beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

I've just been re-reading a Tarot book I have, 78 degrees of Wisdom. When I first put a framework up for plot bunnies for what would turn into Ripper: Fools Journey, I used Tarot cards, and the outline of progress I remembered from that book. Not because I 'believe' it, but because things need bones and that works as well as any as a starting place.

I don't think I've read the book for a few years though.

Today I go back to check up on the High Priestess, and its really winding me up. I feel like throwing a whole bunch of isms at it. Feminism, for a start, and the way that gender is socially constructed. The not small fact that while many cultures identified the sun as male other cultures identified it female. The way all these apparently biological and universal 'facts' it is presenting are socially constructed to appear natural. And from there through semiotics. Study of signs and symbols, should have a lot to say about Tarot. Denotation, connotation. These symbols have been taken to represent these things at these times. But to present anything as a 'universal' myth (and myth is another keyword), to say it arises from the unconscious and just gets understood through symbols, is completely back to front of a lot of thinking. Agrees with other theorists, yes, but the flip side of the idea is, to rephrase without looking it up, that the unconscious arises because of symbols, that people are formed by texts they interact with. Throw postmodernism at the book, because its stuck seeming... well, actually, kind of pre-modern, according to last week in class. With the focus on revelation and circular time.

I'm not saying all this to call the book wrong. It is a demonstration of a certain kind of belief. Its difficult to be wrong about what you believe. But it is quite easy, by some theories, to be wrong about why you believe it.

Why I'm writing this mostly is that, a few years ago, I liked this book. I thought it was a good book. It was full of thoughts, and nice frames for hanging things on. It was nifty and interesting.

The other side of my Access course, I look at it and want to pull out all the textbooks and add some balance.

The way my brain works has changed.

I hope for the better. Because I can go look at it and pull bits out to use, but I can go look at other things to do the same thing. Which I think I used to do quite a lot, but before that there was a phase where I thought I'd found the One True Thing (This Week) and wasn't much with the balance by any definition.

So my reaction to the book made me have more thoughts than the book itself actually has. Newly thoughtful am I. With actual learning from all those years in class.

Cool!



Now to go mine the book for useful symbolism, which is all I was really after in the first place.

Summer temperatures are annoying. Right now next to the internet computer, its just about okay. On the sofa it is only hot enough to be irritating and not enough to really justify putting the fan on. In bed? Bet it'll be nasty. But its hard to get that room cool even with the fan.

ANYways


I have a thought but I can't remember where I got the data that sparked it:

I think at some point a writer said that the speech Oz gives in the van to Willow about 'freeze frame, Willow kissage' was designed to make Willow & the audience fall in love with him. That is the writers set out very specifically to make him the sweetest guy on earth and make everyone watching him like him.

So my thought is, Kennedy also gets a speech. Was it intended to have the same purpose?

Its the speech at the Bronze, about when she knew she liked girls, and what K and Willow have in common.

The reason that speech doesn't work for me is the what they have in common part, where Willow's response is that she doesn't like any of that stuff. That right there says that K, despite living with her, doesn't really know her.

And yet she has this great speech about liking girls, and how to know other girls like girls.

The fun part is the process of - of getting to know a girl. It's like - it's like flirting in code.
It's using body language and laughing at the right jokes and - and looking into her eyes and knowing she's still whispering to you, even when she's not saying a word. And that sense that if you can just touch her just once everything will be OK for both of you. That's how you can tell.
(sits back, grins) Or if she's really hot, you just get her drunk - see if she comes on to you.

I love that speech. But it isn't about falling in love, and it isn't about Willow. It isn't specific. It indicates, between this and not knowing what Willow likes, that the important part to Kennedy is that she's a girl who seems available. Its like the meta where we know that she isn't getting a new relationship because the girl in the made up world wants to date someone, she's getting a new relationship because in our world the writers want to make it real clear that she is still a lesbian and that is yaay. The new relationship is about being a lesbian, not being a Willow.

Compare/contrast with Oz "When I'm kissing you, you're kissing me." and refusing to get involved until its really just about the two of them.

The Oz speech succeeds in making the audience fall in love with him (or at least this bit of the audience).
The Kennedy speech succeeds in making the audience quite clear on the fact she is a lesbian.
If the intent was to get us to fall for her, it rather missed.