SPOILER DISCUSSION

1.Stan pulls out the hangman card when Zeena is assessing his future; his response to such a fate is to flip it upside down and “accept” the circumstances. What matters to him is more his orientation to whatever is happening. Upside down, the card represents indecision and right side up it represents a new perspective. ^[1] The hanged man tarot card meanings. Biddy Tarot. (2021, November 15). Retrieved January 4, 2022, from https://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-card-meanings/major-arcana/hanged-man/ . Stan’s ultimate fate has him ending up as the “geek”, the very position he could not believe a man could succumb to earlier in the film. By “flipping” perspectives, Stan surrenders to his destiny of becoming the “geek”, going so far as to embrace it as the inevitable. It’s very much line with the Oedipal trappings of the film; in trying to avoid his ultimate destruction, he ends up creating the circumstances that end up ruining him through a series of bad decisions.

2.Based off Stan’s therapy sessions with Lilith (Cate Blanchett), we know that his father ended up “failing” in Stan’s eyes. Stan’s mother is a woman he loved but who his father could not end up retaining, losing her to another man who was far more suave and put-together. Through the film , Stan attempts to “get” back his “mother” so to speak while trying to stay out of his father’s footsteps, a path marred with alcohol.

He initially finds himself with Zeena and Pete. Pete, like Stan’s father, is an alcoholic who preaches a gospel to persons through his mentalism act. Stan starts from here, a manifestation of his early childhood, and progresses forward with a set of skills. From there, he seeks out Molly (Rooney Mara), a representation of his mother as “beautiful” and pure. She’s the light in his life and he seeks to take her from the carnival much as the “other” man took his mother away from his father. He’s attempting to follow a different path from his father by becoming this “other” man.

But then Lilith comes in and presents a path back to his roots. If Molly, whose real name is Mary, like the virginal mother herself, represents a purity and shot at redemption for Stan, Lilith represents corruption and succumbing to the weight of past sins. The Biblical sources for both names is intentional and calls to mind Freud’s ideas regarding the Madonna–whore complex.