Media Trickster

A psychodynamic evaluation of contemporary (2013) British tabloid

journalismJames Alan Anslow, MA

At the beginning of the 21st century, British tabloid newspapers, whose circulations were already in steep decline, faced twin existential challenges: a growing tendency by consumers to access free content from the internet and demands for stringent regulation of print journalists. The latter challenge was characterised in 2012 by a report published by the Leveson inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press set up by the UK government following a “phone-hacking” scandal which had triggered the closure of the tabloid News of the World. For decades, cultural theorists had accused popular newspapers of being a pernicious influence on the minds of their readers and of society in general; they argued both would be psychologically healthier if titles such as the News of the World’s sister publication, The Sun, ceased to exist or were radically revised. However, this work suggests that the production and consumption of tabloid journalism are activities affected psychodynamically by what C.G. Jung names “the transcendent function”: the ego’s bridge to the unconscious which this investigation deems to be at the heart of humankind’s meaning-making, survival-enhancing, creative drive. This study hypothesises that, although Jung appears never to have made an explicit connection, aspects of the transcendent function are manifest in the archetypal Trickster figure–portrayed in myths and folklore as a disruptive, lascivious border-crosser. This thesis draws on the insights of earlier investigations to construct a Trickster theory which it uses to evaluate British tabloid journalism, taking The Sun as a case study; it concludes that this journalistic form, with its raucous transgressiveness and ethical imperfections, has beneficial psychosocial value and argues that increased statutory regulation would render this tabloid Trickster unable to fulfil its psychodynamic function, to the detriment of a post-modern Britain challenged by a fragmenting media landscape.

Thesis: abstract

Thesis: points• Question: does tabloid journalism have psychosocial value?• Hypothesis: tabloid journalism DOES have psychosocial value• Why? Because it can be shown to manifest the Trickster

principle explored by Jung et al..• .. and Trickster in turn can be shown to manifest the

psychodynamically positive transcendent function described by Jung

• Corollary: if hypothesis is true, the extinction of tabloid journalism would be to Britain’s psychosocial detriment. Therefore, recommendations by Leveson and others for radical regulationary press reform ought to be rejected.

• This thesis also contests the contemporary academic critique of Goldsmiths scholars (Curran) and earlier mass media observations of Baudrillard and Bourdieu.

Framework

• Depth psychology, mainly Jungian and post-Jungian but incorporating aspects of object relations and mirroring

• Non DP: media and cultural studies (McLuhan, Shirky, Curran, Couldry); social anthropologists (Radin, Pelton)

• Audience: multiple disciplines and projected interest from beyond the Academy, therefore…

…some definitions required• Tabloid journalism: not print dimensions

• Trickster: figure, principle, theory

• Psychosocial: “attentive to the co-presence of psychic and social dimensions of human behaviour” without concentrating on either “in a reductive fashion” (Hollway 2012)

• Psychodynamic: not always obvious

• Transcendent Function: “..mediates opposites..represents a linkage between the real and imaginary, or rational and irrational..” (Crit Dict Jung Anal)

The Archetyp(al)

“pre-existent, innate, patterns” (1911-12/1952, CW5: para. 474),

a priori “organising factors”, (1911-12/1952, CW5: 328, n39)

inborn modes of functioning that constitute, in their totality, man’s nature” (ibid.)

a biological norm of “psychic activity” (1954, CW9i: 309)

This work remains agnostic on the point of genesis and concurs with Jung’s ultimate decision to “accept my ignorance” (MDR: 384) and his observations that “…in so far as the archetypes act upon me, they are real and actual to me, even though I do not know what their real nature is”; it also sees as significant his assessment that “archetypal content expresses itself, first and foremost, in metaphors…” (1954, CW5 9i: para. 267).

This work prefers the adjectival mode, noting Samuels’ observation that analytical psychology is moving away from “single, big, decorous, numinous expectations of archetypal imagery” (1985: 53) and that some post-Jungians already “abandon discrete archetypes altogether and assume the existence of an omnipresent archetypal component” (ibid.)

• Some excellent comparisons of definitions by, among others, Samuels: The Theory of Archetypes in Jungian and Post-Jungian Analytical Psychology and Knox:

Theory: ‘ubiquitous’ Trickster (Samuels)

..but no single, cohesive theory, so..

Trickster theory

There isn’t a comprehensive “off-the-peg” theory available. So this thesis constructs one. Pelton came closest: “Toward a Theory of Trickster” and this work agrees with him that Jung underestimated the principle.. appearing not to connect it with the transcendent function, which this thesis deems to be at the heart of humankind’s mean-making creativity by uniting opposites and accessing the unconscious

Jung’s mistake

He judged Trickster to be “a moment in an evolutionary process” rather than concluding that the principle’s “irreducible ambivalence” has a meaning-making function crucial to humankind’s psychological, and therefore actual, survival (1980: 230).

Tabloid Trickster: some shared characteristics

• Loutish, lustful puffed up with bias and lies, ravenous for foolery..yet managing always to draw order from ordure (Pelton: 1|)

• Inadvertent (synchronistic?) meaning-making). Trickster transforms “the meaningless into the meaningful” (CW 91: para. 458) . Ricketts speaks of the “trickster-transformer-culture hero” or “trickster fixer” but others see a post-modern anti-hero which, in a world of fragmentation and disenchantment, fills the psychosocial gap left by “the inadequacy of the hero myth as a basis for modern identity” (Rowland 2005: 74).

• Mastery of language..Ashanti Trickster figure Ogu-Yurugu possesses the “power to shape human language” (Pelton 1980: 164,165) and Legba is “…master of the alphabet of Mawu..”

• Disruption (of structures, crossing of boundaries, testing of limits);• Disclosure; (kiss and tell)• Unpredictability;• Humour;• Mischief (and lies);• Muck (and excrement);• Sex (and bawdy eroticism..Page 3 ban);• Commerce;• Shape-changing

..collated from lists of Bassil-Morozow, Tannen, Rowland

Method

•Qualitive, hermeneutic, minimal self-ethnography. Interviews with transcripts and questionnaire

Validation• This thesis is mindful of the challenge of validation examined by Lu

(2011) in his work on Jung and history and identifies similarities with the subject of this study: journalism. Lu asks: “…what are the reasons and justifications for the application of a method which focuses on the individual (depth psychology) to a discipline (history) that largely focuses on the collective?” (2011: 71). He responds by invoking, among other psychodynamic concepts, Jung’s hypothesis of the collective unconscious, suggesting it provides “…evidence that analytical psychology is concerned with the collective and introduces the possibility that woven into the model’s fabric are the tools necessary for an analysis of collective phenomena.” (ibid. 83).

• This thesis undertakes its investigation, mindful of post-Jungian evaluations of other cultural phenomena: Hauke, Hockley, Bassil-Morozow, Tannen, Rowland on TV, film and modern literature and Samuels on politics.

Significance

• It applies insights and theories of depth psychology to a pressing, current question facing UK society (press regulation)

• Uniquely, it applies insights of analytical psychology to popular journalism

• Uniquely, it argues that tabloid journalism represents the Trickster principle.

• It constructs a new theory which unites Trickster and the transcendent function

Challenges

Investigating a moving target

‘Pick and mix’ research (inter-disciplinary, intra-disciplinary) and authorial subjectivity