the timboucher experience

…I want you to consider Bugs Bunny. He is one of the best modern manifestations of the Trickster archetype, and the implications of his behavior are not significantly different from those of the traditional Trickster. He represents both the risks and the rewards of the unbridled id and of the chaotic power that underlies existence.

Chaos is, well, chaotic. It is destructive. Yet it also represents power, creative energy, and the life-force itself. An ordered world cannot tolerate the uncontrolled operation of such an incomprehensible power, and yet a too-ordered world, one that too successfully represses this force, becomes sterile and meaningless.

Bugs Bunny is funny and clever, and his main goal in life seems to be to disrupt the conventional order. But look at his tools: he throws bombs! Sure, these are cartoon bombs, so nobody really gets hurt, but the shadow of real danger can be vaguely discerned behind the technicolor brilliance of this cartoon Trickster.

A less complex version of the Trickster is Woody Woodpecker. He is a less inspired manifestation of the Trickster, because he does not carry the depths and complexities of the Bugs Bunny character. His is essentially a one-note performance, whereas Bugs Bunny, both in character and in behavior, conveys a virtual symphony of implication.

And here’s a good thing from an archived page on google:

The Coyote is the same as the Coyote trickster god from Native American myth, and the Roadrunenr is some sort of redefined version of the Raven, the other big Indian god. Similarly, Bugs Bunny is an avatar of the Trickster god, though a more successful one (with Elmer Fudd being Thor to Bugs’s Loki). Which is why the cartoons where Wile E. chased Bugs never worked: it was a battle between two tricksters, and we didn’t know which side to stand on (thoguh we knew which would win).