The Ritual Function of the Press in Alfred Hitchcock's Movies

As the representation of the press and journalists in fiction has potential impact on the public's perception, this paper more specifically examines this representation in Hitchcock's movies, 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 Hitchcock points to an ambivalent representation of the press as an apparatus of the bourgeois order. Such depiction may reinforce this order by naturalizing it or, on the contrary, inspire sociopolitical contestation by showing its failures. This ambivalence is inherent in Hitchcock's art, which promotes a logic ofmonstrationrather than plaindemonstration.