tarot
Carnivale
HBO Carnivale TV series tarot with masked imagery lacking thematic depth.
by HBO Design Company · Home Box Office, Inc
televisionmaskedhbouninspired
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The Canon's read
Tarot Canon's own assessment, written for this catalog.
A tie-in deck for HBO's carnival-noir series, produced by a design company on a broadcast schedule, and it shows: the archive's reviewer found masked faces with varied decoration standing in for tarot's actual symbolic machinery, and we will not argue the verdict. The full seventy-eight cards are present in name, but the images do not carry the interpretive weight the structure promises. As a working deck, there are far better choices at every price.
The honest case for it is different. Carnivale the series was steeped in tarot, dust-bowl fatalism and carnival mysticism, and the show's fans have kept its objects alive since the abrupt 2005 cancellation. As memorabilia from a series about fate that was itself cut off early, the deck has a resonance the cards themselves never earned. It suits Carnivale completists and collectors of television tie-ins, bought as an artifact of the show rather than a tool for reading.
From the archive
An excerpt from a review at the Aeclectic Tarot archive, in the original reviewer's voice.
The Carnivale Tarot is a 78 card deck, created for the HBO television show, Carnivale. It was created in a rush by a design company lacking in tarot knowledge, and has uninspired masked faces with differing decorations on each card...
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