More Than a Party in New Orleans: the Big Sleazy, made manifest
The Party-town of Cultural Contradictions
The city of New Orleans is a seeming contradiction. On the one hand, people from the Big Easy prefer to view their city as a “party town”, of which the Mardi Gras festival is its zenith, with excesses of everything: food, drink, sex, music and dance. Such debauchery is not confined to the carnival season, however; people in New Orleans generally look for excuses to “party” all year round, and they prefer to see themselves as “cool”, “easygoing”, “laid back”, etc. In apparent contradiction to the party image, the culture of this region has an opposing current within it of profound, but typical American conservatism. Plagued by racism, this easygoing party city is really not so easygoing, upon examination. A closer look at this cultural cesspool is warranted, especially in light of the hurricane-floods of 2005.
According to Marx, "it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness"(1). This definition of historical materialism implies matter over mind, rather than mind over matter. When New Orleans is regarded from such a materialist perspective, then its flamboyant excesses, both chemical and ideological, don’t seem so contradictory. In particular, its stagnant economy, based on an oversized portion of tourism, makes its citizens highly vulnerable to economic recession, and obviously, unemployment. Within the city, service industry jobs are the most prevalent kind available, for skilled and unskilled workers, alike. It is hard to convince businesses to invest in the city. With such a weak industry presence, New Orleans has no choice but to appeal to tourists, prostituting its history and culture to generate income.
Through having such a “seasonal” (or weak and unreliable) source of income, the city has generally had fewer funds available for education, housing and other living amenities that get taken for granted in more prosperous cities.
Physically, the city is below sea-level, and built upon soft mud, necessitating periodic “support therapy” for houses and other large structures that sink into the ground at uneven rates. For this reason, there will never be any skyscrapers in New Orleans. Through having such a weak physical foundation on which the city is built, and through being in a permanent state of economic depression, New Orleans was destined to be demolished by a hurricane some day. Despite all of the damage and loss of life, the city is still supremely lucky to have avoided a direct hit from such a dangerous hurricane like Katrina.
Racist artifacts from the Deep South: "Mammy" fetish objects (salt and pepper shakers)
The White Problem in New Orleans
New Orleans in no way deviates from the hypothesis that a culture of misery directly results from an economy of misery. In a town where jobs and resources are scarce, people are at each others’ throats. In particular, socio-economic class and racial antagonism are highly pronounced. In other parts of the United States of North America, racism often appears in more subtle shades, but in New Orleans, the racial antagonism is highly visible. One shocking, fairly recent example is the wide show of political support given to David Duke, an ex-KKK member and outspoken white supremacist, who has served as a Louisiana state representative and who also ran unsuccessfully for the Louisiana senate and governor (2).
The passage of hurricane Katrina through New Orleans quickly and unexpectedly exposed the racism of the Deep South, as well as that of the rest of the country. Most of the harm to human life occurred not directly from the hurricane or floods themselves, but through the failure of government at all levels, local and federal, to intervene in a timely fashion. When the world learned that the majority of people stranded in the city were African-Americans, it was then that the racism became visible. If anything, it shows how well the United States government usually does a great job at concealing its ugly, racist tendencies during times of status quo normalignancy. The true colors of American society shine through during these unexpected moments of paralysis, such as after a natural disaster.
The media contributed to this whirlwind exposé of racism through their coverage of the events as they unfolded: disproportionately reporting the property damage (private property, no less) of businesses and casinos over the loss of human life, and the differential treatment of stranded residents: the black “looters” of grocery stores versus the whites who “found” items of survival. In many of the photos that accompanied the news-stories, the skin color of the victim was the primary determinant in describing whether the individual was “looting” versus “finding” items from abandoned businesses and stores. It took the media several days to make the captions in their photo-essays “politically correct”.
The media (ultimately in the service of the government) also distorted events as they were reported: many of the rumors of gunfights, looting, raping, murders, assaults, etc. have been widely unsubstantiated so far, perhaps serving as ways to justify the government’s own brutalities, which will go unreported until long after the fact. These manufactured, overblown, and thoroughly “edited” reports of urban chaos also might be interpreted as unconscious expressions of the white society’s fears of black insurrection and of African-American power. A common tactic used by white power to justify its use of violence has been to invent and/or inflate the purported misdeeds of non-whites, by way of the media. Either way, the media’s display of racism during the coverage of events after the storm was an eyesore, and a totally obvious one.
All along, the journalists and TV talking heads reinforced the unspoken assumption that the looting and lack of capitalist law ‘n order were somehow intensely undesirable outcomes. But given the circumstances, especially in light of the government FEMA “cavalry” that took an insultingly long time to show up, to provide assistance, it is to be expected that stranded New Orleans residents would take food and other such items from abandoned stores. Since the people of New Orleans had been under the thumb of American, capitalist control for all of their lives, it should not be so surprising that poor people would respond by taking clothes and televisions as soon as they saw their city descend into anarchy. The news-reporters were quick to point out the financial losses to business owners whose stores had been robbed, but they failed to address the ways in which minimum-wage workers had been robbed all of their lives by their employers, and by the American capitalist system, in general. These events only illustrate the fact that a capitalist regime values businesses over individual people. Therefore it’s reassuring to know that some people actually did get up the nerve to help themselves to the material luxuries which are usually inaccessible due to their financially restrictive socio-economic status. Despite the fact that African-Americans were usually the ones labeled by the media as “looters”, it’s very safe to say that people of Caucasian backgrounds were not afraid to take part in enjoying the pricey merchandise, too.
Generally, the specter of racism appears in many observable guises, whether one considers the salient ones, such as the abandoned people in the New Orleans Superdome, or the more subtle manifestations, such as the exploitation of black artists or the racist clichés of mass entertainment (3). While anti-racist legislation can be drafted by governments, leading to changes like affirmative action and the desegregation of schools and other institutions, such surface attempts at dealing with the problem lose their effectiveness quickly due to their inability to confront racism at its psychological roots, in particular, to address the psychopathological issue of “whiteness”, something which intellectuals of the establishment haven’t managed to accomplish yet. While many well-meaning sociologists and other academics have made valiant efforts to address racism, their efforts to confront whiteness have only just begun. The surrealists in Chicago expressed these ideas very clearly:
“As surrealists, we are especially interested in how the “white problem” turns up in language, images, myth, symbols, popular culture, science, everyday life, the whole field of human expression. However, our goal at all times is to attack and abolish whiteness and its institutions – to attack and abolish the whole miserabilist social/political/economic/cultural system that has made whiteness the hideous emblem of the worst oppression the world has ever had to endure.”(4)
New Orleans is a true cradle of whiteness, a hive of racist tendencies, and it seems that almost every piece of establishment-sanctioned culture from this part of the world carries the imprint of white malevolence in all of its various degrees of subtlety.
Mardi Gras "doubloons", or faux riches, made of aluminum. Each organization or "Krewe" has its own version.
The Thrill of Mardi Gras Transgression versus Poetic Transformation
In addition to the blatant racist phenomena, there is also an underlying political conservatism and corruption that pervade all of life in the Deep South, including New Orleans. It might even be argued that such rottenness goes hand in hand with the racism. Nevertheless, it is surprising that a city so desperate for revitalization would be so resistant to change. But fears abound, and objectives are accomplished at a snail’s pace. Parallel to the political conservatism is their stifling Catholic (and to a lesser extent, Baptist) religion, which might be viewed by some as the pure embodiment of spiritual conservatism and repression of the psyche. Taken together, these religious and political tendencies are really but two different sides of the same coin: that of moral cowardice and conformism.
With such a repressive environment, it should be no wonder that residents of New Orleans would so badly want to transgress and escape, by way of their party culture. A remnant of the European medieval era, Mardi Gras, or “Fat Tuesday” (5), is the pinnacle of decadence within New Orleans, consisting of a few days of Bacchanalian debauchery: excessive amounts food, music, alcohol, nudity, dancing, etc. Although sometimes fun and entertaining, the unhealthy aspects of these excesses relate most significantly to physical health (alcoholism, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc.), and the resulting health problems are disproportionately more prevalent than they are in other parts of the world.
Aside from the gluttonous and alcoholic qualities of the party culture, there is the issue of the music, embodied by jazz and blues, and perhaps the most truly revolutionary and surrealist of all New Orleans culture (although the spirits of voodoo and Marie Laveau have been known to mysteriously pervade New Orleans life, at times (6)). Jazz, in particular, is highly esteemed there, and this reverence is fully justified, given that many of its roots are in New Orleans. However, it has been quickly forgotten that the inception of jazz occurred as a spontaneous poetic form, with improvisation as the driving force. The original jazz musicians were not work-a-day song-smiths, creating commodities for sale, but instead were true music-poets.
In contrast, the advertised “Modern Jazz” no longer serves the poetic rebelliousness of the spirit, but rather the needs of the wallet. The rarified jazz for sale in the French Quarter is really the reified sound-bytes of commercialism. The epitome of this tendency of cultural stagnation is the presence of “Preservation Hall”, a place where jazz is remembered and preserved (7), just like any collectible, fossilized specimen. It’s not that jazz shouldn’t be understood and appreciated within in its historical context, but that it should be more actively protected from reification and dilution by these thoroughly benevolent musicians and musicologists. To attempt to “preserve” jazz, is nothing more than the attempt to “ institutionalize art, the very idea of art, plunge it into the domain of experts and specialists, sanctify “greatness” and importance, recuperate art’s spirit by stamping it officially worthy, old, respectable”(8). Rhetorically, the best way to appreciate jazz would be to experience it inside of a place called “Improvisation Hall”, not “Preservation Hall”. It also shouldn’t be necessary to mention the dangers of artistic opportunism, but apparently the most publicly visible musicians pay more attention to material necessity than moral concerns: the “deliberate will to act upon the world” (9) has degenerated into the will to make a sale.
From the surrealist perspective, original jazz has always been highly regarded because of its inherent and refreshing spontaneity. “Jazz has been one of the best means of purging us, and for recreating in us the sense of the instant and the sense of transition” (10). So wrote the Martiniquan surrealist poet, René Menil. Ever since Breton first mentioned the “mysterious wind of Jazz,” in the first manifesto, surrealists and improvisational musicians have gravitated closer and closer to each other. This special relationship was beautifully described in Michael Vandelaar’s article “Surrealism and Black Music” (11). That some contemporary manifestations of jazz (especially the most visible ones, in the public domain) represent nothing more than capitalist commercialization should be of no surprise. However, it is stressed here that the truest manifestations and improvisations in music come as a result of our knowledge of unfreedom, as well as from our insistent dreaming and demanding of freedom: “While the forces of repression seem ever more pervasive and pernicious each passing year, music has increasingly expressed people’s hunger for freedom and a better world” (12). In particular, jazz is prized for its power to incite bold dreaming, and this is the way it should be remembered, in its twentieth century incarnation.
The danger, of course, is that there is currently a backlash of musicians who only emulate the “tradition” of Jazz, ad nauseam, effectively reducing themselves (and those who listen to them) to being tourists instead of seers. Also, it is especially shameful to see black music transformed into commodities by white marketers of the American culture-machine of tourism. In general, Afro-American culture has always been exploited and lobotomized at the hands of the entertainment industry, often driven by Caucasian Americans who ultimately remove the magical, poetic qualities that made it revolutionary from the beginning.
“Jazz” (if it insists on retaining this name, and as if there aren’t other incarnations of improv music that are equally powerful, concurrently) will have to reinvent itself with new identities, new rhythms, new instruments, new transitions, and new inspirations, and it will have to develop outside of the mainstream, outside of the disgusting and mind-numbing consumerist spotlight. Really, the most potent and penetrating improv music has to be at least one step ahead of the music industry to be considered ground-breaking. As Johannes Bergmark insists, “instead of being ‘socially acceptable’, the music of freedom must be poetically true” (13). Most “modern jazz” in New Orleans is only a caricature of what Jazz used to be. Until the death of Jazz is fully accepted, there will be roaming corpses pursuing their own “styles”, as there are, to the contrary, sonic experimenters and other revolutionary musicians who fearlessly do their own improv without clinging to the jazz label.
"Purple, green and gold: the party cometh this way!!" (hurricane Katrina collage)
The Cultural Poverty after the Party
It must be admitted that, like the music of New Orleans, the city itself is no longer a hotbed of creation, neither of improvisation, nor of free-play. It is not what it once was, even before the hurricanes struck. The stultifying racist, religious, moral, socio-economic conditions of misery correlate with the perpetual need for partying, and are in fact the driving force behind the laid back and jazzy nature of New Orleans. For the people of New Orleans to commercialize their music and culture at the cost of losing the ability to innovate and reinvent their poetic solutions to life, suggests an invisible but far worse kind of poverty than the city’s moral and economic shortcomings: a poverty of creative, poetic thought.
It follows that instead of being called the Big Easy, New Orleans should be called the Big Sleazy. Likewise, it is fair to speculate that in the future, in different parts of the country, white people will search for new places to party (i.e. “party” = “trample”). For this reason, there will always be a demand for new Big Easies, and subsequently, new Big Sleazies to take the place of the original, miserabilist party cities. As long as the American corporate-capitalist system prevails, and as long as people hide from social misery rather than fight to transform it, then these assertions will remain applicable.
The passing of the floods from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita represents a painful but worthy opportunity to closely assess the state of American racist, capitalist culture (as well as the racist cultures of all similar, industrialized places), and not just that of the sad, medieval city of New Orleans. At the worst, there is the abandonment and neglect of lower-class African-Americans at the hands of American politics after a natural disaster. Then there are also the government’s attempts to justify its own neglect and inaction through playing the circular blame-game and through measures of callous self-justification, via the media.
For culture, American capitalism’s exploitation and castration of the poetic experience in New Orleans is unforgettable. When a true manifestation of poetry (be it music, literature, or art) becomes an established tradition to be preserved, bottled and then sold, it loses its revolutionary, magical character. That the flood would come through and submerge this pit of misery in foul muck is only a metaphor for what has already happened there over the past few decades. Perhaps, by way of objective chance, it’s a signal to rebuild the culture of this decrepit party city, in addition to the physical structures, and to do so with a racially equitable plan. Could it be time to start improvising again?
Notes:
1. Karl Marx, in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. New York : Int’l Publishers. Website: http://www.intpubnyc.com/.
2. Even though David Duke did not win most of the offices for which he ran, it is alarming how many people actually voted for him. Website: http://www.davidduke.com/.
3. Ronnie Burk. “Racist Clichés in the U.S.A.” Race Traitor. Special issue: Surrealism: Revolution Against Whiteness. Issue #9. Summer 1998. pp. 70-2.
4. The Chicago Surrealist Group. From the Introduction. Race Traitor. Issue #9. Summer 1998. p.4.
5. Mardi Gras, a festival with distinct medieval, European roots, used to exist as a cultural transgression, allowing the poor masses to dress up like nobility or whoever they wanted to be, to spend the day with bountiful food and drink, and to be submerged in faux-riches (i.e. the doubloons and necklaces that are so gratuitously distributed during the carnival season). These traditions, once managed locally, have now become commercialized, and in some cases owned by people and groups who do not even live in the area. Such is the fate of many holidays today.
6. For more information on Marie Laveau and New Orleans voodoo: http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/lave-mar.htm.
7. Preservation Hall website: http://www.preservationhall.com/2.0/.
8. Dust or Art?: The Roles of Museums. Forum discussion among surrealists. Parry Harnden’s comment : “ Art museums, rather like schools and governments, are a promising idea in theory but in practice exist to perpetuate the current social system. They institutionalize art, the very idea of art, plunge it into the domain of experts and specialists, sanctify “greatness” and importance, recuperate art’s spirit by stamping it officially worthy, old, respectable. To the surrealist, the marvelous may be found in either high or low art, so the museum walls which demand the distinction must be seen as an impediment. In searching for marvels in the museum, one must extricate them from the context in which the work is presented. What one finds inspiring in a museum should suggest what museums might be like in a fundamentally different world.” 2003.
9. Paul Nougé. “Music is Dangerous.” Speech from 1928. Translated by Felix Giovanelli, Surrealist R&D Monograph Series, #6, Published by Radical America under the direction of the Chicago Surrealist Group, 1972.
10. René Menil. “Poetry, Jazz and Freedom.” Tropiques. Issue #11. 1944. Translated by Keith Holloman and reprinted in Cultural Correspondence: Surrealism and its Popular Accomplices. 1979.
11. Michael Vandelaar. “Surrealism and Black Music.” Cultural Correspondence: Surrealism and its Popular Accomplices. 1979.
12. Hal Rammel. “Beyond Music.” Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion. Issue #4. 1989.
13. Johannes Bergmark. “Toward a Surrealist Revolution in Music.” Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion. Issue #4. 1989.