If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then we are constantly flattering the individuals and communities who have transmitted their “scripts” to us. But how do we change our story if we’re a character in somebody else’s play?
Part 2 in series: René Girard: The Greatest Christian Intellectual You Never Heard of Christ is not a character in the movie, but he is present throughout, in the sense that his defeat of Satan on the cross, through nonviolent love, put…
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
The themes of redemptive violence, scapegoating, mimesis, and feuding identities dominate both the films of Martin Scorsese and literary theory of Rene Girard. ‘Shutter Island’ (2010) starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo was Martin Scorsese’s second highest-grossing film ($128M), behind only Oscar-winner, ‘The Departed.’ What first appears to be a classic horror film (voted #7 on Business Insiders Highest Grossing Scary Movies of All Time), turns out to be so much more. A story of violent scapegoating of Girardian proportions.
It’s 1954, and up-and-coming U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Boston’s Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital. He’s been pushing for an assignment on the island for personal reasons, but before long he wonders whether he hasn’t been brought there as part of a twisted plot by hospital doctors whose radical treatments range from unethical to illegal to downright sinister. Teddy’s shrewd investigating skills soon provide a promising lead, but the hospital refuses him access to records he suspects would break the case wide open. As a hurricane cuts off communication with the mainland, more dangerous criminals “escape” in the confusion, and the puzzling, improbable clues multiply, Teddy begins to doubt everything – his memory, his partner, even his own sanity.
“People are against my theory, because it is at the same time avant-garde and Christian: the avant-garde people are anti-Christian, and many of the Christians are anti-avant-garde.” -René Girard