Stranger Than Fiction: A Hitchcockian Film Reading

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I've been wanting to do a reading based on a fictional event for some time now, but have been too busy lately. One of the things I've been busy with is making a new deck based on the films of Alfred Hitchcock. But now that I'm finished, I thought what better way to do a fictional reading than to do it based on a Hitchcock film with the new deck? 2 birds, etc.

As I haven't received the proof of the deck yet, I decided to pull from my standard RWS deck and interpret the pull via the corresponding Hitchcock cards. [NOTE: for the purposes of the readings that follow, I have removed the Aces and Court cards].

The film I chose was Vertigo. The situation sees Scottie, having just lost his obsessive love, Madeleine, finding a girl on the street who looks like Madeleine. Judy is in fact Madeleine, and after Scottie follows her home she decides to pack up her things and leave town. She writes him a letter explaining the elaborate deception, but then rips up the letter and decides to stay and try to make Scottie love her for her. This ends disastrously for Judy and Scottie.

I pulled 3 cards:
1). What is the over-riding nature of the situation?
2). What happens if Judy sends Scottie the letter and skips town?
3). What happens if Judy stays?

the first card I pulled was The Hanged Man 12 Rope

Interestingly, not only is the card's actor Jimmy Stewart, who plays Scottie, but he's the card's only figure - suggesting the total domination of Scottie over Judy (and rationality). Stewart's character in Rope influenced that film's murderers with his extreme ideas; Scottie will influence and ultimately control Judy with his idee fixe. Scottie's sanity hangs from a thread. He is upside-down, and he will turn Judy upside-down by turning her into the dead Madeleine. He will also effectively kill Madeleine, just as his character in Rope effectively killed David Kentley and the 2 murderers he hands over to the police. This scene in Vertigo is the mid-point, the film's hinge, where we are told what's happened and step outside of Scottie to seel through Judy's eyes for a moment. Many people told Hitchcock not to do it, to keep the events a secret until the end, but Hitchcock wanted to let the audience in on the situation. By doing so, Vertigo becomes less about a whodunnit kind of mystery and more about the mystery of human psychology. Just like The Hanged Man, Hitchcock placed the emphasis on humanity's predicament, the noose we entangle ourselves in, and the pitfall of subjectivity.

the second card I pulled was Temperance 14 Notorious

This card presents Alicia in Notorious caught between the man she loves and the man she is married to as part of her job. This clearly indicates Judy's position, caught between Scottie, whom she loves, and the murderous husband Gavin Elster whom she pretended to be married to as Madeleine. Alicia has involved herself in this intrigue to atone for her father - Judy, it could be said, is working through her own father issues by loving Scottie, a man old enough to be her father. Alicia is doing what she's doing for the man she loves, even though it pains them both. If Judy left town, she would be doing what's best for her and Scottie, even though it would be painful. The champagne bottle here is intact, but in time it will fall and break, just as Judy - if she goes on - will fall and break. The card's planes and Notorious' trip down south suggest leaving a bad situation. The restraint and control Temperance implies is reflected in Judy's choice to leave and reveal the truth to Scottie. Instead, she chooses otherwise -

The 3rd card I pulled was the 9 of Cups Notorious

Curiously, this card represents the 3rd man in the triangle represented in the Temperance card. The moment represented in the 9 of Cups card is when Alex realizes that the woman he loves is a fraud, and therefore he has been living a lie. This, of course, is Scottie's realization too, which leads to Judy's death. Alex decides to kill Alicia with poison, represented here with the 9 cups. In Vertigo, Scottie slowly turns Judy into a dead woman. In the end of Notorious, Devlin rescues Alicia and Alex is hoist by his own petard. In Vertigo, Scottie overcomes his fear and realizes the truth but cannot save the woman or himself. He must live with the horror of what he's done, just as Stewart's character must at the end of Rope.

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Continuing with yesterday's experiment, I decided to read for the Hitchcock film Suspicion. In it, Joan Fontaine is a mousy, straight-laced, over-protected rich girl who marries the roguish and rakish Cary Grant. Grant is an over-grown boy, and Fontaine is attracted to him for this, but alarmed by his lack of money, lack of scruples, and lack of honesty. After a series of dubious deeds, Fontaine begins to suspect Grant is planning to kill her for her money.

The questions for the 3 card spread are:
1) what's happening from Grant's point of view?
2) what's happening from Fontaine's point of view?
3) what's the over-all nature of what's happening?

the 1st card is the 2 of Clubs Secret Agent

The 2 of Clubs is focused on thoughts of adventure, fun, travel, and intrigue. In Secret Agent, the heroine is excited by the promise of these things, but soon loses her taste for them when she realizes the danger and ugly reality behind them. This suggests Fontaine's point of view, but Grant also sobers up as married life and Suspicion drags on. In Secret Agent, the hero and heroine pretend to be married and fall in love in the process - similarly, Grant and Fontaine, having eloped, live a false marriage but in the end come together. This coming together is a famous alteration to the end of Suspicion, where the original plan was to have Grant kill Fontaine. The studio and audiences, however, refused to see Grant as anything but rakish and roguish - as with the 2 of Clubs card meaning, Grant had to stay optimistic, fun, and alluring. In Secret Agent, the heroine spends most of the film flirting with the charismatic bad guy, only to end up with the so-called hero - a not very believable about-face which Suspicion also attempts and fails to accomplish.

the second card is The Moon 18 Psycho

The Moon card represents fantastic ideas, delusions, fears. This sums up what Fontaine is feeling about Grant in Suspicion - her imagination has run wild, thinking her husband is a murderer, and she fears for her life. There is no mother to speak of in Suspicion, but Fontaine is something of a mother figure to Grant's chum Beaky, who is essentially a big kid. Grant, meantime, has issues with Fontaine's father. Grant famously brings Fontaine a glass of milk - a symbol of the mother - which Fontaine believes is poisoned. Fontaine worries Grant wants to kill her for her money - this echoes Janet Leigh's character in Psycho, who has stolen money and morally agonizes over it. Audiences spend the first 3rd of Psycho concerned about the money too, but it turns out to be a red herring.

the third card is the 5 of Clubs Topaz

Topaz is all about secrets, lying, deceit, infidelity, conflict, and confusion. This is what Suspicion appears to be about, but because of the change imposed on Hitchcock, it turns out to be mostly about illusion and unfounded fears. Curiously, the ending of Topaz was disliked by Hitchcock so he changed it himself. The new ending was disliked by the studio, so Hitchcock changed it again. Like Topaz as a whole, none of the endings are satisfactory. Like Suspicion, Topaz is about conflicting intentions which never quite gels. Arguably Suspicion is more successful because it is carried by the main actors who are well-known and charismatic, 2 things which cannot be said about the main actors in Topaz. During the making of Topaz, Hitchcock didn't get on with the screenwriter and threw out his script weeks before shooting. This meant that scenes were filmed days after being written and without Hitchcock's normal story-boarding. With the changes made to Suspicion at the last minute, much of what went before and the explanation superimposed doesn't work and feels confused - a misstep which the trouble making Topaz and its lousy ending represent. In the end, the confusions and falsehoods of Topaz indicate Fontaine's confusion and false interpretations. Like Secret Agent, the wife in Topaz is cavorting with the enemy - in the end, however, by hook or by crook, just like Fontaine, she gets with the hero.

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I find the ending of Marnie to be the most ambiguous in all of Hitchcock's oeuvre. When Marnie's husbands Mark confronts Marnie's man-hating mother Bernice about Marnie's past, and Bernice responds with physical violence, Marnie's memories are rekindled. Bernice had been a prostitute and when one of her johns molested Marnie, Bernice attacked him. He, in turn, hit Bernice and Marnie inadvertently killed him with a poker. This ostensibly was the root of Marnie's kleptomania and frigidity, but of course remembering such an incident doesn't cure one, it's only the start of a long road toward recovery which may or may not occur. As Mark drives Marnie away at film's end, she tells him, "I don't want to go to jail; I'd rather stay with you." Some may take this as an indication that she will become "normal" with Mark's help, but as much of a jerk as Mark can be, I wager few women would rather go to jail than remain unincarcerated with a wealthy man who looks like Sean Connery.

Curious as to what Marnie's fate would be after Marnie ended, I decided to pull one card to that effect.

The card I pulled was The High Priestess 2 Marnie

Ha. This may silence those who suggest I cherry-pick my cards. Or, I suppose, it may add to their incredulity. Sometimes the tarot plays jokes on its readers. It's hard enough using one Hitchcock film as an allegory for another, but to use the same one? Other than take it as a minor rebuke from the tarot, I have to guess that what it's telling me is that Marnie will go on being Marnie at the end of Marnie, and not be somehow magically cured.

I decided to change tack and pulled a card to indicate what would happen to Mark.

The card I pulled was the 2 of Gems Rich & Stange

Right away, what drew my attention is the ship behind the married couple from R&S shown on the 2 of Gems card. It is the cruise ship they go on and directly echoes the ship behind Marnie in the HP card which is docked at the end of her mother's street and the cruise ship her and Mark go on for their honeymoon. That cruise ship is, of course, the site of Mark's rape of Marnie - his marking her as his. Here, the husband pivots between his blonde wife and his empty bed. The 2 of gems suggests juggling things - here, it may suggest Mark is trying to find a balance between his wife's austerity and his own desires.

In R&S, the bored rich husband has an affair with a woman who claims to be a princess. This suggests, with Marnie remaining Marnie as indicated in the HP card, that the sexual predator Mark will tire of Marnie and look elsewhere for sexual gratification. In R&S, the so-called princess is in fact a gold-digger who absconds with all of the husband's money. The actress who played the princess, Betty Amann, looks a little like the actress who played Lil Mainwaring, Diane Baker, so perhaps Mark will have an affair with Lil.

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At the end of R&S, the husband and wife are reunited and revert to an average bickering married couple, suggesting Mark and Marnie will end up the same - colourless, childless, and resigned to their rut, but happy, more or less, in their way.

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Continuing with the idea of pulling cards to read for what happens to characters after a film ends, I decided to read for the characters of Rear Window. Jeff, the globe-trotting photographer, has ostensibly agreed to marry the park avenue model, Lisa.

The first card I pulled was for Jeff, Judgment 20 The Man Who Knew Too Much

Interestingly, this card & film features the same actor who played Jeff, James Stewart. In TMWKTM, Stewart has to learn some humility and some respect for his wife, a very similar lesson Jeff has to learn with Lisa. Stewart in TMWKTM had forced his wife to give up her career for his career as a doctor, even though he could have relocated to a large city; really, it was his hubris which prevented him from budging an inch for his wife. When she is instrumental in saving their son and uses her talents in his rescue, Stewart is humbled and compelled to re-evaluate his attitude. This directly echoes Stewart as Jeff in RW, but he learns this lesson before he gets a dozen years of marriage under his belt. Rather than insist Lisa abandon her career and lifestyle, maybe the Judgment card indicates Jeff will allow her to live the life she desires. As with his character in TMWKTM, Stewart knew too much with regards Lars Thorwald, but he also knew too much, too well, knew best, and was in fact something of a know-it-all with regards what kind of woman he assumed Lisa was and what a marriage to her would be like.

Of course, another way to look at it is James Stewart went on, 2 years later, to make The Man Who Knew Too Much.

The second card I pulled was for Lisa, the 8 of Cups Foreign Correspondent

This card indicates leaving comfort and security to find the truth. In Foreign Correspondent, small-time journalist Johnny Jones is sent to England to find out what's really happening in Europe with the Nazis. There, he gets involved in all kinds of intrigue, including love. This suggests Lisa may continue to engage in Jeff's way of life, reporting on political events around the world, just as she had gotten directly involved in the observations of his neighbors. Maybe Lisa will even become a reporter herself, commenting as Jones does on the events her husband Jeff photographs.

Of course, this card could indicate that Grace Kelly, 2 years later, left the US to become Princess Grace of Monaco.

The last card I pulled was for Thelma Ritter's character Stella, the 5 of Gems Frenzy

Being a Hitchcock-based deck, this is somewhat darker than the corresponding RWS card. Frenzy deals with both deprivation and depravity. The hero is poor, out of work, disgruntled, and doesn't fit in. His pal is a fruit vendor who seems to have it made but is a murderer. The 5 of Gems deals with frustration, feeling on the outside, and bad luck. Perhaps this card suggests Stella will lose her job; she certainly won't remain friends with Jeff and Lisa once they marry and get on with their life.

Curiously, Frenzy centers around an impotent killer of women who strangles his victims with neckties. The year before Rear Window, Thelma Ritter had played Moe, a necktie saleslady in the film Pickup on South Street. She was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for that role but didn't win. In fact, she was nominated in that category 6 times and never won, making her one of three of the "greatest losers in Oscar history." This clearly reflects one of the meanings of the 5 of Gems: "feeling shafted". The woman strangled here on this card is the hero's ex-wife, who ran a successful marriage agency. In the RWS card, the 2 impoverished figures skirt around a church, as though refused its comfort. Thelma Ritter, with regards her career - a central issue in Rear Window - was denied formal recognition from the Academy. Instead, she was always a bridesmaid, never a bride.


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Switch-hitting here, I decided to use the AHT to read for a non-Hitchcock plot. I chose Hamlet.

card one indicates what would happen if the ghost of Hamlet's father hadn't appeared and implored his son to seek revenge.
card two indicates what does happen to Hamlet as the play progresses.
card three indicates the over-all meaning of the play.

The first card I pulled was the 2 of Cups Young & Innocent

I should think this card's meaning is fairly obvious even to someone who hasn't seen the film. I take it to suggest Hamlet and Ophelia, stand-ins for the young and innocent male and female leads of Young & Innocent, would have become an item as the play rather suggests. The film begins with a murder, suggesting the murder of Hamlet's father. Curiously, the murdered person is an actor. Also of note, the man accused of the murder is a writer. The young heroine who falls in love with the fugitive from the law is the daughter of the police chief - an interesting parallel with Ophelia being the daughter of Polonius, the king's chief counselor. The hero is accused of the murder for no more reason than the actor was killed with the belt of his overcoat. His coat was stolen and given to a tramp named Old Will, tying in wonderfully with the fact Hamlet is the author's autobiographical portrait of himself and that Shakespeare is not "Old Will" at all but a writer who was stolen from and essentially on the lam.

The second card I pulled was the 10 of Clubs Under Capricorn

Under Capricorn is a film few have seen, and I envy them. In it, Joseph Cotten accidentally killed the aristocrat Ingrid Bergman's brother while eloping with her. He spent years in prison for the murder and was reunited with Bergman in Australia where he became a rich businessman. Bergman, in the meantime, became an alcoholic. When the governor of Australia's cousin, played by Michael Wilding, befriends Cotten, he remembers Bergman as a friend back in Ireland of his older sister. He falls in love with Bergman and tries to save her from herself. Meanwhile, Bergman's maid is in love with Cotten and tries to poison Bergman. Cotten becomes jealous of Wilding and when they struggle over a gun, he accidentally shoots Wilding. Her husband threatened with more prison time, Bergman admits that it was she who killed her brother. Wilding realizes he has taken on far too much and retreats to Ireland.

The long and short of it sees Hamlet taking on too much. He may love Ophelia but has to pretend he doesn't. His father commanded him to leave his mother Gertrude "to heaven" but he didn't seem able to do that. Gertrude and Hamlet Senior are killed by poison, as Bergman's character almost is. The death of the brother which haunts the characters is an obvious parallel with Claudius and his brother Hamlet Senior. The brother figure can also be seen with Laertes, who defends his sister and dies. Foremost, however, is how the romantic lead, Wilding, takes on more than he can handle. In most plots, this character would succeed and save the heroine, but not in Under Capricorn. In Hamlet, too, the hero is overcome and fails.

The third card I pulled was The Fool 0 The MacGuffin

Fittingly, the name Hamlet (Amleth) in Old Norse where the story comes from means "fool"; in fact, it basically does on account of the Hamlet story. The MacGuffin is the made-up reason the characters act the way they do, but which in and of itself means nothing. The MacGuffin can be the code to secret plans or cold-war aerial photos on microfilm or the directive from a ghost to seek revenge. Interestingly, Hamlet himself employs 2 MacGuffins of his own. The first is his pretense of being mad. He uses his fake insanity to both confuse those around him and to say things which are true but dangerous to speak. The second is his play The Mousetrap, in which he invents a plot which mimics his father's death at the hands of his uncle. Iterating the number of The Fool and the meaningless meaning of the MacGuffin, Hamlet repeatedly refers to "nothing", and in numerous ways, such as "there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so" and "The king is a thing... of nothing." In Hamlet, Shakespeare delayed the notion of the Revenge Play for 4 hours. In the process, the notion of revenge itself loses significance, hardly knowing whether to be or not to be, and instead what is meaningful are the ideas expressed, the language conjured, the psyches plumbed, and the odd tableaus vivant - such as Hamlet talking to a skull - that occur along the way.


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Continuing with using the AHT to read for literary predicaments, I chose to pull cards for David Copperfield.

card one: what would've become of David if he hadn't run away from his nasty step-father's factory in London for the security of his Aunt Betsy?
card two: what happened to David because he did run away?
card three: what is the underlying meaning behind David Copperfield?

The first card I pulled was the 7 of Knives Blackmail

Blackmail sees a young woman defending herself against an attacker and accidentally killing him. She is then blackmailed by an ex-con who the police assume is the killer. The woman's boyfriend knows better, as he works for Scotland Yard, but he won't let her confess to the crime and instead incriminates the blackmailer. Eventually, chased by police, the blackmailer falls to his death. This suggests to me that David, had he stayed a veritable slave and orphan on the mean streets of London, would've become involved with criminals, perhaps himself involved with crime or at the least incriminated. It may've meant an early death for David, or even his murder.

As David Copperfield is highly autobiographical for Dickens, this reading seems to speak to what would've happened to Dickens if he had stayed working at the bottle blacking factory of his youth that David's plight is based on. Interestingly, the man the heroine of Blackmail accidentally kills is an artist, suggesting Dickens the artist would've been killed had he not escaped his penury and servitude. The 7 of Knives is connected with shame and a sense of guilt over one's actions, a feeling very immediate to Dickens about this humiliating episode in his life. Copperfield, in fact, was an attempt by Dickens to expose and exculpate himself of his feelings of shame, just as the heroine of Blackmail is in the end ostensibly exonerated but inwardly ambivalent, an emotional predicament mocked with the dead artist's painting of a jester laughing at the viewer.

The second card I pulled was the 4 of Clubs Suspicion

The 4 of Clubs card in the AHT has some fun at the expense of the commonly accepted interpretation of the RWS 4/Wands card, which sees a happy couple apparently celebrating their marriage. In Suspicion, Joan Fontaine marries the roguish Cary Grant, but soon begins to suspect that he aims to kill her. And kill her he would have, but the studio and arguably the public wouldn't allow it, so the ending of the film was changed to a happy one. In Copperfield, a callow David marries a woman totally unsuited not only to him but to life generally. To remedy this in a literary sense, Dickens kills off David's wife. In real life, Dickens had indeed married just such a wife and wished desperately to be rid of her. As with the shame over his drudgery as a youth, Dickens used David as a surrogate to correct the errors he had made in his own life. This situation - of fiction used to make real-life palatable - is echoed (or regurgitated) in the way reality imposed fictional changes to make Suspicion more appetizing.

The interplay between real-life and fiction occurs in other ways in Suspicion. Aside from being a dissimulator, Grant's character befriends a writer of murder mysteries and plies her for ideas on how to commit the perfect murder. Grant's pal Beaky is a Dickensian character through-and-through, and extremely similar to the man-child character Mr. Dick in Copperfield. In Copperfield, Dickens explored his feelings for his father, dividing those feelings into 3 characters to do so: Mr. Murdstone, Mr. Micawber, and Mr. Dick. Interestingly, Fontaine's stern military father - who haunts Grant and is shown on the 4 of Clubs card in a painted portrait - is very like the strict Mr. Murdstone who indentures David. Mr. Micawber is a fabulist and trickster like Grant's character and, as said above, Beaky (played by Nigel Bruce, famous for playing Watson to Basil Rathbone's Holmes - Rathbone famously playing Mr. Murdstone in David Copperfield) is a doppelganger for Mr. Dick.

The last card I pulled was The Wheel of Fortune 10 Strangers on a Train

The first thing that strikes me about this card is the criss-cross pattern of Strangers on a Train's plot, which suggests a psychological allegory at work in the film; namely, the dark desires of one character invoked and made physically manifest in another character. This talks directly to what I suggested above about Dickens working out his feelings for his wife and his father in David Copperfield. In Strangers on a Train, the submerged desire of Guy is to be rid of his wife, a woman he married young, now hates, and who hinders his ambition. Meanwhile, Guy's shadow Bruno longs to be rid of his authoritarian father.

Once he became a famous writer, Dickens' father became an embarrassment to the author. Dickens' father repeatedly borrowed money he couldn't repay, but worse: he revealed to class-conscious England Dickens' meager origins. That Dickens wanted to be rid of his wife, meanwhile, was for years a well-known secret in Victorian London. What remained unknown, however, was his 13-year-long affair with Ellen Ternan, which Dickens kept secret because of the public scandal it would cause and concomitant damage to his career. In Strangers on a Train, Guy wishes to become a politician and is far more worried about his reputation than his dead wife. At the end of the film, the protagonist and antagonist fight it out on an out of control merry-go-round, mimicking the chaotic vicissitudes of Fortune's wheel. Of course, this is fiction, so the story ends as the author wishes it to end, based on what he believes he and his audience want. In this way, fiction is more like a train, moving decidedly from A to B on a one-way track. In real life, accidents, of course, do happen - some of what we know of Dickens' secret life came about from his and Ellen's involvement in the famous Staplehurst train crash.

With his double life, Dickens authored the fictional narrative of his public persona and for years his audience believed it. In Strangers on a Train, the main characters seem to meet by happenstance, but Bruno knows all about Guy and has ready his proposal to swap desirous crimes. This suggests the way in which Dickens worked out his real-life feelings for his wife and father in David Copperfield, how the official story of his life was contrived, and how the Wheel of Fortune is less about cause-and-effect or pure chance and more about secret behind-the-scenes machinations.


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Returning to Hitchcock films, I decided to pull a card on the film The Birds. My question was one that has baffled audiences for decades: what was it that caused the birds to act the way they did?

The card I pulled was The Devil 15 Shadow of a Doubt

On the face of it, The Devil represents that which is trapped within us, which we ourselves often entrap, that can fester and grow rancid and cancerous; it can be something unresolved we repress and become, as a result, a slave to. In Shadow of a Doubt, this thing is young Charlie's burgeoning sexuality. Her frustration with quotidian suburban life and her sudden concern for her over-worked mother reflect the awakening of her sexual self and what her role as a woman will be in society and her future life. Her beloved Uncle Charlie arrives just at this moment, as a flesh and blood manifestation of this aspect of young Charlie, but he is not the sweet and dashing hero her childhood vision of him had made - instead, he is a dark, perverted, hateful murderer of women. In short, he is a devil - her own animus, bedeviling her.

This then suggests that the birds in The Birds represent on the surface the chaotic animal within us, unleashed when Melanie brings Mitch a pair of lovebirds in a conflated act of flirtation and aggression. On a deeper level, the birds are a rebuke to the smug Melanie and Mitch, who seem so at ease and complacent in the modern world; the birds are a command for them to wake up. Deeper still, the actress Tippi Hedren had awakened in Hitchcock a sexual stirring which had reared its head with other actresses but had essentially lain dormant for decades. The birds, then, may represent Hitchcock's fascination with Hedren, since just as young Charlie's fascination with her uncle turned to hate, Hitchcock's sexual frustration with Hedren grew to where the bird attacks on Melanie in the film became Hitchcock's abuse of Hedren on set.

Curious about this particular angle, I decided to pull a card to signify why Hitchcock chose Hedren - then an unknown - to star in The Birds.

The card I pulled was Strength 8 The Birds

As I learned from pulling a Marnie card for a Marnie reading, this kind of thematic doubling-up is possible. Here, it is less problematic. It seems clear, at least on the surface, that Hitchcock's intention with casting Hedren in The Birds was to showcase and raise her up as a world-class actress. Given that it is the Strength card, the simple subtext is that Hedren overcame the hurdles, both internally and externally - such as Hitchcock's more animal urges - to accomplish what she and Hitchcock had set out to do.

Curious about Hedron's headspace, I decided to pull a card to signify her side of things during the making of The Birds.

The card I pulled was the 9 of Gems The Birds

You know, if I didn't pull this card myself, I don't know that I'd believe it. In fact, I did pull it myself and I still don't know that I believe it. The 9 of Gems is obviously very similar to the Strength card, the latter Major card being a somewhat more official state of grace, control, and empowerment, whereas the former pip card indicates a hard-fought battle to attain the upper hand.

The 9 of Gems not only represents Hedren's character Melanie in The Birds, but the film's other female characters as well - the mother Lydia, the daughter Cathy, and the "other woman" Annie. In this way, Hedren's role in making The Birds, enduring as she did Hitchcock's unwanted sexual advances and the playing-out of his frustration which amounted to abuse, stands for the kind of mistreatment all women face on one level or another. As such, Hedren and the 9 of Gems signifies a hard-won victory over such maltreatment and injustice.



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Today I chose to focus on the film Rebecca. Although Hitchcock himself claimed it wasn't really a Hitchcock film, and producer David Selznick exercised much control of the film's production, Hitchcock nevertheless learned many things from making Rebecca, notably: the inherent depths of female psychology and the value of exploiting it in film.

At the pivotal moment in Rebecca, the evil Mrs. Danvers has almost convinced Joan Fontaine's character to jump to her death. That moment and Fontaine's haunting by the ghost of Rebecca is encapsulated in the 4 of Knives card:

Using this card as a significator, I pulled a card to examine Fontaine's psyche at this crucial point, and possibly suggest what she needs to do or would do if Rebecca's body hadn't been discovered just then and so broken Danver's spell on her. The card I pulled was the 9 of Knives Marnie

First off, it is telling that the card concerns Marnie - a woman wracked with psychological strife and the prime example of the lesson mentioned above that Hitchcock took away from Rebecca. In it, Marnie is forced to shoot her beloved horse Forio. The gun, however, is pointed toward 9 Marnies, newly awoken from nightmares. Marnie's unloving mother looks on, like Mrs. Danvers to Fontaine. The general feeling of the card is emotional turmoil and self-torment. As for what the card indicates Fontaine needs to do, it echoes what Marnie had to do - namely, kill the thing that gave her pleasure but which was harming her by continuing a negative cycle. Riding Forio the mare gave Marnie hope and a sense of freedom, but it kept her from facing the reality of her life shown to her at vulnerable moments, such as in nightmares. Marnie also uses stolen money to feel empowered, but that kleptomania and money also keep her bridled. The yellow purse she clutches above everything suggests both her fear and Fontaine's - both women are yellow. That purse contains Marnie's false identities, just as she and Fontaine's person are contained - they need to truly break free and become their true selves. For Fontaine to do that, and break the overbearing mother-hold Danvers has on her, she needs to put the thing she loves out of its misery - that is, her husband, Max de Winter. He is in misery, of course, for reasons Fontaine doesn't properly understand. This has much to do with his own uncommunicated emotional turmoil, but because Fontaine is unable to approach Max directly, she needs to do the most painful thing - kill her own desperate need to be loved, and she needs to do it herself, consciously. Perhaps then, by loving herself first, she can stand on her own 2 feet and move forward doing things for herself rather than riding on the backs of others, trying to steal a sense of personhood from them.

The second card I pulled was to explore the psychological nature of Mrs. Danvers. The card was the 5 of Knives Rope

This card represents not only the film Rope, but specifically the malevolent characters of the cowardly Philip and the heartless Brandon. Like Mrs. Danver's vicarious sense of superiority, being the handmaid to Rebecca, the murderers Brandon and Philip think they are better than the average person, so much better they can murder at whim and get away with it. Philip is highly emotional, while Brandon is borderline insane. They derive an inflated sense of themselves by belittling others. Although not made explicit, the 2 characters - based on the Leopold & Loeb case - are homosexual, indicating something long suspected about Mrs. Danvers, - namely, that her strange bond with Rebecca has to it a sexual element.

I decided to pull a card to describe Rebecca's character. The card I pulled was the 3 of Cups To Catch A Thief

This card fairly clearly indicates that Rebecca was a party girl. She obviously loved glamour, wealth, and indulging in physical pleasures. To Catch A Thief's character Francie suggests Rebecca was beautiful but vain and spoilt. The character of Francie's mother, Jessie, suggests Rebecca was crass, a woman of the world, and pragmatic. From Max's point of view at least, echoing Cary Grant there on the ground, Rebecca was less a catch and more of a thief. The cat at Grant's side further intimates Rebecca was catty.

Finally, I pulled a card to describe the overall situation of the characters in Rebecca. the card I pulled was The Chariot 7 Lifeboat

In Lifeboat, made during WWII, all the so-called Allied-nation characters fight amongst themselves, allowing the Nazi U-boat captain who is ostensibly their prisoner to take charge and lead them into further peril. This rather simply sums up the situation in Rebecca, where Max doesn't properly communicate with his new wife and she is unable to interact properly with anyone - even herself. This allows Mrs. Danvers to steer Fontaine's ship. In Lifeboat, the characters have to be stripped of their outward possessions and class delusions of hierarchy in order to properly and effectively work toward a single goal. Similarly, Max and Fontaine must be stripped of their false ideas and social pretenses in order to truly understand one another and form the bond which will see them succeed rather than sink them. Just as Lifeboat began with the Allied ship being torpedoed, Rebecca begins from a dream of the destroyed Manderley; in the end, when Manderley goes up in flames along with Mrs. Danvers, it is akin to the salvation of those at the end of Lifeboat. Finally, The Chariot is about finding one's own identity, becoming the person one is in life, which is exactly what can be said to happen to Fontaine's character in Rebecca.

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[chiscotheque]

Thinking about the unlikely pairing of the intellectual doctor of psychology in Spellbound, played by Ingrid Bergman, and her amnesiac patient, played by Gregory Peck, I decided to do a reading about how they fared as a couple after the film finished.

The card I pulled was the 8 of Clubs Spellbound

This seemed impossible to read, so I decided to try another reading. This time, I wondered about the kidnapped boy Hank in The Man Who Knew Too Much - how did he fare after the film ended? and what did he grow up to be?

The card I pulled was the 3 of Gems The Man Who Knew Too Much

As interesting as a reading of the 2nd MWKTM made by the first MWKTM might possibly be, I was by this time beginning to think the tarot was trying to tell me something. I decided to take a break from it for a while.

Returning, I chose to read for a film made by someone other than Hitchcock. Thinking about James Ricklef, who first introduced me to reading for fictional characters, I recalled a reading he did for Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz - What would've helped Dorothy, when she was feeling unappreciated in Kansas? What did she need?

The card I pulled was the 6 of Cups Downhill/Champagne

While it's true that I'm down to about 30 cards left in the AHT deck that I'm pulling from, this is the card I thought of when I pulled it. No surprise that I thought of it, really, as this seems like the obvious card to answer the proposed question. This is the only card in the deck to feature 2 films. Downhill sees a school-aged boy turned out of his home for a misdeed he didn't do, falling on hard times, and being happily reunited with his family in the end. Champagne sees a young girl whose rich father rejects her, stops giving her money which causes her to fall on hard times, and is happily reunited with his daughter in the end.

With regards to the question - what is it Dorothy needs? - the answer seems to be what she needed was to leave home, endure conflict and the unknown, and return home to a grateful family, both her and them realizing how lucky they are to have each other. In short, Dorothy needed to go through the very thing she did go through! The AHT 6 of Cups and the 2 silent Hitchcock films it features are about naivete, but they are also about the loss of naivete and growing up. Dorothy needed to find the lost love of her family and home, which she did by experiencing the fantastic. In the process, she almost died, and also had to lose the fantasy world of Oz, metaphor for losing her childhood innocence.

Aside from matters to do with childhood, leaving home, and creativity, the 6 of Cups card has to do with gifts, notably sacrificial gifts and gifts of intrinsic emotional value. Not only was Dorothy given these much-needed gifts, but generations of children have been given the gift of joy and wonder that is The Wizard of Oz.

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[chiscotheque]

It was somewhat humorously suggested to me by Dodalisque that I should do a reading on the Marie Celeste, the ship that was found derelict off the coast of Africa in the late 19th Century.

how many possibilities are there? The food was still warm on the plates when the crew from another ship came on board in thick fog. I believe candles were still burning but not a soul on board. Pirates or alien abduction. Or what?

While this is not really a "fictional" reading, I decided to take a shot and pull just one card as to what caused the crew to abandon ship.

The card I pulled was the 2 of Knives Sabotage

Perhaps the first thing we notice is the film's star, Sylvia Sidney, is wearing a sailor suit. The 2 candles in the foreground and the dinner table suggest the "food still warm on the plates" and "candles... still burning" which Dodalisque mentioned. What interests me more is what we see in the background, since that suggests the mystery's "behind the scenes" aspects. First, we see a toy boat which Sidney and her young brother worked on at one point in the film. Behind that is Sidney's husband and a fellow saboteur, their backs to us, meeting surreptitiously in the aquarium. On the left are orange fish while on the right is Hitchcock's impressionistic rendition of London "melting" after a bomb goes off. Eventually, 2 bombs go off in Sabotage, the first kills Sidney's brother, the second kills the bomb maker and obscures the fact that Sidney had killed her husband.

Based on this, I wager to guess the empty Marie Celeste was abandoned because of either an explosion or the threat of an explosion. There may have been some foul play that was covered up by succeeding events, and the explosion could have been threatened either from within the ship or from without - by nature or other humans. The underlying almost metaphysical meaning of the 2 of Knives is sacrifice - I propose that the Marie Celeste's captain sacrificed his ship for the safety of the crew, but his precaution back-fired.

Knowing really nothing about the Marie Celeste incident, I decided to read up on it.

It turns out that the ship's actual name was Mary Celeste, and that many of the details surrounding the incident were embellished and/or invented, much of them by a young Arthur Conan Doyle. Curiously, then, my reading it turns out was a "fictional" reading, based as much on myth and creative writing as on historical fact. Further to this, the AHT card/film I pulled, Sabotage, is based on the 19th Century novel The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad, himself a sailor.

One of the invented details was the dinner still warm on the table and a fire burning (rather than candles) in the hearth. As it turns out, one of the prevailing theories is the "explosion" theory, which posits that the crew, fearing an explosion, got into the lifeboat and either attempted to make it to shore or wait until the fumes cleared. Unfortunately, however, the towline broke, causing the lifeboat and ship to drift apart. There was no evidence of an explosion, but the sails were mostly furled, suggesting the crew took them down to reduce the ship's mobility. The Mary Celeste's cargo was methylated spirits, which remained intact on the ship; this could have easily produced the fumes and the threat of explosion. What's more, an experiment was conducted in the early 2000s wherein a flash explosion of methylated spirits ripped through a model ship without leaving any trace of fire damage. This question of whether there was or wasn't an explosion recalls how, for 40 years after making Sabotage, Hitchcock lamented actually exploding the bomb which killed Sidney's brother - he claimed if he could've done it over, he would've averted the explosion.

With regards the notion of foul play: speculation of deceit and misdeed was rampant, most regarding the Mary Celeste's captain, Benjamin Briggs, and the captain of the Canadian boat which found the Celeste, David Morehouse. In maritime law, a captain who found a derelict boat was entitled to a substantial share of the salvage. At the trial, Morehouse was accused of being in cahoots with Briggs, getting the crew drunk on the cargo (even though it was not potable), and killing Briggs and his crew for the spoils. Interestingly, excessive water was found in the Celeste's hull, leading some to speculate the ship's pump had been tampered with. Meanwhile, the prosecutor spearheading the charge against Morehouse was named Flood. I mention this because Sabotage begins with a London-wide blackout caused by the intentional sabotage of a pump. In the end, no evidence for foul play was found at the Mary Celeste trial, and Morehouse received a smaller payment for salvaging the ship than expected.

One last thought: The bomb that kills Sidney's brother is hidden within film canisters and the final bomb goes off at Sidney's cinema. Hitchcock changed the locale of Conrad's The Secret Agent, setting it against the backdrop of the most popular form of entertainment of the time, the movie house. Starting with Conan Doyle, the story of the Mary Celeste has been embroidered and fictionalized, from newspaper and magazine articles to radio plays, TV movies, and a Dr. Who episode. This speaks to humanity's love of mystery and invention - a ripping good yarn - but also reveals the power of sabotage and what today we call terrorism - namely, the dreadful power of the unknown and our own fear.

Post-script: Hitchcock worked for some time on the script for The Wreck of the Mary Deare, based on the novel by Hammond Innes which took the Mary Celeste story as its inspiration. Hitchcock's interest in the adaptation never caught fire, so he scuttled it and made North By Northwest instead.

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[chiscotheque]

Returning to readings for films, I was thinking about how Vertigo has usurped Citizen Kane in many Best Film of All Time polls. I decided to pull 1 card to answer the question: What is "Rosebud"?

The card I pulled was Death

"Rosebud" is what Kane, at the beginning of Welles' film, utters as he dies. A reporter, looking to find out what "Rosebud" means, sets out to interview key people in Kane's life, allowing the film to indulge in flashbacks from key moments in Kane's life. At the end of Citizen Kane, the identity of Rosebud is revealed to no one but the audience at the very moment it is destroyed. Ironically, then, Rosebud opens and closes the film and, while signifying death in both instances, it actually becomes the pretext for revealing the life of Charles Foster Kane.

As we know, the Death card can mean the end of life, but more often and more to the point it signifies the end of one stage of life and the start of another. Just as the 13th hour on a clock is 1, or the 13th month in a calendar year is January, Death is the 13th card in the Arcanum and indicates a radical change. In Citizen Kane, Rosebud is the name of Kane's childhood sled; he is seen playing with it when his mother sends him away from his home to be raised with the family's new-found wealth. When Kane's guardian Thatcher makes to take the young boy away from his family, the boy attacks Thatcher with Rosebud. Rosebud, then, represents Kane's lost childhood, lost family, and his loss of a "normal" life. The AHT Death card represents death itself, but also the boy Kane becoming the man. The central image is the symbolic death of Cock Robin, from the cartoon seen in Sabotage, which itself represents the death of the young boy Stevie. Also represented is the killing of Gromek, in Torn Curtain, which proves so difficult to accomplish. To my mind, this represents the strength of Kane's character - his boyish and rebellious quality - which proves so resilient and is slowly whittled down in Citizen Kane. It will be remembered that the young Kane uses Rosebud as a weapon when being taken away from his mother and father and family home; similarly, the lifeforce is painstakingly drained from Gromek in a humble house by a man and woman. After which, he is buried along with his mode of transport - Kane's sled becomes Gromek's motorcycle.

Rosebud, to answer the question, is the symbolic death of the young Kane, the death of the adult Kane's vitality, and Kane's actual death.


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[chiscotheque]

Returning to literature, I was thinking about studying The Tempest in grade 12. I remembered that many of the questions on quizzes were rather unoriginal, and thought it could be fun to revisit some of them with the AHT. Instead of writing too much about any one topic, I chose to answer in straightforward manner questions which i found on a site for grade 12 English teachers.

Question 1: What is the nature of Prospero's relationship with Miranda?

Card: 8 of Knives The Paradine Case

Answer: Prospero really has no clue who Miranda is as a person. Similar to the way the lawyer Keane feels for Mrs. Paradine, Prospero's love for Miranda blinds him to reality. Further, his fixation with his abilities and what he believes is the truth is a weakness; it may cause him to ruin himself again as it did leading up to his exile. But whether he screws up again or not, Miranda will be there for him, the same way Keane's wife Gay remained there for him. Charles Laughton's character, the horrible Judge Horfield, who acts lecherously with Gay, reflects Caliban's ugliness and lechery with Miranda. Prospero and Miranda are further illustrated in the father-daughter relationship of the tertiary characters in The Paradine Case, Sir Flaquer - a stuffy, archly-conservative solicitor - and his daughter Judy - a bright, open-minded young woman.

Question 2: Why did Prospero stage the pageant for Miranda and Ferdinand?

Card: 7 of Cups Vertigo

Answer: It had numerous reasons. One was to entrance the young lovers with spectacle and fantasy, to show that they are living in something of a fantasy world. Prospero is at pains to show how love is not all flowers and magic, but rather hard work, loyalty, dedication, and sometimes heartache. Further, The Tempest was likely performed for a wedding - in fact, it may itself have been a wedding gift - so the pageantry would be part of the real-life wedding ceremony's pageantry. In this way, Prospero is giving his blessing. Prospero is also, of course, in a veiled way, admonishing the young lovers to not be deceived by appearances, suggesting that their love-at-first-sight is illusory. Prospero is impelling them to look deeper, at the real person beneath the masque.

Question 3: Why does Caliban hate the way he's treated by Prospero in The Tempest?

Card: 6 of Clubs Saboteur

Answer: As with the saboteur Fry in Saboteur, Caliban was angry and spiteful. As with the Nazis in Saboteur, Caliban believed he was the rightful ruler of the island. Prospero's liberty infringes on Caliban's true nature, just as the average person's liberty infringes on a Fifth Columnist's nature and vice-versa. But most significantly, this film/card speaks of the danger that lurks within. This suggests that Prospero, in his exile and righteous indignation, harbors impurities and malice. As Prospero himself says of Caliban, "This thing of darkness I acknowledge as mine." This has deeper, confessional undertones, since Prospero is something of an avatar of the author Shakespeare.

Question 4: Who is Ariel?

Card: The Sun 19 North By Northwest

Answer: Ariel does not really exist; Prospero merely inhabits him. Or, depending on your perspective, Ariel inhabits Prospero, just as Roger Thornhill inhabited George Kaplan and vice-versa. This is to say that Ariel is an invention, a fiction - more to the point: he is fiction. Prospero released Ariel from being trapped in wood, becoming the manifestation of Prospero's will. Prospero, it will be remembered, is a stand-in for Will Shakespeare, hence Ariel is Shakespeare's muse, his fiction, his invention. North By Northwest's Roger (whose name means "Spear of Fame") is an ad man who doesn't come alive until he becomes George Kaplan. As suggested above, Ariel - like Caliban - is an aspect of Prospero himself, an aspect Prospero is presumably proud of. It could even be said that Ariel and Caliban are akin to being Prospero's sons (suns). The idea that Prospero represents Shakespeare is corroborated by the allusions in North By Northwest to Hamlet, the reason being that Hamlet himself is quite unquestionably a self-portrait of the author. North By Northwest was self-consciously written to be "the Hitchcock film to end all Hitchcock films"; Hitchcock and co-writer Lehman filled it with every Hitchcock trope they could. At the end of The Tempest, Prospero drowns his book, frees Ariel, and returns to reality.

In short: Within The Tempest, Ariel is Prospero's thaumaturgic agency; in metaphorical terms, Ariel is Shakespeare's art, and Shakespeare's art is capable of discovering love, facing the onerousness of the past with humor, defeating evil, and becoming someone else - or, in other words, Shakespeare's art is capable of performing magic.


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[chiscotheque]

Sticking with lit., I decided to read for Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis. In the novella, a young salesman supporting his parents and sister becomes an insect.

What is The Metamorphosis an allegory for? and what does it say about Kafka himself?

The card I pulled was The Hierophant 5 I Confess

On a very basic level, The Metamorphosis could be said to be a confession of sorts. In the film I Confess, the priest played by Montgomery Clift is unable to repeat what he has been told in confession and, as a result, he is implicated in a murder. Clift has taken a religious vow to keep what is said in confession confidential, but he also refuses to tell the police details about his own life that could violate the confidence and privacy of a woman he knew before becoming a priest. Kafka famously had difficulties with women, carrying on relationships through letters but never marrying. In I Confess, Clift and the woman carry on a correspondence which, when Clift stops writing, prompts the woman to marry another man. Kafka felt ugly and was ashamed of his body, which not only echoes the priest's celibacy in I Confess but also Clift's shame and insecurity about his own sexuality. In I Confess, many of the central characters - the murderer, the murderer's wife, the priest, the woman, even the detective! - feel guilt, a prevailing theme in Kafka's writing and life. The fingers pointing at Clift on The Hierophant card suggest Kafka's own paranoia and self-recrimination.

Roman Catholic priests are commonly called "father", and Kafka, as most people know, had a crippling and dysfunctional relationship with his own father. Interestingly, Max Brod, the man who saved Kafka's entire oeuvre from destruction, considered Kafka's writing to be religious in nature. Certainly, Kafka's earnestness, his tenacity concerning matters of ethics, his use of allegory and parable, and his innate affinity with mysticism, make him more properly religious than many priests. Kafka managed to write late into the night, after work and in his free time, and he considered writing "a form of prayer".

While the metaphor of The Metamorphosis' Gregor Samsa turning into an insect suggests on one level that Kafka felt himself to be mentally and physically repulsive, I Confess further suggests that he had become a figure outside of normal human society - a priest, of sorts, for whom writing was a devotion, a vocation, and a solemn pact with the creator.


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[chiscotheque]

Sticking with the high school English lit. questions, based on books most people have read, I decided to pull one card for a number of novels and answer each question succinctly.

Question 1: Why were the children fascinated by Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird?

Card: 3 of Knives Mother

Answer: The kids are fascinated by Boo because he is weird. Not only is he peculiar, but he is a mystery - no one knows what he's really like, and they make up stories about his family life, which the kids assume is dysfunctional. The unknown and the unusual are both aspects of Norman Bates. Further, Scout is curious about her dead mother, whom she doesn't remember; this ties in with Norman's connection to his mother and Scout's curiosity about matters of identity. Here, Norman is no longer himself but has become his mother; like Boo, he is both scary and not the norm. Interestingly, this card's silhouette of Norman's stuffed crow mocks the Mockingbird of the novel's title and Jem & Scout's surname, Finch.

Question 2: How does The Great Gatsby demonstrate the vision of Women in the 1920s?

Card: 10 of Knives Psycho

Answer: Norman's mother was, like her house (and Hitchcock himself) a Victorian. She viewed Marion Crane as a hussy and a floozy. Marion was a thief who stole in order to marry the man she loved. As with the women in The Great Gatsby, then, she is morally suspect, an independent agent, and also somewhat conflicted. The book's protagonist, Nick, dates Jordan, an athlete who cheats to win a competition; her behavior, then, is more traditionally like a man's than a woman's. Jordan, a woman, is like a man; Norman, a man, is like his mother, a woman. Norman's prurient interest in women and his fear and resentment of them reflects a society threatened by female liberation. Norman's mixed feelings about women may reflect something of Fitzgerald's mixed feelings about Zelda.


Question 3: What frightens Holden Caufield continuously throughout The Catcher in the Rye?

Card: The Tower 17 Vertigo

Answer: Holden fears entering the world of adults, a world of self-deception. cruelty, and phoniness. He fears his loss of innocence. Scottie in Vertigo has not only fallen for an elaborate trap, but he has deceived himself with false images and ideals. He tried to escape reality, notably the reality of his own weaknesses, building instead a phony reality which ultimately deprives him of sanity, happiness, and love. This is a fate Holden fears for himself and Pheobe and struggles in The Catcher in the Rye to escape. But Pheobe does not really fit into his romantic notion of childhood, just as Judy does not fit Scottie's romantic notion of Madeleine, and in the end Holden is, like Scottie, afraid of himself.

Question 4: What is Orwell's overall message in 1984?

Card: 4 of Gems Dial M For Murder

Answer: Rather than divorce his wife when he finds out about her interest in another man, Tony Wendice chooses to blackmail an old school chum to kill her. His plan is meticulously thought out, but it nevertheless goes awry. The school chum is killed and Margot Wendice is sentenced to death for the murder. Orwell may be pointing out the utter baseness of humanity, human cleverness used to accomplish violent ends, and the failure of love in an atmosphere of greed, resentment, and self-preservation. Unsure if this was the correct way to read this card, I pulled another to illuminate further:

Card: The Lovers 6 The 39 Steps

Read ironically, as a reversal, this card unquestionably underlines the failure of love between Julia and Winston in 1984. Mr. Memory and his murder suggest Julia and Winston's erased memories, after they betray one another, at the novel's end.

Question 5: Do you think the play Waiting For Godot would function differently if the characters were all female instead of all male?

Card: 6 of Gems Mr. & Mrs. Smith

Answer: Pulling this card was one of those cases where I saw it in my mind's eye before I pulled it. Mr. & Mrs. Smith was done as a favor to Carole Lombard by Alfred Hitchcock. The film is a good for the goose, good for the gander screwball comedy - a genre Hitchcock had no feeling for. It came out when Screwball comedies were essentially passe, and it wasn't very funny. So, to answer the question: yes, an all-woman Godot would function differently. For one, it would be, like Hitchcock here, a fish out of water. The humour wouldn't work in the same way, as it was written by a man for men in a manner that is male. Generally speaking, how women talk and interact and their sense of humour functions differently than do men's. In the end, men are innately more absurd than women.

Question 6: What is the main theme of James Joyce's short story The Dead?

Card: 10 of Cups The Trouble With Harry

Answer: Well, the theme, unsurprisingly, is the condition of being dead. After a somewhat moribund Christmas party in which he is the master of ceremonies, Gabriel is told by his wife of a teenage love affair she had with a young man who died. In ways, this dead young man is more alive than Gabriel, in life and in his wife's heart. Gabriel always wanted to be a writer, but he now realizes he doesn't have the depth of feeling to be an artist. He is superior, stolid, and stuck in his mind, in stark contrast to the artist Sam Malone in The Trouble With Harry. Indeed, Gabriel's more like Harry - a burden, an embarrassment, an unfulfilled thing that needs to be buried. Perhaps he can muster some late ardor for his wife, as the geriatric Captain does for Mrs. Gravely. At the end of the story, Gabriel ponders his own death, and the deaths of everyone in the world, and finds in this an affirmation of life. Similarly, The Trouble with Harry revolves around Harry's death, yet finds life worth relishing - its bright colours, its strangeness, its blueberry muffins.

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[chiscotheque]

To change things up a little, I decided to draw some cards not for an obscure old book or movie but a current and fairly popular TV show. The final season of Orange Is The New Black was recently released, but with some 80 hours of episodes and 2 dozen separate plotlines, it would be impossible to summarize so I'm just gonna assume you know what I'm talking about.

Question 1: Will Piper, now out of jail, wait for and stay faithful to her prison wife Alex, who still has 3 years left of her jail sentence?

Card: The Empress 3 Alma Reville

Answer: Yes. Alma was a devoted wife to Hitchcock, who became a Catholic to marry him and endured his somewhat odd and unpleasant behaviour with women he lusted after. I can't say for certain that Piper will be entirely faithful, any more than I can know for certain about Alma's fidelity, but this card indicates that while the pleasures of the flesh are a very tangible temptation, Piper will ultimately stay with her wife Alex.

Question 2: What will happen to Tastee, now that she has been falsely accused of murder and given a life sentence?

Card: The Hermit 9 Rear Window

Answer: James Stewart's confinement to a wheelchair and of course the traditional meaning of the Hermit card suggests that Tastee will retreat into herself, remain aloof, and shun people. Events, however, will conspire to involve her with others, and other people will help her in her ambitions. Certainly, the other inmates in their cells and the ensemble nature of the series are like the various tableau vivant-ish apartments in Rear Window, but with the Hermit card, their stories imply a distraction. The suggestion is a murder or perhaps simply a death will be of primary significance. Ultimately, Stewart learns to accept Grace Kelly, so the further suggestion is that someone close to Tastee will prove themselves capable or worthy and that Tastee will have to learn something essential about herself - how to stop clinging to her past self and embrace her future.

Question 3: What can be said to be the over-all feeling & thematic emphasis of Orange Is The New Black?

Card: Justice 11 The Wrong Man

Answer: Obviously, the face-value meaning implied here is that the show is centered around the idea of Justice and, by extension, the penal system. On a deeper level, The Wrong Man suggests that the show's emphasis is on injustice - many of the women are in jail either for crimes they didn't commit, weren't properly-speaking responsible for, or were forced into committing given their circumstances. Suzanne, for instance, is mentally challenged and yet she was held responsible for a boy's accidental death. She, like many others including Lolly and Lorna, suffer from mental disorders and should be receiving care, not maximum security incarceration. These concerns are suggested by The Wrong Man's wife, who suffers a nervous breakdown and remains for the rest of her life in an asylum. The police in the Hitchcock film, and the justice system itself, are portrayed as lazy, prejudicial, and inept; concerns such as this and more - the downright cruelty of the guards and a prison system run for profit - are a central focus of OITNB. Just as with The Wrong Man, OITNB is based on real-life events and people, but one way in which Hitchcock's film differs from the series is that it entirely lacks levity whereas OITNB alleviates the bleak realities of prison life with gallows humour.

Addendum: Having now watched the season finale, I want to mention something I noticed about the Justice card but didn't know what to make of at the time: namely, the way the word Justice is bifurcated by Hitchcock's shadow into JUS and ICE. Juice (Jus) is slang for the homemade hooch inmates drink in prison to momentarily escape their reality. It plays an important role in Season 7 of OITNB, accidentally catapulting Daya into the position of prison kingpin. Most significantly, however, is the final season's introduction of the timely variant of mass incarceration: the detention, mistreatment, and suspension of jurisprudence by ICE (US Immigration & Customs Enforcement).

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[chiscotheque]

With 1 day left in the Alfred Hitchcock Tarot Kickstarter campaign, I wanted to do a reading which would use up most if not all of the cards I have remaining from my Stranger Than Fiction readings. I decided to pull cards pertaining to the Star Wars saga, since there are so many films and almost everyone knows them. Rather than beginning with the saga in its internal chronology, I pulled cards in the order the films were released.

Question 1: George Lucas took a lot from the works of Joseph Campbell. In A New Hope, what is the nature of Luke Skywalker's quest and what does he learn?

Card: 10 of Gems Family Plot

Answer: Brought up by his aunt and uncle, Luke learns who his real family is - both his sister and father, but also his chosen family, Han Solo, Obi Wan, R2D2, et al. The Shoebridge character is an orphan like Luke, but he is evil like Luke's father - he killed his own parents and kidnaps people for kicks. When George & Blanche, aided by bogus clairvoyance which echoes the Force, attempt to tell Shoebridge of his windfall, his own ignorance and paranoia lead to his downfall, paralleling Darth Vader's malevolent treatment of his children, Luke & Leia.

Question 2: The Empire Strikes Back is a much moodier work than its predecessor. What new do we learn about the characters?

Card: 8 of Clubs The Ring

Answer: The Ring is Hitchcock's most expressionistic film; similarly, Empire is the most visually atmospheric of the saga. Like Empire and its predecessor, The Ring was made after Hitchcock's major hit, The Lodger. The love triangle in The Ring echoes the love triangle between Han, Leia, and Luke - that is, it did, before we learned of Luke and Leia's paternity. All the protagonists in Empire struggle and suffer, just as in The Ring, where the boxer Jack spends part of the film training intensively rather like Luke training to be a Jedi. Like Jack & Mabel in The Ring, Luke and Leia are together at film's end, while Han in carbonite - like Bob in Hitchcock's film - seems to be quite defeated.

Question 3: What's the gist of Return of the Jedi?

Card: 7 of Gems Murder!

Answer: Through cunning, bravery, and introspection, the truth is discovered and wrongs are made right. Like Darth Vader, Handel Fane in Murder! sacrifices himself to do the right thing. Like Sir John & Diana, Han admits he loves Leia. Murder! has many awkward and amateurish moments, as does Jedi. One memorable scene in Murder! sees Sir John over-run in bed by innumerable children; this may be an allusion to the cloyingly cute Ewoks.

Question 4: What's The Phantom Menace all about?

Card: The Emperor 4 Alfred Hitchcock

Answer: Phantom Menace sets out to show us the creation of Star Wars' main antagonist, the Emperor Palpatine. Of course, it also shows us how Darth Vader started - as a super annoying brat. As young Anakin and Jar-Jar Binks indicate, Phantom is quite irritating. I decided to pull a card to reveal if Phantom has anything else to offer -

Card: The Star 17 The Starlet

This card suggests the importance of Padmé's character. She, of course, will become Anakin's wife and the mother of Luke & Leia. Further, the card indicates Phantom's catapulting of Natalie Portman into stardom.

Question 5: What' can be said about Attack of the Clones?

Card: 5 of Cups Rebecca

Answer: Like Olivier and Fontaine, Anakin marries Padmé. Anakin, however, is haunted by the death of his mother; his hatred and disgust infect his relationship with his wife, eventually leading him to the dark side. Meanwhile, like the servant Danvers, Palpatine pretends to be benign and dutiful but really he is evil and insane. It all ends in a big explosion.

Question 6: What's the takeaway from Revenge of the Sith?

Card: 6 of Knives Torn Curtain

Answer: As Paul Newman defects to the Soviet Union in Torn Curtain, so Anakin goes over to the dark side, becoming Darth Vader. Like Julie Andrews who follows her fiance, Vader tries to convince Padmé to join him. As in Torn Curtain, the chemistry between the so-called lovers is non-existent. Vader's obsessive belief that the dark side of the Force can prevent death is paralleled in how seemingly impossible it is to kill Gromek.

Question 7: The Force Awakens features some of the original cast; what do learn about the old characters and what can be said about the new?

Card: 4 of Cups Stage Fright

Answer: Hitchcock returned to England to make Stage Fright, and in a sense The Force Awakens is a return - to some of the old cast members and the plot itself which is very similar to A New Hope. The young people in Stage Fright are forgettable, whereas the older actors steal the show - Alistair Sim, Marlene Dietrich, & Sybil Thorndike. The main character, Richard Todd, turns out to be insane, which can be said about Han & Leia's son, Kylo Ren. As with the Family Plot reading above for A New Hope, where Shoebridge both signifies Luke and his father, Todd signifies Ren and also his father Han Solo, who takes here his final curtain.

Question 8: The Last Jedi?

Card: The Hierophant 5 I Confess

Answer: The focus of The Last Jedi is Luke Skywalker, who, like Montgomery Clift in I Confess, is part of a religious order and takes his ethical vows very seriously. He is, however, ashamed of his past behaviour or his own feelings. Clift is protecting the Anne Baxter character, whom he cares for; similarly, Luke cares for Rey and instructs her in the ways of the Force.

Question 9: In December, The Rise of Skywalker arrives in theatres - what can the AHT tell us about it?

Cards: The Magician 1 The Lady Vanishes - 9 of Clubs Number 17 - 3 of Clubs Jamaica Inn - The World 21

Answer: The Lady Vanishes suggests a young woman will be of primary significance, probably Rey, and an older woman will also be important, probably Leia. A male will be an important aid and love interest - Finn most likely, but possibly Ren. Humour may play a role in the film.

Number 17 suggests the film will be big on special effects, but short on depth.

Jamaica Inn suggests high adventure and daring-do, and heavy on the ham acting. Perhaps one of the characters will go out in a grand blaze of suicidal glory. The suggestion is that the film will be popular when released but forgotten about by history. As it was Maureen O'Hara's first film, it may introduce an actor who becomes reasonably famous.

The World again attests to the The Rise of Skywalker's popularity worldwide, and of the entire Star Wars saga. As Hitchcock franchised his name to Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, so Lucas has franchised the Star Wars films to Disney. Hitchcock was the richest director of his time, and Lucas is the richest in ours.


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[Diana]

To change things up a little, I decided to draw some cards not for an obscure old book or movie but a current and fairly popular TV show. The final season of Orange Is The New Black was recently released, but with some 80 hours of episodes and 2 dozen separate plotlines, it would be impossible to summarize so I'm just gonna assume you know what I'm talking about.

I'm planning on binge watching the final season as from this evening. Look forward to coming back to reread your post when finished !

[Diana]

Am recovering from a hangover today after thirteen hours of binge watching the last season of Orange is the New Black (and haunted and shaken by the depictions of the detention centres/concentration camps of ICE). I naturally came back to read your post and the reading you did on this final season.

Dammit.... that's spooky what you did. Almost uncanny. How do you this ??? Just want to say thanks for this thread and all the interesting stuff you put into it.