Framing the Trickster

[elainegrey]

Yesterday, an invited speaker gave a message at meeting that moved me deeply. It was very steeped in biblical tradition and the prophets, and with much reference to the political times.

I found myself thinking of the Flyting of Loki. In years past when i read the poem, i chose to believe that Loki was telling the dark truths of all the other assembled Æsir. My suspicion about recorded Norse myths is that there is an overlay of interpretation and framing that is alien to the original stories, and thus disentangling the two sources and the wisdom of the original is a challenge. This morning, i've been reading a little (here, mostly) about Loki: one thought, unbidden and not particularly wanted comes. Can i understand the desires of those who supported Trump as desires for a trickster to take on Washington, a hope that out of disorder and chaos something better will come? That the absence of the trickster -- am i right to not see tricksters in American dominant culture**? -- has made it harder to interpret Trump? Instead, media thought of him as a jester or fool, and thus were stuck in the amusement frame? And because we lack a shared cultural frame of the trickster, this lack, this gap, leaves us so disorientated?


** Not that there aren't amusements that include tricksters, eg Bugs Bunny, but it seems that the fool/jester functionality is more what is brought forward in current culture, not the sharp edge of the trickster that Loki brings forward.

Comments

[owlmoose]

That's an intriguing theory, and for at least some supporters I'd say it hits the mark as an explanation.

[amaebi]

Wow, that makes a lot of sense.