We just watched Ace in the Hole, a 1951 Billy Wilder film wherein a small town tragic accident is exploited by a down-on-his-luck former big city reporter, and turned into media circus (and a literal one). It is a fabulous film, and a perfect compliment to Bourdieu’s On Television (the first part is available here), wherein the ‘Show and Hide’ logic of the social field is elucidated perfectly via Kirk Douglas’ three perfect soliloquies on journalism. It also reminded me of Elia Kazan’s 1957 Face in the Crowd as a commentary on the switch of media from radio to television (which would match up well as a text with Natalie Zemon Davis’ ‘Printing and the People.’
