Blind Man’s Bluff
Readings from The Alfred Hitchcock Tarot.
THE UNAVAILABLE BLOND. The unsuspecting everyman thrust into a fantastic life or death scenario. Common domestic elements—scissors, birds, favorite uncles. Such Hitchcockian hallmarks are well known. Repurposed in macabre ways, they point to universal truths. Conversely, the Tarot uses grand, archetypal scenarios and characters to comment on transitory, everyday experiences. While the director’s films are carefully structured to elicit specific reactions from the viewer, the Tarot is rigorously structured to react to specific situations heretofore unspecified. With both, the viewer/reader has most of the facts but remains in the dark as to the outcome. Knowing that a bomb will go off at a specific time is more frightening—and, as a result, more revealing—than if it suddenly went off with us unawares. Suspense is the willing walk through darkness, a darkness where, if we think about it, we already know what's there.
Just as Alfred Hitchcock's film subjects can be turned into the archetypes and images of the Tarot, the Tarot can, like a film camera, be turned on any subject to imagine what lies hidden everywhere, especially within.
How do we get there? And how do we get back? With what Freud called the Uncanny and Hitchcock Pure Cinema, where the quotidian becomes unfamiliar and the alien commonplace. Upside down, with the lights out, we see things anew for what they are—a piece of rope, some freshly planted flowers, a smooth-talking husband. It's said there are no bad questions, but surely there are over-asked ones, and lonely ones rarely if ever asked. The traditional Tarot questions – Does he really love me? Will I get the promotion? - have their place, but they're not going to turn any tables and they're not going to turn many heads. Just as Alfred Hitchcock's film subjects can be turned into the archetypes and images of the Tarot, the Tarot can, like a film camera, be turned on any subject to imagine what lies hidden everywhere, especially within. The act of imagination is the act of bringing the subconscious into consciousness, the dark into the light, like the average man compelled to distinguish the truth from the lie and prove himself extraordinary. Along with the psychological, the Tarot can be asked historical, conceptual, and even fictional questions – indeed, any question you can think of, and even some you can't. The answers often prove uncanny. With this and Alfred Hitchcock in mind, I pose a series of queries to The Alfred Hitchcock Tarot. Three cards, three questions.
Reading One: What becomes of Lisa and Jeff after the finale of Rear Window?
Card 1: What becomes of Lisa?
Card 2: What becomes of Jeff?
Card 3: What becomes of their relationship?
Click through the cards below to see their basic meaning.
Card 1 suggests that once wed, Lisa—contrary to the strong-willed character we see in Rear Window—will start to feel isolated, lose her sense of identity, and suffer an emotional alienation from Jeff. The irony of Jeff getting the Grace Kelly card is profound. Card 2 suggests that initially, Jeff feels overwhelmed by Lisa, but eventually succumbs to her graces. The Star is a benevolent card of assistance; as such, it suggests Lisa will initiate a softening of Jeff's world-weary exterior and come to personify Jeff's relationship with his feminine side—his anima. This may place unforeseen stresses on their relationship culminating in a rupture, as indicated by Card 3, The Tower. Indications are that Lisa will be renewed, reborn, and move on, whereas the older Jeff will suffer a fundamental psychological trauma from the failed relationship—a fall from grace.
Reading Two: Hitchcock has long been accused of being misogynistic. Was he?
Card 1: Ways in which H was a misogynist.
Card 2: Ways in which H wasn't a misogynist.
Card 3: Clarifying Card
Card 4: What was H's relationship to women?
Click through the cards below to see their basic meaning.
Card 1 suggests Hitchcock felt imprisoned in relation to women, perhaps literally in his body, perhaps on some deeper psychological/sexual level. It also indicates Hitchcock felt judged by women and, in turn, judged women with resentful harshness. The Kim Novack card indicates Hitchcock was focused on women, wanted women to express themselves, and was generally interested and entranced by women, if hampered by his own psycho-sexual limitations and control issues. To get more information, I pulled a Clarifying Card, which indicated Hitchcock was frightened of the heights of love, women's power over him, and the matronly aspects of women (viz. Madge). As a result, Hitchcock tried to “direct” women. Card 3 suggests Hitchcock used film to interpret his feelings about women. In the final analysis, if Hitchcock couldn't stop “killing” the female with his neurosis, he could at least use film to expose the grip that male subjectivity had on himself and, by extension, society.
What would have happened to Hitchcock's career had he stayed in England?
Card 1: What would've happened to Hitchcock?
Card 2: What wouldn't have happened?
Card 3: What Hollywood facilitated.
Card 1 suggests that, had Hitchcock stayed in England, his vision would have been cut short and his career would've gone down the drain. Marion's outstretched hand suggests that Hitchcock would've been held back, or suffered death by a thousand cuts. His famous shower scene would never have been made: Hitchcock, the show-er, wouldn't be seen. Card 2 indicates that Hitchcock wouldn't have experienced exile and would never have been a stranger in a strange land. As a result, he would've been denied self-discovery and he would have less to communicate and less ways to do so. He would not have been compelled to adapt to the larger world and therefore would not have become universal. Card 3's film, North by Northwest, is something of a career apotheosis for Hitchcock, a synthesis of many of his themes and visual ideas. America allowed for a grandeur of scale (Mt. Rushmore), a lightness of touch, and overall exposure. It is apt that this card features Cary Grant, another British expat who reinvented himself in America. Grant plays a self-important ad-man (Hitchcock started out in sales and marketing) who becomes the nobody he really is in order to become somebody— namely, himself.
Hitchcock's methods were highly conscious, to the point of being self-conscious. He used fear, anxiety and suspense as gateways to access the subconscious, and his rigor facilitated access. With the subconscious so encountered, the filmgoer becomes like the Tarot reader, open to suggestion. And both are the wrong man. Like George Kaplan, in the darkness of the theater, we become nobody in order to encounter and become ourselves. The “logic” of the MacGuffin and the reliable world turned upside down must be strictly held to when assimilating the unknown in a darkened room. Both Hitchcock and the Tarot follow this logic—what the former called Pure Cinema and the latter the Language of the Birds. We get here by listening, and by looking we see ourselves. What that may be is always changing, and what remains are the tools to make that change.
