A single film can operate through two incompatible genre precedents at once

Evidence

The Hitchcockian blot, the Thing that doesn’t fit, is the “hero” himself. The film’s central enigma — is the staid, pacific Tom Stall really the psychopathic assassin Joey Cusack? — can be resolved into the question: which Hitchcock film we are watching? Is A History of Violence a rehashing of The Wrong Man or Shadow of a Doubt? Disturbingly, it turns out that it is both at the same time. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 444

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Fisher’s recurring Bergsonian/Lacanian reading of fantasy and to Zizek’s Looking Awry analysis cited elsewhere in the chapter.