Day: August 3, 2024

Basic Analysis of Wes Craven

escapatoria

I got curious because of someone mentioning Wes Craven‘s birthday and looked at his chart. This is pretty basic, sometimes oversimplified astrology and I’m not going to deep dive anything here.

The Basics:

Sagittarius Ascendant, Jupiter in 3rd. Communicator, especially in a big way.

Leo Sun in 8th house. Bit of a hidden personality/enigma at times despite seeking praise. Interest in dark/uncomfortable topics.

Pisces Moon in 2nd. Needs financial stability to feel safe but the resources ebb & flow.

Mars in 1st house: “say hello to my little friend!”.

Libra Midheaven, Venus in 7th. Known through supportive connections with others and associative one-to-one relationships, especially on topics of art, beauty, women.

Ruh-oh! Venus is conjunct Pluto. Make that socially upsetting art, cruel beauty, fetishism, control dynamics, and victims and/or powerful women. Venus also rules the 5th so make sexuality involved, too. Venus is in Leo so said venus-ing needs to be fucking seen.

T-square between Mars, Saturn (in 4th), and Venus/Pluto… Trouble at home. Something about a violent divorce? Restrictive environment at home.

Grand trine between Mars, Uranus, and Neptune. The ease and outlet of his life becomes self-action (Mars in 1st) on level of expressing weird creative ideas (Uranus in 5th) in far-off, nebulous places (Neptune in 9th).

North node in Scorpio in 10th. Further evidence this person is known for fucked up shit.

Looking at movie releases:

The Last House on the Left is a brutal rape movie released 8/30/72. I don’t think I need to explain his chart as a reflection of the movie. Near that date Uranus was conjunct his Midheaven (sudden/surprise career change), Saturn was in Gemini approaching conjunction with his Descendant about to enter his 7th house but still firmly in his 6th (past year = focus on work, specifically writing and minutia), and Jupiter was conjunct his Ascendant and was due to spend the next bit in his 1st house (I HAVE ARRIVED!).

A Nightmare on Elm Street is about a dream stalker where the bouncy ball takes us to girl temporarily winning victory over spooky perverted fingers man, released 11/16/84. At this time Pluto was conjunct his Node (social atmosphere supports weirdo), Neptune had entered his 1st house and was recently conjunct his Ascendant for a while (whooo arrre yooou? [puff of smoke] and literally being seen through the lens of dreaming), Jupiter had traversed the zodiac and made it back to his 1st house again (IT’S ME AGAIN!!), and a few days before release date he’d had his Mars return.

Scream released December 18-20, 1996. I don’t even need to look to know Jupiter was in his 1st house again. Yep! Not as close to his Ascendant this time, but his career was set in stone by then and some of the advertising sold itself just because his name was attached. Jupiter was conjunct his Mars in the following weeks, in any case, amplifying movement and self-action, as one does to sell a movie. Neptune was conjunct his Mars approaching opposition with his Venus/Pluto, and in recent history Uranus had also been conjunct his Mars but was right then opposite his Venus/Pluto, so one would assume changes in his career direction and its specific topics leading up to this time followed by a perhaps otherworldly dissolution (interesting that the Scream movies are movies about movies and have a self-own tone). The intro to Scream feels on brand since it was such a surprise (Uranus) to kill a well-known actress (Venus in Leo) in the first minutes of a movie. He also had Mars conjunct Neptune the week before.

Wiki is focusing less on his victim-meets-revenge theme and more on dysfunctional family relationships, so it’s interesting that Mars rules his 4th and the T-square points at his 4th house Saturn in this case.

I could go deeper (I’ve ignored both movies and aspects) but my fingers hurt from typing and that’s enough random astro exploration for one day.

On a wholly personal level, his Saturn is conjunct my Venus-in-8th, so it’s interesting that kid me was very compelled by the Nightmare movies and People Under The Stairs, teenage me thought Scream was the bee’s knees, and barely adult me thought Last House was fucking horrific and taught me I can’t watch movies with graphic rape in them no matter how much my Venus in 8th wants to go the dark distance on the art thing. If indirectly, he became a Saturn-level teacher of Venus for me.

I read more and listened to an interview about him, so it’s funny that I doubt I knew any of these things apart from the movies beforehand and still nailed it. College teacher (Jupiter in 3rd, Mercury rules 6th), huh? Restrictive parents, huh (Saturn in 4th at point of a T-square)? Kind of missed the Pisces Moon effect on his mention of dreams and imagination, but I generally ignored his Moon anyway.

I can buy myself flowers.

escapatoria

I read another book outside of my wheelhouse. On theme with the previous attempt, this time I read It Ends With Us.

Once again, the writing was simple and easy. I didn’t read this one in two days but I read it fairly quickly. Like the former, the Lifetime/Hallmark movie cliches were immense, and there was a lot of tell-don’t-show going on. That makes for a snappy read, but also makes for a poorly believable, hollow story.

The plot centered on a lady who comes from a domestic violence household who swears she’ll Never when she grows up but, of course, runs head-first right into it. That brings her to Mr. Toxic Masculinity, a guy who has no impulse control because he has a mopey dark past and boohoo him. Right out of the gate he tries to coerce her into sex. Proceed nonsense. We end up on a journey while main character decides how she feels about walking red flags.

I was still pretty skeptical of romance as a genre when I was young, but if I had been much younger than I am now, I might not have noticed the overall tone of what this book put out. At this point in my life I saw through the character(s) and saw the author’s psyche showing, as well as took note of the popularity of this book as a general reflection of society being stupid. I am yucking your yum, kids. Or not-kids, even. Because the author was around 36 when she puts these words out into the world and, as much as she was trying to go for empathy towards her IRL parents, she put out a message I don’t feel best represents those who’ve been abused or grew up in an abusive environment (or might potentially be facing those things). In the fantasy “spicy” realm of the book, it’s a bad representation of female sexuality, whether we’re talking the teenager or the adult. While there are folks who are (for example) demisexual, or prefer to be pursued, or only find enjoyment in superficial and physical attraction, or are into victim-savior ideas, the book insinuates the character has a strong attraction to a man but the actual “show” (not telling) element is not apparent and it comes across like cardboard. In reflection, it seemed like more evidence of purity culture leaking into the minds of folks who don’t participate. While that might be a result of tempering for one’s audience, ennnnh. No. We can do better.

Of course, the sex-is-scary crowd has things to say about “spicy” content in the sense of “oh no! not the children! my begonias!”, even if it’s limp noodle city to anyone who’s ever read, written, watched, or imagined women doing their own thing outside of the context of being seen as a prized series of holes by some random asshole begging on the floor that he just needs one fuck.

I wrote a billion more words about this and wrote about how irritating society was about apparent sexuality when I was a teenager (things haven’t changed much), but that sums it up. The book wasn’t a terrible read as far as the literal reading experience, but the content needed assistance. I hope the young people who pick this book up because it’s popular know better, but based on the 4-5 star reviews I keep seeing, ennnnnh.

No idea what I’m reading next.