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What's wrong with [[The Wrong Man]]?

To comply with the [[dialectical ]] axiom that the only way to reach the underlying law of an [[universe ]] is through its exception, let's begin with The Wrong Man, a [[film ]] which clearly sticks out from the [[totality ]] of [[Hitchcock]]'s oeuvre:1

On the one hand, The Wrong Man is Hitchcock at its purest. His special attachment to it is attested by the exceptional [[character ]] of his cameo-[[appearance ]] in the prologue; Hitchcock addresses the viewers directly, informing [[them ]] that they will see a [[tragedy ]] taken from [[real ]] [[life]]. This prologue sounds like an implicit apology-"sorry, but you will not get the usual comic-thriller stuff here, things are for real, I shall throw my cards on the table and deliver my [[message ]] directly, not wrapped up in the usual comedian's costume..."

The classical [[Marxist ]] reproach to this would be that the ultimate function of such an allegorical procedure, through which the product reflects its own [[formal ]] [[process]], is to render invisible its [[social ]] mediation and thereby neutralize its social-critical potential-as if, in [[order ]] to fill out the [[void ]] of social [[content]], the [[work ]] turns to its own [[form]]. Indeed, is this reproach not confirmed per negationem by The Wrong Man which, because of its suspension of the allegory, among all Hitchcock's [[films ]] comes closest to social criticism, dreary everyday life caught in the [[irrational ]] wheels of judicial [[bureaucracy]]? Yet one is tempted to [[defend ]] the opposite argument:2 the strongest [[ideological]]-critical potential of Hitchcock's films is contained precisely in their allegorical [[nature]]. In order for this potential of Hitchcock's benevolent [[sadistic ]] playing with the viewer to become [[manifest]], one has to take into account the strict [[concept ]] of "[[sadism]]" as elaborated by [[Lacan]]. In "[[Kant ]] with [[Sade]]," Lacan proposed two schemes which trace the [[matrix ]] of the two [[stages ]] of the Sadean [[fantasy]]:3

V as Volonte designates the Will-to-[[Enjoy]], the fundamental attitude of the [[sadist ]] [[subject]], his endeavor to find [[enjoyment ]] in the [[pain ]] of the [[other]], while S stands for this other subject, [[suffering ]] and-therein consists Lacan's point-as such, non-[[barred]], [[full]]: the sadist is a kind of parasite in [[search ]] of the corroboration of his [[being]]. In suffering, the other-his [[victim]]-is confirming himself as much as resisting solid substance: the live flesh into which the sadist cuts authenticates the fullness of being. The upper level of the scheme, V--> S, thus denotes the manifest sadistic [[relationship]]: the sadistic [[pervert ]] gives [[body ]] to the Will-to-Enjoy, which torments the victim in order to obtain the fullness of being. Lacan's [[thesis ]] is, therefore, that this manifest relationship conceals [[another ]] [[latent ]] relation, which contains the [[truth ]] of the first one. This other relation, the [[object]]-[[cause ]] of [[desire ]] to the [[split ]] subject, is represented in the lower level of the scheme. The sadist as [[aggressive ]] Will-to-Enjoyment is but a [[semblance ]] whose truth is the [[object a]]: that of an object-[[instrument ]] of the Other's enjoyment.

* [[In His Bold Gaze My Ruin Is Writ Large]]. ''[[Lacanian ]] Ink''. Volume 6. Fall 1992. pp 25-42. <http://www.lacan.com/frameVI2.htm>