"The Ritual Function of the Press in Alfred Hitchcock's Movies", Communication, Culture and Critique...

Communication, Culture & Critique ISSN 1753-9129

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The Ritual Function of the Press in AlfredHitchcock’s Movies

Sandrine Boudana

Department of Media, Culture and Communication, New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA

As the representation of the press and journalists in fiction has potential impact on thepublic’s perception, this paper more specifically examines this representation in Hitchcock’smovies, which grant a significant role to newspapers and newspapermen in their narratives.In these movies, the press fulfills the ritual function that J. W. Carey (1992) and N. Couldry(2003) have emphasized in their work. The analysis of the 56 movies directed by Hitchcockpoints to an ambivalent representation of the press as an apparatus of the bourgeoisorder. Such depiction may reinforce this order by naturalizing it or, on the contrary,inspire sociopolitical contestation by showing its failures. This ambivalence is inherent inHitchcock’s art, which promotes a logic of monstration rather than plain demonstration.

doi:10.1111/j.1753-9137.2012.01134.x

Newspapers and newspapermen are omnipresent in Hitchcock’s movies. As Rae Harknoticed, ‘‘Hitchcock points the viewer toward a heightened scrutiny of press functionsin the films through his cameo appearances in them. In Foreign Correspondent, wefind the director walking down the street reading a newspaper (Figure 1), in Saboteurhe is a customer at a news stand, and in Lifeboat he famously appears in before andafter pictures in a newspaper advertisement for the weight-loss aid Reduco’’ (RaeHark, 1999, p. 334).

However, while over the past decades, Hitchcock’s movies have drawn extensiveand meticulous attention by critics and scholars, who have shown special interest inthe recurrence of themes (e.g., the figures of the wrong man or the psychopath, the lovetriangle situation, the questions of matrophobia or scopophilia) and of motifs (fromblondes to handcuffs, trains, or eggs) (Walker, 2006), as yet no study has focused onthe recurrence of the press as a theme, and of journalists and newspapers as motifs.

When mentioned at all in scholarly works, Hitchcock’s treatment of newspapersand newspapermen is either evoked in passing or used to address a specific questionlimited to the analysis of a few movies. This is the case of Rae Hark’s study of ‘‘The

Corresponding author: Sandrine Boudana; e-mail: [email protected]

Communication, Culture & Critique 5 (2012) 273–294 © 2012 International Communication Association 273

The Press in Hitchcock’s Movies S. Boudana

Figure 1 Hitchcock and Joel McCrea starring the foreign correspondent in the eponym movie(1941)

Press and Democracy in Hitchcock’s World War II Anti-Fascist Films,’’ which focuseson a predefined political question and limits the scope of analysis to three movies (RaeHark, 1999). It seems that, paradoxically, it is the omnipresence of newspapers andnewspapermen on Hitchcock’s screen that makes them invisible to critics and scholars.

Yet, as I argue in this paper, examining the functions of the press in Hitchcock’smovies enhances both our understanding of Hitchcock’s cinema and our criticalthinking of the role of the press, and of communication, in society. I contend that thepress, as depicted by Hitchcock, fulfills the ritual function that media scholars such asCarey (1992) and Couldry (2003) consider so crucial to our comprehension of the roleof communication and of the media in society. As Couldry has emphasized, ritualsserve as much for masking inequalities and managing conflict as for ensuring socialintegration. From this perspective, by showing on screen the ritual functioning ofnewspaper production and consumption, Hitchcock’s movies might be characterizedas unmasking social injustices and political tensions. The central question raised heretherefore is: Does exposing, in the sense of showing, rituals of press production andconsumption lead to exposing, in the sense of disclosing, social and political issues?

Hitchcock’s art is characterized by the ambivalence of the act of exposing, asthe literature on his work has acutely demonstrated in the case of representation ofwomen (Allen, 2007; Modleski, 1988; Mulvey, 1975). When Hitchcock repeatedlyshows women in a situation of oppression, it begs the question: Does he invite theviewers to share a sadistic drive or does he appeal to empathy and indignation?In their response, critics point to an ambivalence or ambiguity in Hitchcock’srepresentation of women. The same question arises, this paper proposes, in the caseof the representation of the press. Hitchcock’s mise-en-scene of the ritual function ofthe press as masking social inequalities and maintaining political control over societydoes not necessarily constitute a committed social and political criticism, though, atthe same time, the act of showing enables such a criticism to be formulated.

274 Communication, Culture & Critique 5 (2012) 273–294 © 2012 International Communication Association

S. Boudana The Press in Hitchcock’s Movies

As we will see in the last part of the study, Hitchcock plays with the ambivalenceinherent in a pictorial transmission of messages: The image of society that he givescan be seen as both a critical reflection on society but also—because of the absence ofa committed politics—as a mere reflection of society.1 In the conclusive discussion,I use the concept of monstration to shed light on this ambivalence.

Three ritual functions of the press

Within a conceptual framework drawing primarily on the work of media scholarswho emphasized the ritual view of communication (Carey, 1992; Couldry, 2003),as well as upon the work of anthropologists and sociologists (Bourdieu, 1991;Durkheim, 1912/1995; Turner, 1974) who examined the social function of rituals,the analysis developed in this paper is organized around the three main approachesto ritual functions identified in the literature: integration, masking of inequalities,and management of conflict.

Ritual is more than any habitual action or repeated pattern. It is an action,formalized or not, that involves ‘‘transcendent values’’ (Couldry, 2003, p. 3). Whenneighbors ritually meet and comment on the latest news, they signify their belongingto a community that values daily circulation of information about events happeningwithin or outside their community. They also signify that they share, amongthemselves and with the media, a sense of what constitutes an event and of what isnewsworthy. In that perspective, rituals refer to what members of a society have incommon and they fulfill a function of integration (Durkheim, 1912/1995). But, asCouldry has argued, ritual should not only be ‘‘associated with claims that it produces,or maintains, social integration’’ but must also be connected ‘‘with the management ofconflict and the masking of social inequality’’ (Couldry, 2003, p. 4). Rituals formalizecategories and boundaries between categories (Turner, 1974) and, in doing so, theydo not so much express order as they naturalize and legitimize it (Bourdieu, 1991).In the United States of the 1950s, for instance, men read newspapers while womenread magazines (Kimball, 1959, p. 398). Men read newspapers because they naturallyneed to be informed about a world in which they make decisions and are influentialactors; women read magazines because they only have to know about gossip, fashion,and cooking recipes, as their role is centered on, if not confined in, the household.

I analyzed the representation of the press in Hitchcock’s movies via the compre-hensive study of visual and verbal references to newspapers and newspapermen in allof the 56 movies that Hitchcock directed.

For each movie, I transcribed the ways in which newspapers and newspapermenmanifested themselves: description of the item (e.g., legible content of the newspaperarticle, physical appearance and behavior of the newspaperman, transcript of his/herconversation), movement of the camera (e.g., close-up shot on an article, travelingon a street where a news stand can be seen), length and insistence of exposition(e.g., in passing as a background element or long fixed shot), as well as their contextof manifestation (e.g., newspaper read at a table where the family is gathered for



breakfast), and the larger place and role in the story (e.g., opening scene on anewspaper article that introduces a protagonist).

Based on this material, I identified patterns that I further analyzed within theconceptual framework of the ritual view of communication.2 For example, the briefmedium shot on a middle-aged man reading a newspaper at the breakfast tablewhere his family is gathered (with no specific reference to the paper’s content andno impact on the plot) points to a situation of newspaper consumption as a dailyroutine. Repetition of similar situations in Hitchcock’s movies further points to aconception of newspaper consumption as integrated in bourgeois lifestyle and refersto a function of social integration.

The study shows that the three ritual functions (integrating, masking inequalities,and managing conflict) of the press are expressed in Hitchcock’s movies as follows:

1. Omnipresent in public, semipublic or private spaces, newspapers are food forconversation among family members, neighbors, or colleagues, thus serving afunction of integration. This integration can operate at the expense of individualswho are ostracized in the context of social dramas (Turner, 1974).

2. Newspapers are thus also associated with deviance and, through their mise-en-scene, social hypocrisy and inequalities are unmasked. In particular, newspaperconsumption divides genders.

Yet one cannot speak of a critical function of this mise-en-scene as Hitchcockmaintains ambivalence: Is his depiction meant as reflection of society or reflectionon society?

3. Via the routine production of ‘‘junk food news’’ (Jensen, 1983/2001), the press inHitchcock’s movies also appears as a locus of power that maintains control oversociety, through processes of surveillance or distraction. The press is here definedas an agent of power but not without ambiguity, especially when Hitchcockhimself participates in propaganda efforts.

Let us analyze each of these ritual functions before discussing the observedambivalence in connection with the logic at play in Hitchcock’s art.

The function of integration

Newspaper consumption as a shared daily ritualWith a few exceptions (Jamaica Inn, Under Capricorn, Rope, I Confess), newspapersand newspapermen are omnipresent in Hitchcock’s movies. They even play animportant role in Lifeboat, while the whole story unfolds in a place cutoff fromcommunication with the outside world.

Newspaper articles often invade the screen, as the camera offers close-up shots onpages held by characters whose hands only are visible, as though they were holding thepaper for us, the spectators, to read. Significantly too, some of the movies begin (Dial



M for Murder) or end (The Wrong Man, Topaz) with a scene that grants prominentvisibility to newspapers.

Yet this invasion is inconspicuous in the sense that newspapers are so banalobjects integrated in our routine life that we do not pay attention to them. They areomnipresent in public, semipublic, and private spaces.

As part of the street landscape, they are either held by passers-by as an accessorycomparable to hats or handbags, or waiting in news stands, or handed by salesmen.Newspaper readers also invade hotel receptions and public transportation, espe-cially trains—which constitute a recurrent motif in Hitchcock’s movies (Walker,2006, pp. 373–387)—and also subways (Rich and Strange, The Wrong Man), boats(Lifeboat, Rich and Strange), or planes (Foreign Correspondent, Topaz, and TornCurtain). Finally, they are part of the home setting, comparable to plants or familyphoto frames. In these instances, they are often thrown on a table or a couch tosignify the normality of routine life.

While newspapers circulate as common objects throughout the city, news cir-culates as a valuable object of conversation between family members gathered atthe breakfast table, neighbors meeting at the grocery store, or colleagues sharing aworkplace (e.g., The Lodger, Blackmail, Topaz).

Here the newspaper maintains social cohesion by implementing a shared dailyritual. This function has been a central object of communication studies, especiallyas theorized by Carey (1992). Inviting scholars who focus their attention on ‘‘thetransmission view of communication’’ to show more interest in the ‘‘ritual view ofcommunication,’’ he argues that communication

is the basis of human fellowship; it produces the social bonds, bogus or not, thattie men together and make associated life possible. Society is possible because ofthe binding forces of shared information circulating in an organic system. Thefollowing quotation reveals this tension and Dewey’s final emphasis on a ritualview of communication:

‘There is more than a verbal tie between the words common, community, andcommunication. Men live in a community in virtue of the things which theyhave in common; and communication is the way in which they come to possessthings in common. What they must have in common . . . are aims, beliefs,aspirations, knowledge—a common understanding—likemindedness, associologists say’ (Carey, 1992, p. 22).

With the disaggregation of organic solidarity (Durkheim, 1893) characteristic ofthe Gemeinschaft3 (Tonnies, 1887/2001), newspaper consumption represents a com-mon—altogether in the sense of universal and ordinary—activity that nourishessocial interactions and participates in the creation of ersatz of communities.

The newspaper as a metonymy for our mechanical societyIn Hitchcock’s movies, newspapers are closely associated with industrialized masssociety. Consumerism is represented through newspaper advertisements designed by



Hitchcock. They are the advertisements that target the family man in The WrongMan or the middle-class worker in Rich and Strange, or the advertisement forthe weight-loss product, in which Hitchcock appears in before and after pictures(Lifeboat). What is sold in each case, it is suggested, is delusion. In The Wrong Man,the protagonist dreams of purchasing a Ford car when he cannot afford the serviceof a dentist who could relieve his wife’s pain. In Rich and Strange, the newspaperinvites the protagonist to change his ‘‘present circumstances’’ but when he does, it isonly to get a sense, through the painful experience of seasickness and infidelity, of theweakness of his physical and marital condition. As for the weight-loss advertisement,one can have an idea of the irony involved when they know about Hitchcock’sproblematic relation to food and weight (McGilligan, 2003, p. 326; Walker, 2006,pp. 179–200).

If advertisement sells individual fulfillment, on screen Hitchcock often usesnewspapers in scenes that represent a homogeneous society, in which all individualsperform the same actions at the same time, in a mechanical way. This is theopening scene of Rich and Strange that shows a mass of people exiting their officesat the end of a labor day. A very similar scene opens North by Northwest, whenthe camera distinguishes the protagonist from the mass exiting an office building.Not incidentally an advertising executive, the protagonist appears as a busy manable to perform multiple tasks simultaneously, including reading the newspaper.As for the mass of employees, they seem to wear the same suits, as if uniformsof the army of capitalism, while hats and newspapers are worn or carried asinsignia. The novel The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (Wilson, 1955) was published4 years and made into a movie 3 years before the release of North by Northwest,while Marcuse’s One-Dimension Man (Marcuse, 1964) was published 5 years later.Newspapers work as a metonymy for the mechanical society that produces andconsumes them.

Interestingly, while the newspaper is a symbol of the mechanical society, news,especially human interest stories, by their mechanisms of projection and identifica-tion, responds to the individuals’ desire to be comforted and to feel that they belongto a community—thus, fulfilling a function of aggregation (Maffesoli, 1988).

In Hitchcock’s movies, this function of aggregation is sometimes fulfilled at theexpense of individuals identified as deviants: Social integration thus passes throughostracism. This is the case of protagonists wrongly accused (The Lodger, 39 Steps,Saboteur, The Wrong Man, Spellbound, North by Northwest, Frenzy). Further to theiridentification in the newspapers, these individuals are not only chased by the policebut also by their fellow citizens who see them as a threat on society. This is also thecase of women accused of ‘‘easy virtue’’ (Easy Virtue, The Birds). The press then actsas a catalyzing agent in these social dramas.

The press as central actor of social dramasTurner defines social dramas as ‘‘units of harmonic or disharmonic process, arisingin conflict situations’’ (Turner, 1974, p. 37).



Although Turner specifies that social dramas are not crimes, his description ofthe four phases of public action involved in social dramas is highly relevant toHitchcock’s depiction of the way a man wrongly accused of a crime is treated by thepress and his fellow citizens. The four phases observed by Turner are:

1. The initial breach of a norm. This corresponds to the crime in Hitchcock’s movies.2. A phase of ‘‘mounting crisis,’’ ‘‘during which, unless the breach can be sealed

off quickly within a limited area of social interaction, there is a tendency for thebreach to widen and extend.’’ This phase corresponds to the manhunt. In orderto seal off the breach rapidly, the press and the citizens are called for contribution:Newspaper salesmen shout the news in the streets and the papers, circulatingfrom hand to hand, display the photo and name of the deviant on their frontpages.

3. A phase of redressive action: ‘‘In order to limit the spread of crisis, certain adjustiveand redressive ‘mechanisms’’’ are brought into play. In Hitchcock’s movies, thewrong man is found innocent and the real criminal is arrested or killed.

4. A phase of reintegration or of recognition of ‘‘irreparable schism.’’ In the movies,newspaper headlines sometimes rehabilitate the wrong man who is reintegratedin his family unit and in society. However, this sort of reparation is often farfrom complete. In The Wrong Man’s final scene, the protagonist goes to thepsychiatric institution where his wife now lives and shows her the newspaperthat establishes his innocence. Yet this action does not help her recover from hermental breakdown.

And if rehabilitation is still possible for men wrongly accused of murder, thereis no salvation for women whose reputation has been wrongly sullied. Here the‘‘initial breach of a norm’’ (the alleged ‘‘easy virtue’’) leads to a crisis (when thepress makes the breach public) that calls for redressive action (under the form of aruined reputation or a divorce), which is not followed by reintegration but by therecognition of ‘‘irreparable schism’’ (with the stigmatization of the divorcee).

In Easy Virtue,4 it is by reading the newspaper that Mrs. Whittaker finds outthat her fresh daughter-in-law is the sulfurous protagonist of a divorce trial largelycovered by the press: ‘‘I knew this woman was concealing some vile secret!’’ she says,triumphant. In fact, the plot of this movie is entirely based on the destructive powerof gossiping.

In Hitchcock’s movies, concerns about sex scandals are often expressed by jealousmothers who justify their interference by the idea that this sort of scandal bringsshame upon the whole family. It is the voice of Mitch’s mother in The Birds: ‘‘She’salways mentioned in the columns, Mitch,’’ and later on, insisting: ‘‘Well, actually thenewspapers said she was naked.’’ When the protagonist of Easy Virtue objects thather past ‘‘affects no one’’ but herself, her mother-in-law replies: ‘‘On the contrary, itwill utterly disgrace us—it will make us the gossip of the entire countryside.’’ In thisscene, the newspaper passes from hand to hand among the family members and thiscirculation is a synecdoche for the spreading of the gossip in ‘‘the entire countryside.’’



And here newspapers seem to leave no room for salvation. In Easy Virtue, Laritatries to escape: ‘‘Reporters—photographers—publicity . . . Larita sought to forgetthem all on the tolerant shores of the Mediterranean.’’ But her attempt turns outto be hopeless. In the last scene, exiting the court that has pronounced her seconddivorce, the heroin faces with dignity the photo-reporters armed with their camerasand launches dramatically: ‘‘Shoot! There’s nothing left to kill.’’ This dramaturgicreference to the camera as a weapon is recurrent in Hitchcock’s movies. It is actuallynot always purely metaphorical: In Saboteur and Foreign Correspondent, a murderweapon is concealed in a fake camera, while the protagonist of Rear Window uses theflash balls of his camera as a defensive weapon against the villain.

The same press that cries wolf loudly in the social dramas that we examinedmight thus cover actual crimes. This idea is implied in instances when newspapers areused by Hitchcock’s characters for purposes other than reading: to protect the facefrom the sun or the light (Rear Window, Sabotage), to wrap objects (Rear Window,Psycho), to fix things (Saboteur), to entertain oneself or others (the hero of ForeignCorrespondent cutting newspapers in his office, the heroine of Dial M for Murder withher clipping activity or Uncle Charlie building a house with a newspaper in Shadowof a Doubt). All these apparently insignificant activities send us back to crimes.

If Charlie5 builds a house with a newspaper, it is not so much to entertain hisniece and nephew as to destroy an article that designates him as a serial killer.Charlie’s suspicious behavior will incite his niece to go to the town library and findthe incriminating newspaper. The objects wrapped in newspaper in Rear Windoware the murder weapons and they will likewise arouse the hero’s suspicion: ‘‘What’sinteresting about a butcher knife and a saw wrapped in newspaper?’’ he asks hisgirlfriend. Wrapped in newspaper in Psycho is the money stolen by Marion—a crimethat will be punished with disproportion. The newspaper is also the last piece ofevidence which Norman Bates will get rid of when removing every trace of Marion’spresence in his motel. This object is so banal that Norman does not notice itspresence until a final check. Going several times back to the newspaper lying on thebedside table, the camera suggests that Norman is about to make a fatal mistake. Thenewspaper then becomes an element of suspense, in the sense that the tension is bornfrom the fact that we see something that the protagonist does not, and yet should see(Morris, 2002; Zillmann, 1996, pp. 199–232).

Through newspapers as false banal objects, Hitchcock thus gives a nod tohis audience and turns them into his accomplice, as if saying: ‘‘You—and youalone—know what lies beneath the surface.’’

The function of masking social injustice

The press as the instrument for covering dysfunctionHitchcock’s ironic treatment of the press is also observable in the many scenes wherenewspaper reading is presented as morning ritual associated with family gatheringat the breakfast table. Then Hitchcock suggests that the bright morning light under



which this activity is performed actually covers dark secrets. This is the case of theopening scene of Dial M for Murder that introduces an apparently loving couplegathered at the breakfast table: A close shot on a newspaper article about a novelistinvites the secret lover in, and soon teaches us to distrust the appearance of perfection.For the newspaper might just be a cover for dysfunctional individuals or a tool forsociety to hypocritically deny dysfunction.

And conformism starts with family unity. In Rich and Strange,6 when the couplecomes back home to restart a normal life after their trip vicissitudes, the maidwelcomes them by saying that she prepared a nice dinner and brought them ‘‘allthe newspapers.’’ By contrast, in Topaz, the pile of newspapers and magazines thatobstructs the door when the French spy comes back home from his mission in Cubarepresents an anomalous accumulation. It signals that his wife has left him, thusbreaking family unity.

Hypocrisy of conformism is more patent in Rebecca, in the contrast betweenMr. de Winter’s first wife, Rebecca, and his new bride. Rebecca appeared as anaccomplished lady and it is only in the last part of the movie that the husband revealsthat she had a vile character and was unfaithful. In opposition, the new bride is agenuinely kind person and devoted wife. Yet socially she appears as awkward. This isvisually shown through her relation to the newspaper: Sitting at the breakfast tablealone, she soon decides to leave the place but the butler catches her up to remind herthat she left her newspaper. This reminder sounds like blame: The protagonist hasbroken a social convention. Later on, we will see her read a fashion magazine to tryto match up to Rebecca, depicted as a fashion icon. These references to newspapersand magazines point to two dimensions of social criticism: the oppression of theindividual by mass society that demands conformism and the oppression of womenin patriarchal society.

Newspaper consumption as reflection of patriarchal societyMedia consumption is clearly gender-differentiated in Hitchcock’s movies: Men readnewspapers while women read magazines. This observation sends us back to thesignificance of categories and boundaries in the ritual process: ‘‘Rituals do not somuch express order, as naturalise it; they formalise categories, and the differencesor boundaries between categories, in performances that help them seem natural,even legitimate’’ (Couldry, 2003, p. 27). In ‘‘Rites of Institution,’’ Bourdieu (1991)has shown that the rite of passage is not simply about the transition from boyhoodto manhood but serves to define boundaries between the categories of men andwomen. The rite of passage excludes a category (women) for whom the boundary isnot crossable. The underlying division men/women is reasserted in the boy’s ritualtransformation into a man.

In Hitchcock’s movies, only dysfunctional characters violate the strict gendercategorization of media consumption habits. In Marnie,7 the female protagonistuses the classifieds of a Philadelphia newspaper to find a job. But she is a frigidwoman whose mother has taught her not only to seek independence from men but



to loathe them. In Psycho, when the detective arrives at Norman’s motel, he findshim at the reception, having a snack and reading a book. If Norman does not readthe newspapers, it is because newspapers are meant for people concerned with dailylife and the outside world, whereas Norman is stuck in the motel. It is also becauseNorman is not really a man: He is not only impotent and dominated by his mother;he eventually becomes his mother.

The strong gender divide in Hitchcock’s movies has been analyzed by MarantzCohen as a vestige of the Victorian age in which the filmmaker was born. The segmen-tation newspaper/magazine is tightly connected with the dichotomy male = actionversus female = feeling (Marantz Cohen, 1995, p. 12). Newspaper reading is forbusy men and decision-makers. By contrast, magazines are vain. In Rebecca, theclose shot on a magazine’s catchphrase is full of irony: ‘‘Beauty: The magazine forsmart women.’’ But it is above all in Rear Window that this opposition is developed,through the opposition between Jeffries, a photo-reporter, and his girlfriend Lisa,who works for a fashion magazine. When Lisa tells the detective about her suspicionthat a murder has been perpetrated, the detective reacts in this very patronizing way:‘‘Look, Miss Fremont, that feminine intuition stuff sells magazines, but in real life,it’s still a fairy tale.’’

And yet, Lisa will be the one taking action and running risk to solve the murdercase, while Jeffries, immobilized by his broken leg, is a passive spectator. And this isnot an exception. There are other instances of active women in Hitchcock’s movies,notably in The Man Who Knew Too Much, in which it is the female character whofoils the political assassination plot.

Besides, if reading the newspaper can be the activity of hyperactive businessmen,like the hero of North by Northwest, it also turns out to be the activity of theunoccupied or the unemployed. This is the case of the father in Juno and the Paycock8:While he is sitting in the living room, reading his newspaper and smoking his pipe,as a useless ‘‘peacock,’’ the mother is the one standing up, both literally (on her feetall day, working and taking care of the household) and figuratively (standing up forher children, especially her daughter after she announces her pregnancy).

However, as soon as we begin to think that Hitchcock shows that women’s role insociety is underestimated, a last shot sends us back to the idea of the unalterable vainnature of females. In the last scene of Rear Window, as soon as Lisa sees that Jeffries isasleep, she trades a book titled Beyond the High Himalayas for the magazine Bazaar.

The gender approach to newspapers and magazines consumption thus illus-trates Hitchcock’s ambivalence toward patriarchalism, and his permanent oscillationbetween backing up stereotypes and inviting us to their denunciation. This funda-mental ambivalence has been emphasized by feminist critics (Modleski, 1988) whoconclude that Hitchcock is neither misogynist nor sympathetic in his representationof women. Or perhaps we should conclude that he is both. This is what Allen arguesthrough his concept of ‘‘romantic irony,’’ which ‘‘describes the both/and rather thanthe either/or logic that governs the universe of Hitchcock’s films’’ and ‘‘explains how



it is that critics could construe Hitchcock’s work both as an affirmation of the idealof heterosexual romance and as a critique of that ideal’’ (Allen, 2007, p. xiv).

Newspapers are a reflection of society, which can in turn inspire a critical reflectionon society. But this critical function might be more apparent in instances whereHitchcock gives an active role to newspapers and newspapermen. Then the referenceis not just metonymical as the press is given harmful agency.

The function of conflict management

News as an instrument of control through processes of surveillance and distractionPrior analysis of the role played by newspapers in the public actions involved in socialdramas (Turner, 1974) has suggested that the press in Hitchcock’s movies createdvisibility as a trap for the wrong man.

Newspapers create a feeling of oppression by their ubiquitousness and theirextraordinary capacity to circulate information rapidly and at large scale: ‘‘How willI know him?’’ the hero of North by Northwest asks. ‘‘He’ll know you. You made theChicago papers too,’’ the interlocutor replies. There seems to be no escape possible aseverybody knows everything about everybody. Hitchcock immerses his protagonistsand his audience in a Panoptic society: ‘‘visibility is a trap’’ (Foucault, 1975, p. 200)through which modern society exercises its controlling system of power-knowledge.

This idea is epitomized in scenes where heroes are fugitives playing hide andseek not only with the police, but with all the people surrounding them in publicspaces, especially those holding a newspaper. This is exemplified in the famous andvery similar Grand Central Station scenes, in The 39 Steps and North by Northwest.Newspapers turn everyone into potential informers for the police and sometimesinto active hunters. The collective violence then depicted by Hitchcock resembles themob behavior studied in social psychology at the turn of the 20th century (Le Bon,1897/2002). The mob lynching the wrong man in The Lodger is not an assembly ofcitizens willing to do justice, but a mass stirred up by newspapers’ obsession withmurder stories.

This newspapers’ obsession is expressed with humor by the female lead characterof North by Northwest, when she corrects the protagonist who gave her a fake identity:‘‘No, you’re not. You’re Roger Thornhill . . . of Madison Avenue . . . and you’rewanted for murder on every front page in America. Don’t be so modest.’’ One mightnotice here that he is not ‘‘wanted’’ by the police but by the newspapers. This remarkconfirms the active role of the press in the ‘‘discipline and punishment’’ (Foucault,1975) system characteristic of modern society.

For readers, murders covered by the press represent entertaining objects ofconversation. At the end of the day, Hitchcock suggests, entertainment is whatthe audience expects of newspapers. Human interest stories, especially reports onmurders or accidents, invade the papers’ space. If some of the newspaper articlesshown by Hitchcock’s camera deal with political news (especially in Topaz), a large



majority concerns advertisement, sports, gossip, and human interest stories, whatJensen (1983/2001) has termed ‘‘junk food news.’’

Reversal of the traditional hierarchy of news, which makes entertainment newsappear as more important than political news, is treated with humor in TheLady Vanishes, when two British gentlemen lament that American newspapers giveprominent coverage to the current bombings, on the eve of World War II, at theexpense of the cricket game: ‘‘Not a word about cricket. Americans have no sense ofproportion.’’

This idea of an invasion of sensationalistic news at the expense of political newshas been theorized by sociologists who argue that this invasion functions as diversion:By invading the space that should be dedicated to political and social matters, themedia divert the citizens’ attention from them and thus generate a ‘‘democraticdeficit’’ (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 16).

And indeed, Hitchcock tends to present the press as an agent of power that numbsthe citizens.

‘‘The authority of the printed word’’Newspapermen appear as ‘‘agents of power’’ (Altschull, 1994) ready to sacrifice thetruth on the altar of superior national interest. This is the case in North by Northwest,when the media back up the staged killing of the protagonist. The head of thesecret agency further expresses his satisfaction, not without a dose of cynicism: ‘‘Mr.Kaplan’s untimely shooting has now acquired the authority of the printed word.Everyone’s been cooperating beautifully.’’ The media manage to impose their claimto truth as self-evidence for their audience, while in reality they serve law and order.Lies become the truth when uttered by the press: ‘‘You saw the newspapers. Myfingerprints are on the knife. I’m a car thief, a drunk driver, and a murderer’’ (thewrongly accused protagonist in North by Northwest).

Cameras play a crucial role in Hitchcock’s idea of how deceptive appearances canbe. This is notably illustrated by the famous scene at the United Nations in North byNorthwest: ‘‘Cary Grant is photographed holding the knife that has just been usedto stab the ambassador to the United Nations in the back (North by Northwest),and the snapshot shows him in the process of stabbing him, when it is preciselythe opposite that is happening’’ (Dufreigne, 2004, p. 137). And Dufreigne concludeshis study of the deceptive function of cameras by explaining that ‘‘the photographis a fixed reflection of the real character, inanimate, and thus soulless’’ (Dufreigne,2004, p. 137). Paradoxically, whereas Hitchcock insists on visual transmission ofinformation to his audience, he also sends them this fundamental message: Do nottrust image.

Hitchcock as a propagandistHitchcock thus generally gives a negative image of newspapers and newspapermen,especially photo-reporters. However, when he focuses on specific journalists whobecome protagonists of his stories, he tends to give a positive image of their



personality and their professionalism. Jeffries in Rear Window, the protagonist’sson-in-law in Topaz, and, above all, the foreign correspondent in the eponym movieare all brave professionals in quest for truth, and their occasional cynicism hides aheart of gold. This positive image seems exclusively reserved to war correspondents,in that Hitchcock’s representation, far from being original, aligns itself with theimage d’Epinal of war correspondent as the undisputed journalist hero in movies andpopular culture in general (Annenberg, 2010).

However, beyond the stereotyped representation, Hitchcock seems to make apoint of discussing journalists’ values and goals, as well as the dilemmas—especiallythe question of censorship—they are confronted with. His view is mostly developedand made explicit in Foreign Correspondent, throughout the film in general, and inmore length and depth in the introductory conversation between the chief editorand one of his journalists. That Hitchcock, making an exception to the rule ofsupremacy of visuality over verbality, concedes such long dialogues to explicate hisprotagonists’—and his own—views on journalism prove the importance grantedto these views. In this conversation, the ideal war correspondent is defined, inopposition to the ‘‘intellectual type,’’ as someone able to get to the facts becausehe has no preconceived ideas; his mind has not been perverted by an ideology: ‘‘Iwant a reporter. Somebody who doesn’t know the difference between an ism and akangaroo.’’

Yet, ultimately war correspondents do not escape from serving as agents of power.It is the case of Francois (Topaz) when he passes information obtained by interviewon to his father-in-law, a secret agent spying for the Americans, in the Cold Warcontext. More disappointedly, it is also the case of Jones (Foreign Correspondent)when, in the movie’s last scene, the patriotic speech that he delivers from a radiostation in London turns him into an instrument of propaganda. This scene, whichhas actually been written by a different scenarist at the last minute to replace theoriginal ending, sounds phony and the speech is not in line with the character. Thisis Hitchcock’s sacrificial contribution to the war effort, as Spoto pointed out: ‘‘LikeCharles Chaplin’s impassioned plea at the end of The Great Dictator (made the sameyear), Foreign Correspondent breaks the rules of dramatic logic and structure to makeits political and social point’’ (Spoto, 1999, p. 234). This sacrifice has to be understoodnot only in the political context of World War II, but in the more particular contextof Hitchcock’s personal experience of the war. Indeed, in 1940, Hitchcock had justleft his native England to work as a director in Hollywood and ‘‘the British press and asignificant portion of the film and theater community unleashed a storm of protest’’against him: ‘‘Hitchcock’s former employer had called him a deserter’’ (Spoto, 1999,p. 235). That is also why, although, as Rohmer and Chabrol insisted, Hitchcock was‘‘ordinarily not at all a ‘committed’ auteur’,’’ he ‘‘made an exception where Nazismwas concerned’’ (Rohmer and Chabrol, 2006, p. 120).

Such compromises add ambiguity to the ambivalence of what we may callHitchcock’s critical gaze on society and politics—an ambivalence notably pointedout in his treatment of the gender issue.



Discussion: How Hitchcock’s logic of visual communication accountsfor the observed ambivalence

In this last part of the paper, I want to argue that, beyond the contingencies of Hitch-cock’s particular involvement in the political intricacies of his time, the ambiguity ofHitchcock’s critical gaze has first and foremost to do with the ambivalence inherentin the gaze, that is, in visual communication.

Indeed, in accordance with his philosophy that ‘‘whatever is said instead ofbeing shown is lost upon the viewer’’ (Truffaut, 1985, p. 17), Hitchcock triesto communicate with his audience visually rather than verbally. His referencesto, and uses of, newspapers on screen are thus another illustration of his well-deserved characterization as a great ‘‘cinematic visualizer’’ (Spoto, 1999, p. 517).Understanding Hitchcock’s art of visual communication is all the more significantsince the past decades have witnessed an expansion of the place and role of visualmessages in the communication process (Sturken & Cartwright, 2009; Lester, 2005).

Visual expression of the protagonists’ psyche and of plot complicationsInfluenced by German expressionism and Russian expressive realism, Hitchcockuses elements of montage and of visual representations, such as colors and facialexpressions, to convey the emotional states of his protagonists. This is particularlythe case with men wrongly accused of murder or lovers involved in a problematictriangle situation—all of whom are confronted with violent internal conflict. AsTruffaut (1985, p. 20) put it, Hitchcock belongs to the society of ‘‘artists of anxiety.’’

Elements of visual representation, newspapers are thus used to introduce pro-tagonists and their psyche visually instead of verbally. Close-up shots on newspaperarticles provide the viewers/readers with the name, occupation, and circumstancesof life and/or death of several characters. More importantly, the mise-en-scene ofnewspapers gives the audience access to the characters’ secret fears and aspirationsand foreshadows plot complications.

This sort of mise-en-scene is offered in the movie The Paradine Case. In thislove triangle story, the jealousy felt by the wife is conveyed by a play of the camerabetween her subjective gaze and a newspaper article on her husband and his femaleclient. The cross-fade between the tortured face of the protagonist’s wife and thenewspaper photograph of the protagonist with the caption ‘‘Mrs. Paradine’s counselvisits her in prison’’ implies the following causal logic: The wife is informed by thepress that her husband, who had been out of town for days, decided, upon his return,to go directly to the prison to visit Mrs. Paradine instead of going home first. Forher and for the audience—but for no other newspaper reader—this informationbetrays her husband’s feelings for Mrs. Paradine. When her husband comes backhome, she hastily hides the newspaper under the couch, as if hiding her shamefuljealousy, thereby revealing it even more clearly to the audience. The husband’s noticeof the presence of the newspaper eventually leaves them both embarrassed, as if thenewspaper were material evidence of his betrayal. Whereas no word has been uttered,the feeling of jealousy is so clearly conveyed by the movements of the camera and the



facial expressions that viewers have no room for alternative interpretations. In hispaper ‘‘The Tutor-Code of Classical Cinema,’’ Daniel Dayan offered a similar analysisof Velasquez’s painting Las Meninas: ‘‘The painting proposes not only itself but itsown reading. The spectator’s imaginary can only coincide with the painting’s built-insubjectivity. The receptive freedom of the spectator is reduced to the minimum’’(Dayan, 1974, p. 27).

Monstration and demonstrationCan this logic of subjective gaze imposed on the viewers be extended to socialand political criticism? Is representation of gender divide in press consumption, forinstance, the equivalent of a denunciation of discrimination against women? In otherwords, by exposing, in the sense of depicting, rituals of newspaper consumption,does Hitchcock expose, in the sense that he denounces, social injustice?

As previously mentioned, Hitchcock was not a committed author. If Hitchcockwas influenced by expressionism, he also found a source of inspiration in Britishsocial realism documentary (Ryall, 1996, pp. 18–32). And this suggests that whenhe shows abused women in his movies, it is neither to support patriarchalism orfeminism, neither to call for status quo or for change, but only because women areabused in reality. In an attempt to solve the question reflection of or reflection onsociety, I will refer to the concept of ‘‘monstration’’ as developed by Daniel Dayan.9

‘‘Monstration’’ is a ‘‘performance that calls for and modulates attention’’ (Dayan,2009, p. 25). It designates ‘‘acts of showing,’’ in the way one speaks of ‘‘speech acts’’(Dayan, 2009, p. 19):

. . . the monstration of suffering involves a performative dimension (Austin,1962). It deploys the ‘behabitives’ of condolence. It calls on the ‘verdictives’ ofdenunciation. To victims, the monstration of suffering expresses regard. Toperpetrators, the same images are a slap in the face (Dayan, 2006, p. 26).

Interestingly, Dayan argues that the same images can call not only for differentinterpretations but for opposite ‘‘gaze acts.’’ Yet, this does not mean that imagesare open to any interpretation or that they do not resist some ‘‘gaze acts.’’ Thisparadox can be solved in the comparison between monstrations and demonstrations.According to Dayan,

A demonstration is a monstration that serves as proof. It is an ostension (derivedfrom the Latin ostensio, the term ostension belongs to the liturgical vocabularywhere it designates the ritual display of religious objects such as holy relics) thatserves to close an argument (Rosental, 2007). Yet, opposing demonstration tomonstration suggests that there are monstrations that make no point, that obeyno purpose, that are gratuitous. I believe this is wrong (Dayan, 2009, pp. 25–26).

If a monstration does not necessarily serve as proof, it is not, for all that, gratuitous asit is an act of showing that calls for a ‘‘gaze act.’’ In the same way as the monstrationof suffering can express regard or outrage, the spectacle of women in a situation



of oppression in Hitchcock’s movies may express regard or sadistic pleasure ofdomination. In fact, it probably expresses both, given Hitchcock’s repeated resort toirony, as this paper has previously emphasized.

This sense of irony reaches a peak in the role that Hitchcock gives to the press inthe construction of a privileged relation with his audience.

Newspapers’ role in the construction of a privileged relation between Hitchcock andhis audienceHitchcock gives us, that is, his audience, privileged access to information (Truffaut,1985; Webber, 2008). Like Jeffries, the protagonist of Rear Window, we are PeepingToms with inner access into the characters’ homes and darkest actions and thoughts.We even have superiority over Jeffries, as we spy on him too. A central part of thepleasure experienced by the audience stems from this play on who knows what, andfrom the audience’s top position in the hierarchy of information.

At the base of this hierarchy, we find newspaper readers who get partial or falseinformation from journalists. Hitchcock’s protagonists are better informed thanjournalists because they are the actors of the reported events. That is how, in TheBirds, the female protagonist, caught in the town under attack, calls her father, whohappens to be the owner of a major San Francisco newspaper, to give him an updateon the situation in the field. Newspapers seem to be content with appearances andwith taking stock of the situation without trying to understand the causal logic. Forexample, in Topaz, newspapers report on the geopolitical crisis and, later, on itsresolution, without any idea of the ins and outs. By contrast, Hitchcock gives hisspectators access to what is happening behind the scene.

Likewise, newspapers are full of reports on accidents that we know actually hidecrimes or resulted from criminals’ failed attempts on the hero’s life: This is the case ofthe villain who falls from the bell tower in Foreign Correspondent, the one who falls in aravine in Family Plot, or the pilots who crash their plane on a truck in North by North-west. In each case, the action resulting in the death is followed by the image of a news-paper article presenting the event as a regrettable but, all in all, meaningless accident.

If journalists fail to get their facts right, it is mostly because they rely exclusivelyon official sources. This position is epitomized, in Foreign Correspondent, by thecharacter of Stebbins, whose recipe for longevity as foreign correspondent is: ‘‘Cableback the government handouts and sign them ‘Our London correspondent’.’’Newspapermen are thus followers depending on the government or the police. Yetthe police themselves are often mistaken, as repetition of the wrong man situationdemonstrates. The wrong man is a fugitive harassed not only by the police, but by thepress and its readers. We, the audience, on the other hand, know that the protagonistis a victim of injustice and is put in danger, and we feel empathy for him. However,Hitchcock occasionally misleads us as well, by making the protagonist appear as asuspect (The Lodger, Frenzy), before revealing his innocence and inviting us to sidewith him against the rest of the world.

And so Hitchcock plays with his audience. We, the spectators, know more thanany of the characters: We know more than the protagonists, who know more than



the authorities, who know more than the journalists, who know more than thecitizens—and yet sometimes we know less than we think. This is all the more excitingthat information appears as a crucial asset that can be used and misused. This isthe case when the villain gets information in the newspapers about the protagonist’sprivate life and uses it to perpetrate his crime to the protagonist’s detriment. Forexample, in Strangers on a Train, that is how psychopath Bruno comes to proposethe exchange of murders. He boasts himself: ‘‘Ask me anything, I got the answer.Even news about people I don’t know. Like who would like to marry whom whenhis wife gets her divorce.’’ Annoyed, the protagonist replies: ‘‘Perhaps you read toomuch.’’ Privileged access to information is key in the mechanism of Hitchcockiansuspense, as notably analyzed by Dolar in his well-named paper ‘‘The Spectator WhoKnew Too Much’’ (Dolar, 1992, p. 129). Our access to information that is denied tothe protagonist leads to an anticipation of action, which, in turn, leads to the tensionknown as ‘‘suspense.’’

To summarize Hitchcock’s system, the hierarchy of information can be schema-tized from top to bottom, as follows:

Viewers of Hitchcock’s movies: Public as audience↓

Protagonists↓

Police↓

Newspapers↓

Readers of newspapers: Public as citizens

But here lies the irony: Viewers of Hitchcock’s movies are better informed thanreaders of Hitchcock’s newspapers, who are being lied to. Yet in the real world, thatis, outside the fictional world built by the filmmaker, movie audience and newspaperreaders are one and the same public. From this we can infer that Hitchcock implicitlysays to us: ‘‘You are being lied to, in the same way as the fictional readers of myfictional newspapers are deceived.’’ Hitchcockian fiction tells us that our reality ismade of false appearances. From that, one could deduce a more militant message thatwould be: ‘‘Don’t be a fool and wake up!’’ This unveiling function can be consideredthe mission of intellectuals in general and of media critics in particular.

Yet Hitchcock’s movies do not convey a constructed sociopolitical criticism.Instead, Hitchcock leaves the spectator with a sense of irony: ‘‘You are being lied tobut there is not much you can do about it. As a citizen you might be condemned tothe same passivity you experience as a spectator. So just entertain yourself.’’



Conclusion

This study has emphasized Hitchcock’s ambivalent treatment of the press as part of thedominant social and political systems. The ritual modes of newspaper production andconsumption point to a role of the press as apparatus of the bourgeois order or as agentof power and instrument of propaganda. Yet Hitchcock’s depiction of these pressfunctions seems to oscillate between the poles of legitimization and contestation. Bycontenting themselves with visual representation, Hitchcock’s movies might imposethe extant situation as natural. However, by making flaws visible, Hitchcock’s moviesseem to incidentally invite us to a critical reflection on society.

This indecisiveness of the critical function has to do with the ambivalence inherentin the logic of Hitchcock’s art. It is because Hitchcock communicates his view visually,instead of verbally, that his message can oscillate between two poles: Visual depictionof sociopolitical order can reinforce this order—by naturalizing it—or may, on thecontrary, inspire contestation—by showing its failures. Far from constituting a flawin Hitchcock’s work, this ambivalence refers to a logic of monstration that proves tobe powerful in the sense of irony that it expresses. Here lies Hitchcock’s most valuablecontribution to our understanding of the role of communication in society. It is nothis archetypal, if not stereotyped, depiction of the press or of the bourgeois worldthat enhances our comprehension of this role, as much as his way of showing howvisual communication works in monstrating, rather than demonstrating, the flaws ofour society.

Acknowledgment

I am grateful to Scott Selberg and Magdalena Sabat for their helpful comments onearlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

1 There is, of course, no such thing as ‘‘a mere reflection of society’’ insofar asmediatization implies construction of the real. What I mean here is simply that Hitchcockmay claim to avoid charging his visual construction of the social with an ideologicalmessage and, instead, pretend to describe society as it is. I develop this point further whenI discuss Hitchcock’s visual mode of communication (see p. 25). Hitchcock necessarilyproceeds to a ‘‘visual construction of the social and social construction of the visual,’’ asMitchell put it (2005, p. 345). To be convinced, it is enough to observe that, in all hismovies, he portrays an archetypal society, be it in the England of the first decades of the20th century or in 1970s’ America.

2 The methodology adopted here is similar to the ‘‘hermeneutic approach’’ that Matthesand Kohring identified as one of the methods used for the ‘‘measurement of mediaframes’’: ‘‘There are a number of studies that try to identify frames by providing aninterpretative account of media texts linking up frames with broader cultural elements’’(Matthes and Kohring, 2008, p. 259). In this case, the ‘‘broader cultural elements’’ areconstituted by the rituals and their functions. One example of frame identified in thisstudy and linked up with ritual functions is the gender divide.



I acknowledge the limitations of this methodology, in particular the ‘‘selection bias’’pointed out by Matthes and Kohring (2008, p. 259). However, this approach allows for awell-documented study that is not possible with strict content analysis. Furthermore, ifalternative interpretations for the observed patterns are always possible, they wouldcomplete, rather than contradict, the interpretation that I proposed within theframework of ritual functions. For example, I found that newspapers in Hitchcock’smovies are mostly filled with what Carl Jansen (1983) has called ‘‘junk food news’’ (seep. 20), that is, human interest stories, advertisement, and sport. I interpreted this patternby referring to the ritual function of conflict management: These news items are meant todistract the citizens’ attention from political and social problems and therefore serve tomaintain the political and social status quo. This interpretation does exclude other kindsof explanations, for instance, that Hitchcock suggests that the press industry is primarilyinterested in offering stories that sell (rather than informing the public or promotingdemocracy) or that readers value this sort of story more than ‘‘serious’’ topics. If myinterpretation is limited to the ritual functions framework, it is not, for all that, arbitrary.Indeed, it is based on the identification of patterns (in my example, it is the dominationof junk food news) and it does not discount contradictory elements. I recognize that in afew movies, such as Topaz, political news are given prominence and I explain thisexception by the movie’s plot line: Topaz is a Cold War spy story in which political newsplay a crucial role (whereas in the other movies, the news is not central to the story).

3 The German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies (1887) defines two models of socialorganization: Gemeinschaft (community), in which individuals are closely tied (family,friends living in the same village and sharing the same traditions and religion), andGesellschaft (individualist society) where people are associates essentially motivated byself-interest. If Tonnies analyzes the historical transition from one model to the next, hecontends that Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft are normal types and that actual socialorganizations present a mix. Tonnies’ work has notably influenced Durkheim (1893) whoargues that community is the cement that makes possible the division of labor in society.

4 Easy Virtue (1928) is the story of Larita, a woman whose reputation has been ruined afterher husband got his divorce on false charge of adultery. Larita escapes to the FrenchRiviera, where she meets a man and soon marries him. But her new husband’s familyfinds out about her past, forcing her to divorce again.

5 Shadow of a Doubt (1943) tells the story of a serial killer, Charlie, who, hunted by thepolice, decides to hide at his sister’s. Charlie’s niece, who admires him, becomessuspicious when Charlie destroys a newspaper that might have betrayed him. The niecefinally discovers her uncle’s dark secret and kills him in self-defense.

6 Rich and Strange (1931) is the story of a middle-class couple who decide to live a life ofease and go on a cruise after they inherited a fortune. But from seasickness to swindle,troubles do not end and they end up regretting their past routine lives.

7 Marnie (1964) tells the story of a habitual thief whose boss, Mark, forced her to marryhim in exchange for his silence. Mark helps her confront her traumatic past to solve herkleptomania and frigidity.

8 Juno and the Paycock (1930) takes place in the slums of Dublin during the Irish Civil War.A mother strives to hold her family together but has to witness its destruction: Herunemployed husband drinks up the family’s finances at a pub; her daughter isimpregnated by a man who whisks her away; and her son, an informer for the GardaSiochana, is executed by the IRA.



9 Daniel Dayan seems to apply the concept of ‘‘monstration’’ strictly to television, whilecinema would follow a different regime of communication. However, I find this conceptuseful in the interpretation of what is at stake in the logic of Hitchcock’s art.

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希区柯克电影中新闻业的仪式功能

【摘要：】

因为虚构情节里对新闻和记者的描写有影响公众看法的潜力。因其叙述通过信息的权力展开，所以本文具体地研究希区柯克电影中的报纸和新闻记者的功能。作者通过对希区柯克执导的 56 部电影作品进行分析，说明这些电影矛盾地展现了新闻业作为一个资产阶级秩序的机器。这种描写使新闻业自然化而可能加强这种秩序，或者相反，通过显示其失败而激发社会政治论争。这种矛盾在希区柯克的艺术中是固有的，并且，它倡导证明而非显示的逻辑。

La fonction rituelle de la presse dans les films d’Alfred Hitchcock

Comme la représentation de la presse et des journalistes dans la fiction a un impact possible sur la

perception du public, cet article examine plus particulièrement les fonctions des journaux et des

journalistes dans les films de Hitchcock, dont les narratifs sont fondés sur le pouvoir de

l’information. L’analyse des 56 films réalisés par Hitchcock montre une représentation ambivalente

de la presse comme dispositif de l’ordre bourgeois. Une telle représentation peut renforcer cet ordre

en le naturalisant ou, au contraire, inspirer une contestation sociopolitique en montrant ses échecs.

Cette ambivalence est inhérente à l’art de Hitchcock, qui promeut une logique de monstration plutôt

que de démonstration.

Mots clés : culture visuelle, film, culture populaire, journaux, Hitchcock

Die rituelle Funktion der Presse in den Filmen Alfred Hitchcocks

Da die Darstellung von Presse und Journalisten in fiktionalen Inhalten einen potentiellen Einfluss auf die öffentliche Wahrnehmung haben, untersuche ich in diesem Artikel die Funktionen der Zeitungen und Reporter in den Filmen von Hitchcock, dessen Geschichten auf der Macht der Informationen basieren. Die Analyse von 56 Filmen unter der Regie von Hitchcock zeigt eine ambivalente Darstellung der Presse als einen Apparat der kleinbürgerlichen Ordnung. Derartige Darstellungen könnten diese Ordnung zementieren oder aber durch die Explikation von Fehlfunktionen einen soziopolitischen Streit anregen. Diese Ambivalenz ist inhärentes Merkmal der Kunst Hitchcocks und stellt die Logik des Demonstrierens in den Vordergrund und nicht die Demonstration.

Schlüsselbegriffe: visuelle Kultur, Film, Populärkultur, Zeitungen, Hitchcock

알프레드 히치콕 영화에서의 언론의 의식적 기능

요약

픽션에서의 언론과 언론인들의 대표성이 대중의 인지에 잠재적 영향을 미치는 것으로,

본 논문은 히치콕 영화에서의 신문과 언론인들의 기능들을 보다 세세하게 연구한

것이다. 히치콕에 의해 만들어진 56 개 영화의 분석은 언론의 양립적인 대표성을

지적하고 있다. 묘사는 그것을 자연화하는 것에 의해 이러한 질서를 강화하거나, 또는

그 반대로 그것의 실패를 보여주는 것에 의해 사회-정치적 경쟁을 고취할 지 모르는

것이다. 이러한 양립성은히치콕의 예술에 내재하고 있는 것으로, 증명보다는

몬스트레이션의 논리를 통해 나타나고 있다.

.

La Función Ritual de la Prensa en la Películas de Alfred Hitchcock

Resumen: Como la representación de la prensa y los periodistas en la ficción tiene un impacto potencial sobre la percepción del público, este artículo examina más específicamente las funciones los periódicos y los periodistas en las películas de Hitchcock, cuyas narrativas están basadas en el poder de la información. El análisis de 56 películas dirigidas por Hitchcock apunta a una representación ambivalente de la prensa como un aparato del orden burgués. Esa representación puede reforzar el orden mediante su naturalización o, por el contrario, inspirar la contestación socio-política mediante la exhibición de sus fracasos. Esta ambivalencia es inherente en el arte de Hitchcock, el cual promueve una lógica de mostración en vez de demostración. Palabras Claves: Cultura visual, Film, Cultura popular, Periódicos, Hitchcock

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