day 1 - Saturday, ruled by Saturn: Obstacles and Blockades
Card: 2 of Coins - Mutiny on the Bounty
On the face of it, this card implies a dichotomous conflict - a mutiny, in fact. The 2 principles represent this struggle - discipline, civil obedience, and worldly conquest [Laughton as Bligh] vs. happiness, satiety, gratitude [Gable as Christian]. I take this as a clear indication of a struggle I face all the time - how much time to devote to working for monetary security and fulfilling duties I have taken on board in order to help others vs. time to myself, time following my own path, and time spent appreciating life and actually living it sensually.
Mutiny on the Bounty won the Best Picture Oscar that year, but its 3 stars - each up for best actor - all lost. What this suggests to me is that the individual details of the internecine struggles are less important than the final product; the important thing here is not the combat between poles, but the dialectic.
During the filming, Laughton was incredibly self-conscious about his looks, his weight, and his secret sexuality; this actually lent to his portrayal of Bligh an added depth - Bligh's character demanding a certain order and respect for his authority, yet being fundamentally a misfit wracked by a gross sense of inadequacy. Interestingly, Gable himself was hounded by a sense of inadequacy - he had been an awkward young man with big ears and bad teeth. Over a decade or so his image was systematically groomed into the matinee idol he became. In the film, Gable's character reaches his Utopia of Pitcairn, and escapes Bligh and society's wrath. In real life, Gable's fame and good looks afforded him a great deal of privilege and immunity, one he took advantage of with his excessive drinking and womanizing - the culmination of which was his date-rape of Loretta Young. When his wife Carole Lombarde died in a plane crash, he was in
flagrant dilecto with Lana Turner. He went downhill, morally and professionally, after that. My point here is this: in the film, Gable escapes culpability and lives as far as we know an idyllic dream. In reality, he died a sad, dissipated man. Laughton, meantime, taking nothing for granted, continued to act at a high artistic standard, such that he is considered one of the greatest film actors of his era. Laughton worked from the inside out, the opposite of Gable, who used his looks and image to do the acting while being empty inside. In short, the real-life fates of the film's stars reveal a deeper dichotomous conflict - Gable/Christian's hedonistic arrogance crashes on the rocks and is drowned, while Laughton/Bligh's disciplined craft floats to the surface.
Again, while rest and succour for the body and certainly the soul is needed, one also needs discipline and perseverance to grow out of psychic conflicts with the world and society. The best picture is the big picture.
day 2 - Sunday, ruled by the Sun: Inspiration and Goals
Card: The Fool 0 The Marx Brothers (featuring Lassie)
Well, this card certainly has a comical aspect. Could it be that my goals and inspirations are laughable? Certainly, humour is an inspiration for me - I have often thought life is such a serious thing that the only sane response to it is ridicule and jest. In their way, Groucho, Chico, & Harpo represent Swords, Wands, & Cups respectively - Lassie being a stand-in for Coins. Groucho's wit is rapier - he will cut a person down along with himself with an onslaught of one-liners; Chico will ramble and gamble his way through any mess while eating a salami; Harpo loves the girls but his true love is a horse, and he is capable despite himself of the sublime; Lassie is loyal, almost royal, and will save a boy trapped in a burning barn as sure as save a flagging movie studio. On the Waite Fool card, the dog represents the animal side of man, while here, the Marxes represent the animal and the dog represents man's finer ambitions.
The Marxes found humour everywhere, especially when being disrespectful to authority. They had honed their routines for years in vaudeville and on Broadway, suggesting that while they were almost surreally chaotic, they had worked hard at perfecting their art. The sense of everything falling apart was finely thought-out and rehearsed. Lassie, meanwhile, well-groomed and intrepid, reminds me of something I have heard said about dogs - that they have sacrificed what some would call their better, animal nature, in order to form an allegiance and dependence on humanity. While the Marxes may be the psyche divided, as with Freud's Ego, Superego, & Id, Lassie over the course of a film and all the subsequent films over the years seems to be Lassie, whereas in fact she was played by many different dogs. The taming and training needed for these Lassies to perform as they did suggests the discipline and fortitude needed to accomplish goals, but it also hints at the artifice behind what appears a simple-hearted tale.
All in all, I take from this card a Marxist dialectic: don't take anything for granted - the ground beneath your feet may be a hound. Years of training may lead to studied anarchy, or a rather sad animal tamed in the service of weak family entertainment. inspiration is by nature anarchic. Goals can be a gaol. Let the barn and the boy burn down. And laugh.
"
Look at me. I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty." - Groucho
day 3 - Monday, ruled by the Moon: Dreams and Fears
Card: 7 of Cups - Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs
Snow White is kept from getting her beauty sleep by 7 perhaps inebriated dwarfs. Echoing their red noses is the red apple the wicked witch holds up - the poison apple that will put Snow White into a deep sleep. These events are actually being reflected in the magical talking mirror, that speaks the truth. The foremost fear this reveals to me is the fear of getting old, represented in the wicked witch disguised as an old crone. It also alludes to the dangers of a mean-spirited resentment, such as the wicked witch harbours for the charming young Snow White.
Animation is analogous to dreams - images and ideas imagined and projected from the mind's eye. Looked at another way,
Snow White had been Disney's dream to make, and many people thought a full-length animated film was sheer folly. Taking years to complete, Disney had to mortgage his house to get the film finished. When released, it became the highest grossing film up to that point, and was the bedrock on which Disney's dream empire was founded.
To return to the area of fear, or the card's darker aspects, Disney ill-treated his animators. He was a crypto-fascist, and his dream empire became a huge money-making enterprise capitalizing on people's desire for escapism. Disney's product became ubiquitous, brainwashing generations of children with its insipid stories and crass commercialism. As impressive in a technical sense as Disney's early films such as
Snow White are, these darker aspects of Disney and his Disneyland are things I despise and eschew.
day 4 - Tuesday, ruled by Mars: Conflicts and Challenges
Card: 2 of Cups - A Star Is Born
The obvious conflict in the original 1937 version of
A Star Is Born centres around the frailty of the male protagonist's ego, the doubtfulness of his talent, and his spiral into alcoholism to numb the pain. Right off the bat, this suggests to me my own dependence on alcohol to help me cope - even when it actually makes coping harder - and my struggle to moderate or eliminate it altogether when I know it's what's best for both me and those close to me. The love between the 2 main characters, played by Frederic March and Janet Gaynor, is deep and enduring. Gaynor tries many ways to help March, but he just can't shake his humiliation or his reliance on booze to drown his sorrows. There is a warning here, about feeling sorry for oneself and indulging in resentments. A ham actor, March commits a histrionic suicide, sacrificing himself rather than allowing his wife to sacrifice her life for him, a man beyond redemption. This indicates to me that either I alter my ingrown, unhealthy ways and change my life for the better, or my proclivities to feel overwhelmed by reality and sorry for myself - 2 core pitfalls of Pisces - will kill me.
During the making of
A Star Is Born, Frederic March co-founded the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, for which he was thereafter hounded by red-baiters and HUAC. This real-life harassment seemed to tell on March's face. While the story of
A Star Is Born was woven together from many Hollywood couples' real-lives, its main source was the marriage of Barbara Stanwyck and Frank Fay. Fay was a hideous creep - a drunk, an anti-semite, an egocentric, a wife-beater. His self-destruction suggests to me some less than savoury attitudes behind the scenes and behaviours in my past which I have subsequently turned my back on, but which nevertheless cannot be undone. The marriage of Frank and "Babs", and what price Hollywood so to speak, certainly hardened Stanwyck to the realities of life and show-biz.
A Star Is Born has been remade many times, becoming one of Hollywood's clichés about itself. A version is out in theatres now, with the principles playing musicians rather than actors - as in the 1954 version starring Judy Garland and the 1976 version starring another Chris (of sorts) - Kris Kristofferson - and another Babs - Barbara Streisand. This suggests the motifs touched on in the original film are still germane to a public gaga for celebrity, generally speaking, and perhaps also to me personally, as a musician.
day 5 - Wednesday, ruled by Mercury: Interactions and Change
Card: 9 of Spades - Dark Victory
In
Dark Victory, Bette plays a hedonistic young socialite who drinks and smoke too much and, while the toast of the town, is a shallow and spoilt brat. When she literally falls from her high horse, she condescends to see a doctor who discovers she has an inoperable brain tumour and a year to live. He keeps this from Bette and instead begins a romantic relationship with her. When she finds out her fate, she thinks his feelings for her were simply pity and she reverts to her old profligate ways. Things get so out of hand that at one point she even strikes up a relationship with Ronald Reagan. Fortunately, Humphrey Bogart - completely uncredible as an Irish stableboy - convinces Bette she's being a childish twit, whereat she returns to her loving doctor. In the end, Bette succumbs to her disease, but not before learning the grace of self-sacrifice and the healing power of true love.
What a change - from Snow White 2 days ago to Bette Davis. And yet, the theme I pointed out of aging and the fear of death in Monday's card is repeated here today. Because both main characters are women, and because as a boy I saw my mother as a kind of Snow White, and because my mother's name is Betty, I fear that the theme may concern my mother, who has been quite ill and suffered this past year. Bette's hedonism has more to do with me, and ties into some of the self-destructive behaviours seen on yesterday's card, as does the theme of self-sacrifice and the redemptive power of love - granted one accepts it. Where yesterday the Frederic March character literally killed himself rather than accept this healing love, Bette does accept that love and lives the most fulfilling year of her life.
Dark Victory is one of those stories where a blind person learns to see through losing their sight, and learns to live life through facing their own death. Made in the most golden year of Hollywood's Golden Years, 1939, the glitter was about to fade as it was also the year of the beginning of a turning point in modern history, the 2nd World War. With death obviously looming, I take from this card the chance to nevertheless make the most of what time one has in the world, especially with the casting aside of fairweather friends (even - or perhaps especially - if they be future presidents) and the cultivation of deeply rewarding relationships with people of merit who share their vulnerability and care.
day 6 - Thursday, ruled by Jupiter: Power and Influences
Card: The Hermit IX New American Cinema
Today it is set to rain, and I have been working at manual labour all week while the sun shone. I set aside today and tomorrow as days for myself - get up slowly, have a long-deferred shower, and then look at some of the projects I've been neglecting - putting the finishing touches on a book of poetry for a friend, editing the text of a tarot deck for Schiffer, and most importantly: going out to my newly built music studio to work on some songs that have been swirling around my head the last month. Since boyhood, where as an only child I spent hours entertaining myself, I have very seriously needed time alone to not only charge my batteries and create, but to stay somewhat sane and remain a whole person.
The Hermit, of course, suggests solitude and having time to oneself. In the GAHT deck, it also suggests going one's own direction, represented by experimental film of the time as opposed to mainstream Hollywood films designed to make a profit. The pioneering work of Maya Dereen, Kenneth Anger, and Stan Brakhage eventually led to the break with studio-style filmmaking seen in the cinematic renaissance of the 60s & 70s known as The New American Cinema. The mesh of images on the Hermit card here reflect a switch from traditional narrative structures to abstract and surreal juxtapositions which turn away from money-making formulas and focus instead on feelings, memories, psychology, and the human psyche. There are a number of hands on this card, suggesting the hand-made quality of this work; there are crossed wires and lines of transmission, like puppet strings, a tightrope, a cat's cradle [the name of one of my songs]; there is a phone left off the hook, in contact with things far away or so to go undisturbed; there is a record player playing music.
Naturally, many of these experimental artists gained little or no recognition, and they certainly made no money from their work - if anything, they spent their own money on their projects while going without. My relationship to my work is essentially the same. Excuse me while I go begin my day.
day 7 - Friday, ruled by Venus: Love and Attraction.
Card: 10 of Cups - It's A Wonderful Life
Well, my better half is away in a different city right now, so a Venus reading is a little difficult to relate to today specifically. But the very fact I am away from her reflects the last part of
It's A Wonderful Life, when George Bailey [Jimmy Stewart] gets to see what life would be like without him. This autumn, I'm in the midst of turning an old garage into a living space for my sweetheart, a process which reminds me of the old house the newlywed Baileys buy and restore. My gal is a cat person, and I once had a cat myself I named Zuzu, after the character in the film. My sweetheart is coming out for Christmas, and what is
IAWL if not the best-loved Xmas movie of all time? The 10 of Cups, of course, is a card of familial joy.
The film also has a dark side. The creepy scenario of Pottersville in George's vision is the world we live in, not the hallmark card of the world with George Bailey. The idea of suicide and the death that haunts the film recall to mind my own experience of a number of deaths recently of people I know. The autumn naturally lends itself to nostalgia and end of cycle thoughts. Appropriate that the end of the Cups cycle then came here, on the last day of the weekly reading. Jimmy Stewart as it happens appears on a couple other cards, most notably as the Knight of Cups.
Like most people, I find many scenes in this film to be emotionally moving. My personal all-time favourite has always been the scene where George and Mary [Donna Reed] are sharing a phone to talk with Sam Wainwright while Mary's mother listens on the extension upstairs. George's frustration boils over in a pique of anger, and he grabs Mary and says "I don't want to get married - ever - to anyone! You understand that? I want to do what I want to do." This reminds me of myself. Of course, it's at this very moment he breaks down and, Mary and George repeating each others' names, they kiss. The film critic Andrew Sarris called this scene "One of the most sublimely histrionic expressions of passion in film history." and I have to agree. Certainly from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
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And what about those who just want to have a Deck of the Week, Card of the Day reading? They can just jump in and leave the planetary lore away. 
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