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What does the Joker–the Trickster archetype–symbolise? A Jungian analysis.
The Trickster archetype has been a widespread feature of play and entertainment since antiquity. Trickster manifestations emerge in most mythologies–from clowns to phantoms, shapeshifters and jokers.
Tricksters are characterized by peculiar qualities. They deceive, thieve, shift, play, lie, trick, joke–they bend conventional rules. They’re almost always grotesque. They have provocative features to compliment controversial natures. Why?
The symbolic purpose of the Trickster, Jung claims, is ‘simply the reflection of an earlier, rudimentary stage of consciousness’ (p.166–7, Carl Gustav Jung, ‘Four Archetypes’). More explicitly, ‘In his clearest manifestations, he is a faithful reflection of an absolutely differentiated human consciousness, corresponding to a psyche that has hardly left the animal level’ (p.165–6, Ibid). Essentially, Jung claims that the Trickster represents humans at an earlier stage of evolution: semi-developed, differentiated, partially conscious, human.
This explains the Trickster’s dual nature. It shifts shapes, because it is both hyper-conscious and hyper-animal, each wrestling with the other. It is ugly and funny looking, because it is only somewhat recognisable.
It can create new things from apparently insufficient materials. This is what magic tricks are: creating animals from balloons; pulling rabbits from hats; making living things disappear into thin air; giving birth to creatures whilst being neither man nor woman. Why is this property central to the Trickster?
‘This is a reference to his original nature as a creator, for the world is made from the body of God’ (p.169). Here Jung provides genius insight. His claim is that the habitable world – the understood material world – is a creation by God, where God is, among other things, identifiable with consciousness. The generation of ordered things from disordered things – habitable domains, the predictable, the known – is a consequence of consciousness. Consciousness, therefore, has this feature of creating new things. By understanding components of the…
