Wild/Lives: Trickster, Place and Liminality on Screen

Wild/lives draws on myth, popular culture and analytical psychology to trace the machinations of 'trickster' in contemporary film and television. This archetypal energy traditionally gravitates toward liminal spaces – physical locations and shifting states of mind. By focusing on productions set in remote or isolated spaces, Terrie Waddell explores how key trickster-infused sites of transition reflect the psychological fragility of their willing and unwilling occupants. In differing ways, the selected texts – Deadwood, Grizzly Man, Lost, Solaris, The Biggest Loser, Amores Perros and Repulsion – all play with inner and outer marginality.

As this study demonstrates, the dramatic potential of transition is not always geared toward resolution. Prolonging the anxiety of change is an increasingly popular option. Trickster moves within this wildness and instability to agitate a form of dialogue between conscious and unconscious processes.

Waddell's imaginative interpretation of screen material and her original positioning of trickster will inspire students of media, cinema, gender and Jungian studies, as well as academics with an interest in the application of Post-Jungian ideas to screen culture.

Terrie Waddell is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Cinema Studies at La Trobe University, Australia. She has written widely and edited works on contemporary media, identity, gender and analytical psychology. Her previous publication, Mis/takes: Archetype, Myth and Identity in Screen Fiction, was published by Routledge in 2006.

Introduction. Verging on Wildness: Liminality and Trickster. From the Slime to the Scream: Pigs, Whores and Random Acts of Soiling – Deadwood. Channelling the 'Inner Warrior': Bear Whispering as an Extreme Sport – Grizzly Man. Waiting for Godonlyknows: The Island with Agency – Lost. Lost in Space: The Pull of a Sentient Planet and its Avatars – Solaris. Drop and Give Me Ten: The Game, The Shame, The Pain – The Biggest Loser. Dog Day Afternoons: Furbabies and Hellhounds – Amores Perros (Love’s a Bitch). Tell Me about the Rabbits Carol: Fear and Misandry in the Underworld – Repulsion. Conclusion.