| Dec. 5th, 2009 @ 10:42 pm Tarot in The Princess and the Frog |
|---|
The cards, the cards, the cards will tell
The past, the present, and the future as well
The cards, the cards... just take three
Take a little trip into your future with me
I saw an advanced screening of the upcoming The Princess and the Frog (Note: I am a huge animation geek). During his big musical number, Dr. Facilier brings out "the cards" for a reading for Prince Naveen and his valet. Now, as Disney intentionally refrained from an accurate representation of Voodoo, I assumed that these cards were just a playful take on the card-reading concept. The images are colorful and bizarrely accurate to the characters' situations, being solely there to illustrate what he's saying at the moment. Dr. Facilier does tricks with them, like showing an extra long, stretched out card at one point and later doing a flip book effect to make the image in one move (I want a deck that can do that). You can see a teeny tiny bit of this card stuff in this clip from 1:06 to 1:13.
However... (And this is the reason for my post)
I noticed that my local big box bookstore already had the art book in stock, so I took a peek at it. Now, I kind of noticed before this how sometimes in the artwork, the card may have a little number stuck on it, but I thought it was random. Then, in the back, I noticed some "Fortune Card" artwork, some of which is recognizable from the movie.
Indeed, some have numbers and some don't, and then I started noticing some things:
There were two versions of the card depicting Naveen marrying "a little honey who's daddy got dough," which, both of which have a IX and at least one cup. One of them was very clearly a nine of cups, with the cups hovering above them, and they both also feature that little honey's father, Big Daddy La Bouff, who's a fat, wealthy character. In the clip I mentioned earlier, if you pause it at around 1:06 before the closeups of the dollar bills, you can see one of these on the table (you kinda have to squint... Hey, maybe it's yet another variation, now that I squint more).
There was a seven of swords, showing one character holding swords and another holding a dagger, looking about to rob him.
There was a card with a chained up prince, which seemed to be Devil imagery, and I think I saw a Ten of Wands in there somewhere.
At the bottom part of the super-long card for Naveen's background there's a three of pentacles arch.
There was a definitely a Hanged Man and two version of The Lovers in there. Also, there was a card that had a very Rider-Waite King of Wands look to it, with the prince leaning forward, one hand on a staff, and a frog by his feet.
The card showing a prince with no money happened to have a tower struck by lighting in the background. Okay, I guess I see the connection. And the happy, freewheeling prince image has... Hold on, is he sitting in The High Priestess' chair? That makes no sense. This one's also on the table in the clip. You can't see it, but, if I remember right, there's a sun on one column and a moon on the other.
As I said, this isn't a serious tarot thing, and it's something that very briefly shows up, with some cards getting the spotlight to make a specific point, and others most likely only briefly appearing (as things like cards and books these days are computer models), never really meant to be seen. It's still very interesting to see these cards' artwork up close and see that more thought went into them than you might assume. I guess that's a naive thing to say, as everything in an animated movie has a whole crew of designers and such behind it. It sounds like from the very beginning they had the idea that Dr. Facilier should read cards, and the cards are a part of his image in quite a few pictures, even though they really don't play much of a role. So I suppose, in the process, a lot of stuff was done on cards before what little we see in the movie made it to the final cut. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any real commentary on the cards in the book. They're just there to keep the pages (I think it had an interview on it) from being just text, and on one page they look a touch fuzzy.
The artwork is whimsical, colorful and stylish, and it kind of makes me wish there was a full deck (hmm, fanart project?). So... go to your local big box bookstore, to the TV, Film, and Radio section, and take a peek around the back of the art book, and see what you think. |
|  |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
amethyst73's Friends Page
grumpy
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
dirty