Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Wrong Man’ tells the story of Emmanuel Balestrero, arrested for a crime committed by his physical double. It portrays in miniature what theorist René Girard has described as a ‘mimetic crisis.’ The plight of the central character is not a product of blind chance, but rather due to the mimetic fears, desires, and vanities of the members of society that accuse him. Our failure to resist the flawed but contagious human desire to punish a scapegoat for every wrong suffered, not only fails to bring justice to the world, it subjects innocent scapegoats to suffering injustice themselves.
Part of 4 series: René Girard: Greatest Christian Intellectual You Never Heard of
Hitchcock and the Scapegoat: René Girard, Violence and Victimization in The Wrong Man, by David Humbert
