If you live in New Orleans, you know how screwed up New Orleans is. The weather’s miserable. Your economy relies on tourism and encouraging people to act ridiculous. Your politics are a history of corruption. It’s one of those situations where, if you don’t want to cry, you have to laugh. Fortunately, N’awrlins laughs at itself louder than anyone else does. The city embraces the mixed bag of cultures, languages and economic classes that define the bayou.
New Orleans takes its satire very seriously. And Treme, a show which already takes itself pretty seriously, takes its satire even more seriously than that.
First: Creighton Bernette and the Krewe du Vieux. The Krewe du Vieux is a real organization, a parade known for its satirical and adult themes. They are one of the earliest parades to march in the Mardi Gras festivities every year. The 2010 Krewe du Vieux parade took to the French Quarter on January 30th, with Dr. John as the “King” of the parade.
The Krewe du Vieux is real; Creighton Bernette is fictional. And the theme of the 2006 Krewe du Vieux was in fact “C’est Levee,” as we witness briefly during the parade depicted in Episode 6 (“Shallow Water, O Mama”). As to whether any of the sub-krewes featured a giant float of Ray Nagin masturbating? History has not preserved that one for us.
The important thing is to be classy.
In Episode 5 (“Shame Shame Shame”), we listen in on Bernette’s krewe planning their floats and costumes for the parade we witness in Episode 6.
LADY: Some of our sub-krewes: they want some kind of acknowledgment of the storm. A serious acknowledgment, not that tongue-in-cheek thing we usually do.
BERNETTE: I’m most serious when my tongue’s in my cheek.
MAN: Well, how serious an acknowledgment are we talking about here?
LADY: Well, like a … a riderless horse at the head of the parade.
BERNETTE: The sacred purpose of Krewe du Vieux is to mock the serious. Vote?
After a heads-up poll and a brief pause to take a vote from a mannequin in blackface (“Cato K-Doe abstains!”), the motion fails. (Update: Arthur in the comments clues me in that this is Ernie K-Doe, not a mannequin in blackface)
The most striking thing about that whole scene isn’t the Krewe refusing to be serious. That fits with their aesthetic. The most striking thing is how seriously they refuse to be serious. The vote is humorless (aside from checking in with CatoK-Doe) and direct. And if the stated purpose of Krewe du Vieux is to champion artistic expression and individuality, why are they shooting down their sub-krewes ideas with a parliamentary vote? What if the Knights of Mondu decide to make a serious acknowledgment of Katrina anyway? Will they get excommunicated?
In Episode 6, the actual preparation for the parade begins. Toni calls her husband while on the road, asking that he make sure their daughter Sofia does her homework. Bernette nods absently, watching with approval as Sofia works on her costume. A few days later, once Toni gets home, we see what that costume is: a sperm. Sofia’s going to march as a sperm, issuing forth from Mayor Ray Nagin’s erect penis while he masturbates, in the Krewe du Vieux parade. Toni can’t quite comprehend this at first, making a few incorrect guesses as to what Sofia’s supposed to be. “A pearl necklace?” she says; Bernette stifles a chuckle.
I'm shocked Toni didn't get this sooner.
Toni has a hard time grasping it.
TONI: You’re joking.
BERNETTE: It’s political commentary. The Mystic Krewe of Spermies.
SOFIA: The sperm lead the way!
TONI: As sperm so often do! And at what point did you decide to abdicate as the parent of a fifteen-year-old girl?
BERNETTE: She knows everything anyway. You know everything, right Soph?
SOFIA: Of course.
TONI: Creighton! This is over the top.
BERNETTE: Considering the circumstances, I think we’re showing admirable restraint.
TONI: But this is just … offensive.
BERNETTE: The mayor’s performance is offensive. The indifference of the state and federal government is offensive. Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.
Depicting an ejaculating Mayor might render the Bernette family’s legitimate complaints about New Orleans Parish – e.g., its inability to locate prisoner David “Daymon” Brooks – ridiculous. Also, dressing up their not-unattractive teenage daughter as a sperm and sending her to distribute condoms during Mardi Gras might, to phrase it gently, put her at some risk. To Toni these fears are obvious. Creighton has not even considered them. He doesn’t consider them mitigating factors or things to apologize for. They don’t even cross his radar.
Creighton Bernette (an apparent homage to Carol Creighton Burnett – thanks, commenter Ezra!) takes his satire very seriously. This is odd because satire isn’t a serious subject.
Satire is, notionally, humorous. An ideal satire is supposed to produce a disbelieving laugh in the audience, followed by (if a Juvenalian satire) some corrective action at the ill being satirized. Consider Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” as the archetype. It’s stood the test of time because it marries a civilized tone with a barbaric suggestion. The absurdity of the gap between the two jars the reader, hopefully resulting in a laugh. Balancing across that gap, however, is really tough to pull off. It must have taken Swift quite a few drafts to get “A Modest Proposal” right. Too formal and the audience misses the joke. Too ridiculous and the joke is sprung too early. One can imagine sleepless nights hunched over a writing desk, ink dripping from the quill onto a blank page, before Swift came up with the line “A young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food …” And the rest is history.
Treme shows us the sleepless nights but not the end product. By the time we actually see the Krewe du Vieux march – the very end of Episode 6 – the joke has already been spoiled. We know they’re going to feature a float of Ray Nagin stroking his hardened penis. Any shock value is lost to us, the TV audience. What we saw, instead, were the unfunny parts of the satire: all the work that went into it. The Krewe masterminds debating how they want to acknowledge the storm. The Bernettes making their costumes. If Treme wanted us to be shocked, they’d have shown us the parade, not the planning behind it.
So what does Treme want? Treme wants us to realize how seriously New Orleans takes its satire.
Let’s look at another example, one slightly more obvious: Davis McAlary’s campaign for city council.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2ggFMpnlPQ
McAlary is inspired to run for city council after a pothole wrecks his car in Episode 04 (“At The Foot of Canal Street”). The idea comes to him while drunk, like most of his ideas. His “friends” at the bar egg him on. Soon he’s pressing his parents for money, rolling down the street with strippers and taking meetings with New Orleans kingmaker Jacques Morial. He appears in a televised debate, promising to fix the city’s financial woes.
There’s little real chance McAlary will succeed – Treme hews too close to the bone to allow that. But he could coast on enough popularity to be dangerous. That’s just what a judge tells him over breakfast in Episode 7 (“Smoke My Peace Pipe”). In return for McAlary dropping out of the race, he offers a “get out of jail free” card: a business card with the judge’s cell phone number on it. McAlary grins, nods and takes it.
(Note: there was some ambiguity in the A.V. Club discussion on whether McAlary was legitimately dropping out. But considering that he spends the rest of the episode relaxing and taking care of friends, particularly Janette, I think it’s clear he’s stopped campaigning. Debate it if you like in the comments)
Davis McAlary is a joke candidate. He uses strippers to distribute campaign materials. He frames his issues around ways to make them lyrically memorable, like “Pot for Potholes.” Really, Davis? Out of all the money you’d get from legalizing and taxing pot, fixing potholes are your first priority? He has no real chance of winning. He seems to know it, too. But he’s not letting anyone else in on the joke. Anytime someone challenges him about his qualifications, he deflects the discussion.
MRS. McALARY: The question is, my darling boy: do you want people to take you as a serious individual or not?
DAVIS: Why would I do something that would violate the entire logic of my life as I’ve conducted it so far? […] But I also feel compelled to take exception to the idea that there’s nothing serious about what I can do with this. Jacques Morial says that I have a chance to talk about issues that nobody else is talking about.
MRS. McALARY: A Morial. What’s next?
AUNT MIMI: Get over it, Ramona.
MRS. McALARY: The point is, we finally have a chance to turn New Orleans around, now that certain elements are gone. Raising money from selling marijuana is not the way to do it.
DAVIS: Your carefully euphemised racist sentiments are duly noted, my darling mother. But even you might agree that the city needs every stream of revenue it can get. The city is broke and the city is broken. And it can’t stay broke and get fixed! It’s a contradiction in terms.
McAlary seems to genuinely want to change New Orleans. Being a self-centered ass, he goes about it in his own precious way. He records novelty songs – that aren’t very good, by the way: they don’t feature lyrics so much as they feature a litany of complaints set to righteous horn playing – and finds an excuse to hang out with strippers. He takes his talking points from better-informed advisors, like Jacques Morial (the Morials were one of the institutional families of New Orleans politics for generations: think the Daleys of Chicago or the Borgias of Rome). McAlary’s first issue comes to him because it wrecked his car. The subsequent issues – “Blackjack on the Track,” “Greased Palm Sunday” – seem calculated to stick in the mind, not to stand a chance of passing.
McAlary wants to change his city more than he wants to run for office.
It could just be a roundabout way of getting his DJ gig back.
Is McAlary’s campaign a form of satire? Perhaps. It unites civility (a campaign for city council) with absurdity (legalizing pot, opening the doors on bribery) in order to address a social ill (the poverty and corruption of New Orleans). But it’s not a very good satire. The problem is that the absurdity McAlary uses contains its own set of social ills, which you have to acknowledge or deflect. McAlary (supposedly) wants to legalize and tax pot to repair the city’s infrastructure. Legalizing pot is monumentally unpopular, even in liberal New Orleans. McAlary (supposedly) wants bribery exchanges to take place on camera once a month. But the people who don’t take bribes won’t appreciate having aspersions cast on them, and the people who do take bribes won’t agree to this.
Perhaps this is why McAlary bows out at the first sign of real success. “Are you offering me a bribe?” he asks as the judge slides him a business card. The tone is one of delighted awe, like someone showing off the latest Apple gadget. McAlary was never offended by the amount of bribery in N’awrlins politics. He was offended because none of it was coming to him.
Maybe the most telling condemnation of McAlary’s attempts at satire came from Creighton Bernette in Episode 6.
BERNETTE: What is that?
SOFIA: It’s a Davis bumper sticker. He’s running for city council.
BERNETTE: Davis McAlary? Our Davis? Who’s teaching you boogie-woogie? That bozo’s running for council?
SOFIA (sings): ‘Vote for me / I ain’t fakin’ / I won’t lose my shit / Like Mayor Nagin.’
BERNETTE: Hey.
SOFIA: Mom’s not here!
BERNETTE: It’s not your language; this isn’t funny. What’s happening in New Orleans now is not a joke. We’re fighting for our lives – our way of life. People are dying, people are homeless, people are stuck all over the place; they can’t get back. Everything is not a joke all the time.
SOFIA: You mean like Krewe du Vieux?
BERNETTE: That’s political satire. It’s a long tradition. This is just wrong.
Why is Bernette – a man who’s about to parade through the Vieux Carre in front of a float featuring the mayor of his city pleasuring himself – so offended by McAlary? What makes dressing up as a mayoral sperm acceptable but running for City Council on a gag ticket “just wrong”?
I don't want you endorsing that trash. Now go work on your sperm costume.
One possibility: Bernette is an asshole. Maybe he’s just an insecure boy, mad that someone else is playing his game. We have to give this some thought.
Another possibility: Bernette is pointing out the mote in someone else’s eye while ignoring the beam in his own. New Orleans has real problems, as Bernette points out to Sophia. A lot of these problems come from real jokers who got themselves elected – Ray Nagin, the Morials, etc. Bernette himself is an example of how popular someone from New Orleans can get by making a spectacle. Maybe Bernette fears that McAlary’s campaign will take off, getting attention outside the city. Were that to happen, that’d be another chapter in the growing story that the rest of America tells itself on Why New Orleans is Fucked Up. “McAlary? He’s that pothead that got elected to city council in New Orleans a few years ago, right?” Another excuse to write the city off.
A third possibility: the war between satirical styles.
I talked about Juvenalian satire regarding Bernette’s masturbatory float and the Krewe du Vieux. But the Krewe du Vieux is probably a better example of Horatian satire. Named after the poet Horatio, Horatian satire is meant to warmly mock the excesses of human nature. You’re meant to laugh at it. Nagin might be a grandstanding incompetent, but he did not literally masturbate while New Orleans sat under water. The point of depicting Nagin in such a way is to make him look self-satisfied and indulgent: to deflate him as a local hero. It’s a reminder that, for all the importance he assumed post-Katrina, he still is a ridiculous man.
To put it another way: the Krewe du Vieux float is not proposing a social change or pointing out an obvious institutional flaw. It’s taking someone down a peg. It’s “mocking the serious” – the sacred purpose of Krewe du Vieux. That’s Horatian satire.
Juvenalian satire, on the other hand, has bite to it. It’s supposed to make you angry. Now Davis McAlary makes people angry just by sharing a room with them, so that’s not saying much. But the issues he raises not only speak to New Orleans’ poverty, but to its institutional confusion as well. Why are the police investing so much time in shaking down people for smoking pot (as we saw with Delmond getting busted in Episode 2)? Couldn’t those resources be better used elsewhere? And why aren’t all political meetings conducted with open doors? What do the politicians have to hide? You can’t even rebut McAlary’s campaign without acknowledging that he’s raising good points.
A vote for “Pot for Potholes” is an acknowledgment that the War on Drugs does more harm than good. A vote against “Pot for Potheads” is a statement that cracked roads are a small price to pay for the right to bust young black men. Confronted with an alternative like that, you have to get angry. And that’s Juvenalian satire for you.
Change you really shouldn't believe in.
Juvenal and Horatio never went to war in real life, probably because they lived a century apart. But the forms of satire which bear their name are distinctly different. Horatio’s is the shared laugh of The Simpsons; Juvenal’s is the biting sarcasm of Orwell. It can be discomfiting to find one when you expected the other. This is why Bernette can’t laugh at McAlary’s run for city council: because he doesn’t use humor as a weapon. When Bernette wants to say “fuck you” to someone, he says just that. And this is why McAlary won’t back down in the face of his peers’ or his parents’ disbelief: because, to make Juvenalian satire work, you have to keep your straight face until the end. He backs down as soon as somebody takes him seriously: Judge Williams, treating him as a real threat to the ticket.
New Orleans – and Treme – take their satire very seriously. The only question for the coming episodes: which kind will it be?
