Wild/lives: Trickster, Place and Liminality on Screen

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Routledge, Feb 25, 2014 - Psychology - 216 pages

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.

 

Contents

Liminality and trickster
1
Pigs whores and random acts of soiling Deadwood
20
Bear whispering as an extreme sport Grizzly Man
43
The island with agency Lost
66
The pull of a sentient planet and its avatars Solaris
86
The game the shame the pain The Biggest Loser
103
Furbabies and hellhounds Amores Perros Loves a Bitch
123
Fear and misandry in the underworld Repulsion
142
Conclusion
162
References
164
Film references
175
Television references
179
Index
181
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About the author (2014)

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.

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