Almost Hollywood, Nearly New Orleans by Vicki Mayer

Author:Vicki Mayer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520967175
Publisher: University of California Press.

TREME AND ORDINARY TRAUMA

Another recurring feature in my research was when interviewees schooled me about New Orleans as a place. They would frequently start by telling me how New Orleans is, before telling me how Treme “gets it” right or wrong. For example, one interviewee, an older African-American gentleman, started to tell me, as many others would, “New Orleanians have their own authentic culture.” He then said with a smirk, “Like when [the local actress] Phyllis Montana tells her husband [in a scene in Treme] that he came home that night ‘smelling like cigarettes and pussy,’ that was her line. Nobody outside of New Orleans could have thought of that anyway.” At the moment, I think he was trying to catch me off my guard, but what really shocked me was how he could have divined that it was her line—that she had created it. Then I knew he was not kidding. A former mailman, this interviewee said he knew Montana because he used to deliver disaster-aid checks to her flood-ravaged neighborhood in New Orleans East.

By virtue of beginning the series and its storyline so soon after the disaster, Treme encouraged survivors to reflect similarly on the smallest details of their own post-Katrina stories.

[In my FEMA trailer] my shower didn’t work. My refrigerator didn’t work. The heat was off in the middle of the winter. It was just irritating. We kept calling these people, and we’re dealing with the contractor, and we’re screaming at each other because they said they’re gonna show up and they didn’t. There was all this constant frustration. Everyone was going through that. The first season [of Treme] was so good. When [the character] Ladonna cut into her roofer to do the work, I thought, yes, I’ve had those. I’ve had screaming battles with my contractor. It was a very intense time. (Landlord, female, mid-60s)

I could hardly help from being moved [by the show]. There were little nuances in there that I didn’t even recognize. Some of the ways we talk. Some of the things we say and no one else says. And [the characters] said it in just such a way like we would. Like when the trombone player asks, “How’s your mama?” He’s not just saying that line. He’s truly asking it. [...] Katrina put me in a place where I was willing to help people. We became a community like never before. (Barista, male, 47)

While these highly personal stories differed, they also spoke to viewers’ own archival impulses, in making sense both of New Orleans as a place and of their own experiences there. Beyond the temporality of the program’s broadcast, Treme seemed to elicit those impulses through conventions that resonated with residents’ sense of home. Simply put, “The show was close to home,” a viewer and tour guide told me. “There was a connection.”

Even as loyal viewers scoured Treme for inconsistencies, factual errors, and lapses in creative license, they related to the details emotionally, if not therapeutically. The retelling of the past in terms of the present should come as no surprise.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.