Bueller's Day Off on the other hand represents one of the non-violent modern tricksters. Unlike Durden and Sparrow, he never needs to use the threat of violence or destruction to achieve his objectives. As a bored teenager, his only objective is to survive the doldrums of high school and avoid trading his dreams and passions for societal acceptance. The irony is, that as a master trickster, he radiates extreme charisma. We admire his complete confidence in himself and his commitment to rewrite the rules of society in such a way as to obtain what he wants without actually harming anyone. The modern audience who has experienced the horrors of high school can relate to the need for mischief and adventure that Ferris Bueller seeks. In the film Bueller uses no weapons or violence to achieve his ends. He uses nothing but his own guile to charm and magically maneuver everyone that he encounters into giving him willingly that which he seeks.. As a result, he and his companions enjoy an extremely adventurous day in Chicago while breaking all of the rules and values that society has determined are critical to becoming a wholesome and successful young man. He inspires the community with his societal non-compliance to such a degree that we want him to succeed. When his classmates and community begin an effort to "Save Ferris", we sympathize because saving Ferris symbolizes saving spirit of individuality. We all want to step outside of ourselves and become our own version of Ferris Bueller. His ability to connect with the misfits in this humorous scene by Grace the school secretary, describes how diverse his followers truly and show powerfully charismatic a trickster he truly is, "Well, he's very popular. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wasteoids, dweebies, dickheads. They all adore him! They think he's a righteous dude" (Ferris Bueller's Day Off).

Instead of attempting to meet an ideal, the modern trickster encourages us to reject the societal ideal and instead embrace the flaws and scars that make us uniquely individualized humans. It encourages us to remove ourselves from the capitalist machine, or at least make the machine work for us rather than against us.

Lewis Hyde asserts that "there are no modern tricksters because trickster only comes to life in the complex terrain of polytheism. If the spiritual world is dominated by a single high god...then the ancient trickster disappears" (Hyde, 9-10). Hyde is wrong, he defines the trickster too narrowly and neglects to the recognize that the trickster is not a harbinger of morality lessons, but rather an ever-changing representation of neutrality that reflects whatever society is currently missing. As long as humans have a hope to break free from the internal and external prisons that hold them captive then there will always be a place for the ever evolving modern mythological trickster.

No matter what form the trickster archetype may take, be it the more virtuous qualities of the ancient mythological trickster, or the more anarchic modern mythological trickster who brings about renewal through destruction, they both serve the same function in the grand mythological story but achieve them in very different forms. They are there to inspire us, intrigue us, amuse us, and in the very end they are there to help guide us through the most wrenching experiences we shall ever face in this all too brief journey we call life.

Works Cited

Allen, R.E., Ed. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English. 8^th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Bagley, C.B. Indian Myths of the Northwest. Lowman and Hanford Co. 1930.

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: Princeton University Press,

1972

Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God. Vol. 1. New York: Penguin Books. 1991.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Written and Dir.by John Hughes. 1986. DVD. Paramount. 1999.

Fight Club Dir. by David Fincher. Screenplay by Jim Uhls. 1999. DVD: Twentieth Century Fox, 2000.

Graves, Robert. The Greek Myths, Vol. 1. Baltimore, Maryland: 1955. (63-65) Rpt. in The World of Myth: An Anthology. Ed. By David Adams Leeming. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Hart, Hugh. "Trickster Pirate" San Francisco Chronicle. July 2, 2006. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/02/PKGCEJKJBE1.DTL>

Hyde, Lewis. Trickster Makes the World: Mischief, Myth, and Art. New York: North Point Press, 1998.

Leeming, David Adams. Ed. The World of Myth: An Anthology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

"List of Modern Day Tricksters". Wikipedia. May 13^th, 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_modern_day_tricksters>

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Dir. by Gore Verbinski. Screenplay by Ted Elliot & Terry Rossio. 2003. DVD. Disney, 2003.