The Vice Squad and the Fortune Teller
This note on sources considers how to write a history of fortune telling by examining a 1931 vice squad report on immoral advertising in illustrated weeklies. The vice squad policed prostitution but, in this report, ads placed by fortune tellers were signaled alongside ads for sex work and pornography. What, this leads me to ask, was the relationship between “immoral” sex and divination? Thinking with the opening of Agnès Varda’s 1962 film Cléo de 5 à 7, I seek a way to approach this history with wonder rather than the borrowed gaze of the skeptic or the police officer.
Institutions
- Harvard University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- The Journal of the Western Society for French History
- Published
- 2025-09-21
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3998/wsfh.8756
- Primary Topic
- Geochemistry and Geologic Mapping
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00