Well to start with, I watched a whole lot of old movies. Along the way, I began paying particular attention to all things divination-related in them, many of which I hadn't noticed before -- click here to read on and see more clips...
The first time I watched the 1954 Otto Preminger movie Carmen Jones, I admired a lot of the songs but didn't think much of it as a whole. Especially the ending, which I felt was rather anti-climactic for a tragic death scene. But hey, that drum song that Pearl Bailey sings is so frigging catchy, I often wind up popping the dvd in from time to time just to skip through and listen.
I was doing just that recently, and wound up flipping ahead and re-discovering the scene up top, which for some unknown reason I had completely blocked from my memory. You'd think it would have stuck out in my mind that right before Carmen dies, she draws the Nine of Swords (um, sorry... Spades) and rails against her destiny as her stunned friends look on. I got chills watching it this time, realizing that this scene contains the climax of the movie, not the final scene she shares with her star-crossed Belafontean lover.
And what a climax it is... Pearl Bailey's character, having outed herself as a shaman in "Beat Out That Rhythm", reveals herself to be adept cartomancer too. Her delivery of the line, "Here's your little secret," as she slips Carmen the fatal card is so beautifully and unintentionally sinister. And Dorothy Dandridge's reaction to the card (voiced by Marilyn Horne) is just... epic. Go ahead and come for her, Death. You'll have to pry the booze and menfolk from her cold, dead lips.
Telling fortunes with playing cards is a lot different than reading Tarot cards. For starters, there are fewer cards in your average Bicycle deck, so the meanings of the cards are distributed a bit differently. And since there aren't pictures on any of them except the face cards, there's less room for interpretation -- the imagery of the Tarot deck allows us to aspire more to than mere fortune-telling, allowing us to storyboard possible alternate realities or uncover symbolic truths about our own nature. It's a more communal experience than what's available to the characters in Carmen Jones. But let's go ahead and project Minor Arcana card meanings onto the hand that Carmen lays down at about 2:10. Though there are a few different ways of doing this, we'll assume that Diamonds = Coins, Hearts = Cups, Spades = Swords, and Clubs = Wands. And we'll go ahead and assume that the Jack or Knave = the Page or Princess. So the cards are:
The Four of Diamonds
The Jack of Clubs
The Ten of Hearts
The Eight of Diamonds
The Nine of Spades
If you were reading these cards for Carmen, how would you interpret them? Post your take on them in the comments below.
All new Arcanalogue cards starting soon! In the meantime, I'll be reporting back with more divination-related Summer Vacation movie clips in the next few days. See you then!
