New Orleans: A Rich History Almost Washed Away (Documentary)
The "HELP US" signs, rescue boats cruising city streets, dead bodies, crying babies: In the year and half since Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans remains defined by the disaster which overwhelmed it in 2005. Now comes the PBS-produced New Orleans, which attempts to remind us of what made it special in the first place. Airing Monday, Feb 12, New Orleans has the unfortunate luck of coming on the heels of Spike Lee's critically acclaimed documentary When the Levees Broke: Requiem for a City. But while Lee's emotionally raw film laid bare the tragedy created by government inattention, "New Orleans" celebrates what has been jeopardized: the cultural and historical riches of the city.
Alternating between a history of the city, and scenes of residents struggling post Katrina, New Orleans speaks to the qualities that make New Orleans unlike any other city in the country (as one man puts it, outsiders are often referred to as "Americans")while also arguing that the city produced many of the cultural products that made America itself distinctive.
The film juxtaposes these two ideas throughout. Quirky staples of New Orleans culture are highlighted: Mardi Gras, the tradition of picnicking in graveyards, its French sensibility. The film makes the point that New Orleans' uniqueness made it "a radical experiment in American democracy" and that its diversity became a "vital creative force." It was New Orleans' population of free blacks—the most prosperous in the nation at the turn of the century—that met in the offices of the blacks newspaper "The Crusader" to shape the case that would eventually become Plessy v. Ferguson. And, as many have argued before, the city's French, African, and Spanish roots helped create both jazz and Creole cuisine.
Read entire article at Mother Jones
Alternating between a history of the city, and scenes of residents struggling post Katrina, New Orleans speaks to the qualities that make New Orleans unlike any other city in the country (as one man puts it, outsiders are often referred to as "Americans")while also arguing that the city produced many of the cultural products that made America itself distinctive.
The film juxtaposes these two ideas throughout. Quirky staples of New Orleans culture are highlighted: Mardi Gras, the tradition of picnicking in graveyards, its French sensibility. The film makes the point that New Orleans' uniqueness made it "a radical experiment in American democracy" and that its diversity became a "vital creative force." It was New Orleans' population of free blacks—the most prosperous in the nation at the turn of the century—that met in the offices of the blacks newspaper "The Crusader" to shape the case that would eventually become Plessy v. Ferguson. And, as many have argued before, the city's French, African, and Spanish roots helped create both jazz and Creole cuisine.