Harpo Marx as Trickster

by Charlene Fix

The author invites readers to spend time in the pleasure of Harpo’s cinematic company while comparing him to tricksters from folklore, myth and legend. The book demonstrates how Harpo, the sweetest, wildest, most magical Marx brother, accomplishes the archetypal trickster’s work. Thirteen chapters examine Harpo’s trickster persona closely in each of the Marx Brothers’ films: The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup, A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, Room Service, At the Circus, Go West, The Big Store, A Night in Casablanca and Love Happy.

Harpo as trickster embodies luck, foolishness, cleverness, mania, hunger, lust, stealing, shape-shifting, gender-bending, alliance with underdogs, attacks on the powerful, musicality, sympathy for animals, magic and mischief. His trickster behaviors in all the films are woven into a composite impression that "with a little luck, will resonate beyond the covers of this book and leak out into the world, making it a more just, flexible, resilient, amusing and magical place."

232 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Mattie]

Fix analyzes the characters Harpo Marx played in the Mark Brothers movies as the archetypal "trickster" character. I think she's right about his role as trickster and her analysis is generally solid. Yet the book left me mostly unsatisfied. If Goodreads let me, I'd give this 2.5 stars.

First, I think she also assumes that the reader is already familiar with the idea of the trickster archetype in folklore & myth (someone who through a sense of playful chaos challenges authority and prevailing norms for conventional behavior). I was, and perhaps the audience is supposed to be, but it struck me.

Second, I didn't like the organization of the book. It's rather a filmography - each chapter looks at a different movie. But after the first couple, the analysis gets very repetitive. I think it would have been better to organize the chapters by the different aspects of the trickster archetype, weave in the examples from the movie and also bring in other trickster characters. One good thing about the filmography approach is that it did make me recall some things about some great movies that I hadn't seen in a long time.

[Dan Fahlgren]

As a lifelong (49 years so far) devotee and fan of the Marx Brothers- particularly Harpo, this book was drudgery to read. It appears to be aimed more at intellectuals with an expertise in the “trickster” archetype in literature, mythology, and American Indian folklore. After reading almost every other book written by or about the Marxes, I finally found one that removes the funny from the films. I couldn’t bear to read it for more than 2 or 3 pages at a time, but as a completist when it comes to the Marx boys, I trudged through to the end.
The introduction seemed to last for 117 pages. I thought that would be the worst of it. No, the author seemed obsessed with flatulence and phallic metaphors and allusions, and this book uses the word “hinge” more than the Acme Hinge Company’s sales catalogue.
In watching the Marx films dozens of times, and reading all sorts of angles and perspectives on Harpo’s antics, flatulence and phalluses were no where else to be seen. That seems to be the main focus of this book.
The book painstakingly lists and describes all 13 Marx films scene by scene, yet doesn’t seem to have seen any humor in them.
If you love Hermes, and Coyote, and other mythological tricksters, you may get something from this. For me, make mine Marx. This one doesn’t.

[Oliver Ho]

This is an incredible book-length essay on how the characters played by Harpo Marx across 13 movies embodied the elements that make up the trickster archetype. It's a totally fascinating and fun exploration, very well thought out and convincing. I'll definitely re-read this book. The author doesn't address whether Harpo (and the writers of his movies) might have been conscious of aligning him so closely with the trickster figure. I suspect they weren't entirely (although some may have been). I think it's like that the qualities Harpo displayed in the movies felt right to him (and the other artists involved) because the trickster archetype is so thoroughly ingrained in world mythology and storytelling. I found it thought-provoking.