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Persona and Rebellion in Trickster Narratives. Case Study: Fleabag (Bbc 2016-2019)

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Persona and Rebellion in Trickster Narratives. Case Study: Fleabag (Bbc 2016-2019) Bassil-Morozow PERSONA AND REBELLION IN TRICKSTER NARRATIVES. CASE STUDY: FLEABAG (BBC 2016-2019) HELENA BASSIL-MOROZOW GLASGOW CALEDONIAN UNIVERSITY ABSTRACT This paper brings together the concept of persona and the figure of the trickster to examine the dynamic between social norms and creative noncompliance, between the social mask and human authenticity, in moving image narratives. In particular, it looks at the female trickster challenging the female persona in recent television shows, primarily BBC’s Fleabag (2016-2019), using the previously outlined framework of trickster attributes (Bassil-Morozow 2012; Bassil-Morozow 2015). The concept of persona is examined using a combination of Erving Goffman’s presentation of self theory and Jung’s persona concept. It is argued that the female persona – the artificial vision of socially acceptable femininity – is a particularly rigid psycho-social structure, comprising repressive and unrealistic expectations for women’s looks, bodies, and conduct in public situations. Using the nameless protagonist of Fleabag as a case study, the paper shows how the female trickster can challenge these prescribed attributes and expectations while defying the individual- controlling techniques: shame, social embarrassment, social rejection and ostracism. KEY WORDS Female Trickster; Persona; Fleabag; Jung; Goffman; Social Mask PERSONA AND REBELLION IN TRICKSTER NARRATIVES. CASE STUDY: FLEABAG (BBC 2016-2019) This paper brings together the concept of persona and the figure of the trickster to examine the dynamic between social norms and creative noncompliance, between the social mask and human authenticity, in moving image narratives. In particular, it looks at the female trickster challenging the female persona in recent television shows, primarily BBC’s Fleabag (2016- 20192019), using the previously outlined framework of trickster attributes (Bassil-Morozow 2012; Bassil-Morozow 2015). Application of trickster features and the introduction of the specifically female social mask provide a new angle on the multidisciplinary concept of persona. Meanwhile, the trickster theory also benefits from the inclusion of Erving Goffman’s analysis of social performance which shows off the trickster’s disdain for the artificiality of accepted social values. Trickster narratives can be found in different media, from myth and folk tales to literature, film and TV. They typically depict a protagonist losing face (accidentally or 30 Persona Studies 2020, vol. 6, no. 1 deliberately), entering a period of turmoil, and emerging out of it with a changed status. The link between the trickster and persona seems natural. After all, at the core of a trickster narrative is the disruption of the order of things and erasure of the official mask worn by the individual in their everyday interaction with society. This mask is discussed here using a combination of Carl Jung’s concept of persona and Erving Goffman’s performance theory. Both are transposed onto the trickster narrative arch to explore the trickster’s relationship with all things orderly, lawful, and official. Importantly, persona is also a gendered concept. This article focuses on the female trickster because persona requirements have been traditionally more potent for women in many societies, with additional prescriptions for etiquette, dress code, make-up, body language, and taboo topics. The contrast between the persona and the female trickster is therefore particularly stark, and their conflict is doubly antagonistic (as well as funny). The emergence of the rebellious, unruly, and chaotic female protagonist in recent television narratives, including Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (The CW/Netflix; 2015-2018), Disenchantment (Netflix 2018-), Killing Eve (BBC 2018-), and Fleabag (BBC 2016-20192019), signal that the female trickster has fast becoming accepted into the genre. It signals a social shift, and shows that there is a demand for a new type of female character, the one who does not conform to the traditional vision of what it means to be a woman; a character who is not afraid to challenge the norms and to make change happen. Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s chaotic nameless protagonist is one of the more prominent female tricksters because of her ability to uncover the embarrassments, errors, and genuine emotions underneath the smooth surface of the persona. PERSONA: DEFINITIONS According to Jung, the persona is constructed to look like a coherent identity to the outside world yet it is a “segment of the collective psyche”, and “a mask that feigns individuality, making others and oneself believe that one is individual, whereas one is simply acting a role through which the collective psyche speaks” (Jung CW7, para. 245). The persona is not to be confused with what Jung calls “ego-consciousness” - one’s personal identity parts of which an individual may choose to shield from society. By contrast, the persona is “that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is” (CW 9/I, para. 221). A persona often takes the form of a carefully cultivated image projected to the outside world. Even though it is a necessary part of social adaptation, this image can easily become a trap when its wearer becomes excessively concerned with success and acceptance. Jung writes: When we analyse the persona we strip off the mask, and discover that what seemed to be individual is at bottom collective; in other words, that the persona was only a mask of the collective psyche. Fundamentally the persona is nothing real: it is a compromise between individual and society as to what a man should appear to be. He takes a name, earns a title, exercises a function, he is this or that. In a certain sense all this is real, yet in relation to the essential individuality of the person concerned it is only a secondary reality, a compromise formation, in making which others often have a greater share than he. The persona is a semblance, a two-dimensional reality, to give it a nickname. (CW7, para. 246) Erving Goffman employs terms such as facework, deference, demeanour, embarrassment, stigma, alienation from interaction, communication boundaries, situational proprieties, and other terms to describe the intricacies of the interaction ritual and public behaviour. Unlike the psychoanalytic tradition, Goffman is not interested in the authentic self versus the public self dichotomy, but only in the ritual interactions between people, which he calls “the ritual roles of 31 Bassil-Morozow the self” (Goffman 2005, p. 31). Neither is he interested in origins and development of an authentic personality which would then go on to have an ongoing, repressed conflict with authority. Instead, Goffman defines the self as “an image pieced together from the expressive indications of the full flow of events in an undertaking; and the self as a kind of player in a ritual game who copes honourably or dishonourably, diplomatically or undiplomatically, with the judgemental contingencies of the situation” (2005, p. 31). In other words, to the outside world, which in most cases has no time for exploring personalities and individualities, what really matters is one’s ability to participate in the ‘game’. Anyone unable or unwilling to participate in it is side-lined, as only compliance is rewarded. By contrast, trickster figures in narratives are not invested in improving their “facework” or performing a social ritual; they does not aspire to being nice to others or being likeable; they reject the concepts of “earning a title” or “exercising a function”; they do not intend to become a civilized person or a good citizen. The willingness to build a persona emerges out of the propensity for imitation, out of the desire to belong to a social group. Jung writes: Human beings have one faculty which, though it is of the greatest utility for collective purposes, is most pernicious for individuation, and that is the faculty of imitation. Collective psychology cannot dispense with imitation, for without it all mass organizations, the State and the social order, are impossible. Society is organised, indeed, less by law than by the propensity to imitation, implying equally suggestibility, suggestion, and mental contagion. [...] We could almost say that as a punishment for this uniformity of their minds with those of their neighbours, already real enough, is intensified into an unconscious, compulsive bondage to the environment. [...] To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realise how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality is. (CW7: para. 242; emphasis is mine) To imitate is to belong, to compromise, to be like others in your environment. Yet, the trickster dislikes everything to do with compromise, and goes with complete difference, with strangeness, with otherness – with pure individuality which, from the point of view of society, looks stupid and selfish. The genre staples of trickster behaviour – boundary-breaking, shamelessness, refusal (or lack of care) to have an assigned name, shapeshifting, messy, explosive creativity, obsession with taboo subjects such as sex and excretion – act as repellents against the persona, against the requirements to ‘behave’, to be proper, to become embarrassed when a protocol is breached, or to be ashamed when accidents happen. The persona is all about controlling oneself and one’s environment, by feigning similarity, by fitting in, by seeking external personal validation and professional confirmation. As Marshall et al. put it, as human beings, we are constantly engaged in production of this public self as we negotiate ourselves through life (Marshall et al. 2020, p. 1). Even though the persona has “the appearances of being an individual”, it is, in fact, “the way an individual can organize themselves publicly” (2020, p. 3). Persona is thus a ‘performance of individuality’ and not in any way the authentic individual self. Both the persona and the rebellious human agency behind it are the two sides of what Jung calls the individuation process – the journey of becoming oneself while navigating various societal expectations and rules.
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