Conflicting Fields: A Bourdieuian Guide to The King of New York

Abstract

Abel Ferrara’s 1990 film King of New York, and specifically the film’s trangressive use of The Plaza Hotel, presents a unique way to see the restructuring of the social and economic order via Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory. Contextualizing the New York City landscape as a personification of a capitalist social and economic order from which its characters have literally and metaphorically profited turns King of New York in a cinematic space where differing fields ‘battle’ for the ultimate prize of control over these fields. With this in mind, we can see through Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory how Ferrara reinscribes the relationship between space, social organization, and capitalist economics within the cinematic spaces of the film.