L’Heure du Crime at 36, Quai des Orfèvres: When Radio Shows Us a Mythical Place

Résumé 0

The police universe is one of the media’s favorite backgrounds, and a mythical imagination surrounds “36, Quai des Orfèvres,” the home of the Judicial Police of Paris, in particular. Reflecting on the relations between the police and media spheres, we examine the strategies used to stage the institution of the Judicial Police in contemporary radio discourse. This study looks at the radio program “L’heure du crime” [Crime Hour] on French radio station RTL, and more particularly the program broadcast live on March 8, 2012, from 36, Quai des Orfèvres, to mark the one hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the Crime Squad. The analysis of the technical and set arrangements and of the discursive treatment of this event shows that fictional imagination still surrounds the reality of police work.