Mardi Gras in New Orleans: Reconciling Commercialisation and Local Culture - Essay Example

Mardi Gras in New Orleans: Reconciling Commercialisation and Local Culture Introduction As described in films, songs, and literary works, New Orleans is perhaps most commonly associated with carnival or Mardi Gras, a festival that signifies the city’s celebration of life’s joys whilst revealing hidden struggles over social class and racial issues. Despite the destruction brought about by Hurricane Katrina, numerous parades, carnivals, and marching groups invaded the boulevards of New Orleans in 2006 (Gotham 2007b, 825). The 2006 Mardi Gras was seen locally as a vital declaration of the city’s resilience and speedy rebuilding attempts. As stated by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, “Mardi Gras was a smoke signal to the rest of the world that New Orleans is on its way back” (Gotham 2007d, 170). Even though Hurricane Katrina severely destroyed the city, local authorities declared the 2006 Mardi Gras as a sign of New Orlean’s revival. Hundreds of news outlets from across the globe made a trip to New Orleans to broadcast the Carnival celebrations to audiences all over the world. This essay analyses the celebration of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, particularly the challenge of reconciling commercial interests and the preservation of local traditions. Overview For New Orleans, Mardi Gras symbolises many. It expresses not just the day prior to Ash Wednesday, but the local custom of ‘performing’ Mardi Gras. Assemblies of costumed participants in trucks or riding on horseback wander around the streets of New Orleans. At least twenty Mardi Gras could be performed in a year, but the festivities are different in various communities (Gotham 2007c, 320). One aspect that has remained is the tradition of racially divided Mardi Gras performances. Both Afro-French Creoles and Cajuns perform Mardi Gras, but normally separately. Numerous Cajuns, tourists, and marketers currently relate Mardi Gras performances wholly to Cajun traditions, in what is referred to as the ‘Cajunisation’ of Mardi Gras. Performing Mardi Gras symbolises Cajun culture, even though for several partakers trying to show their Cajun identity, this could be mainly a symbolic culture (Stanonis 244). Nevertheless, Mardi Gras performances as representations of ethnic identity are somewhat new. Throughout the 20th century, Cajuns aspiring for Americanisation view French Louisiana traditions, and Mardi Gras particularly, as ‘primitive’. By the mid-20th century, community recognition of Mardi Gras performances— widely related to aggression and drunkenness—had gradually disappeared, and the Second World War terminated almost all existing performances (Ware 157). Most community Mardi Gras performances vanished completely. The first to purposefully re-create its Mardi Gras culture in the 1950s was the city of Mamou. Local cultural advocates, inspired by a ‘deliberate sense of tradition’ (Ware 157), agreed to restore and rebuild Mamou’s inactive Mardi Gras performances, making it less risky and more reputable than before. The Mamou Mardi Gras eventually became very popular, the first Mardi Gras performance to attract huge numbers of tourists. The beginning of what Nicholas Spitzer refers to as a ‘romantic cultural revival’ started transforming the public reputation of French Louisiana traditions in the latter part of the 20th century (Ware 157-158; Statononis 248). Cajuns began renewing their ties to their language, music, and other customs. Heritage tourism emerged in the 1980s. Local leaders “began desperately to look around for the ideas to develop and diversification became the buzz word of the decade” (Ware 158). Their plan was to endorse, support, and advertise their own heritage. Nowadays, Mardi Gras also is a vital seasonal festivity in New Orleans. Policies to Enrich New Orleans’s Mardi Gras For hundreds of years, Mardi Gras and Carnival have been strongly embedded into New orleans’s social realm and have consistently conveyed the city’s social conflicts and collective awareness. By tradition, the Carnival period in New Orleans comprises a succession of parades and balls from the 6th of January to ‘Fat Tuesday’, or Mardi Gras. Prior to the Civil War, Mardi Gras was a somewhat unplanned and local merriment for indigenous peoples that involve lively street parades, masquerade balls, and widespread gaiety (Gaudet & McDonald 38). At different periods, particularly during the antebellum and colonial times, city officials banned masquerade balls and costume parties, although implementation was usually laidback and inconsistent. The Civil War momentarily suspended planned parading, and the Reconstruction period saw the emergence of new Carnival traditions and groups in New Orleans (Gotham 2002, 1742). Railroad firms applied Mardi Gras motifs in their ads to promote tourism, and by the late 19th century the local festivity had become popular all over the country. European and American travel authors informed readers that New orleans’s Mardi Gras was an extravagant celebration that showcased community uniqueness, local identity, and a home-grown tendency of ‘Let the Good Times Roll’ (Davis 90). As the 20th century progressed, the symbolic image and actual performance of Mardi Gras became much grander as huge numbers of tourists visited New Orleans to take part in the yearly celebration. The intensification of promotional activities, global marketing and publicity, and media coverage greatly contributed to the formation of a lasting international image of Mardi Gras as the most lavish festival performed in any urban area of the world. Yet, by the 1960s, numerous people started to feel concerned about the apparent deterioration of the Mardi Gras. Opponents of the parades believed that Mardi Gras had become out-dated, and they argued that the elitist attitude of the old krewes—a group that organises a parade for the Carnival—adversely affect the profitable tourism sector. In 1968 the new Krewe of Bacchus organised a grand parade (Gotham 2007b, 836). The New Orleans city council endorsed legislation in 1992 banning racial discrimination in organisations that organise parades. The legislation mandated krewes to present proof to the council that they obeyed the anti-discrimination policy in choosing their members. Numerous of the most traditional and popular krewes, which had habitually kept their membership rules secret, declined to conform to the policy and stopped organising parades (Souther 143-45). Still, Mardi Gras keeps on drawing tourists to New Orleans from across the globe. Nowadays, even though other metropolises across the globe perform Mardi Gras, none have the lustful and immoderate image, age-old cultural practices, grand balls, impressive parades, and tourism facilities to entertain a huge number of travellers that visit New Orleans every year. Mardi Gras attracts millions of tourists to parades and brings in billions of dollars to the local economy. Social and Economic Context of New Orleans’s Mardi Gras New Orleans has transformed in social and economic ways over the recent times, thus has Mardi Gras evolved over the decades. The recent decades have seen a significant increase in the numbers of krewes and parades, the number of tourists that visit New Orleans to participate in the Mardi Gras, and the profit raised through the festival (Gaudet & Mcdonald 68). In 1973, the demands of bigger floats and hordes of tourists pushed the city government to implement a decree prohibiting parades all over the French Quarter, hence forcing century-old parades to swarm historic quarters. In the latter part of the 20th century, the number of parades rose significantly to a maximum of fifty-three (Gotham 2007d, 170). Local leaders have monitored the calculated economic impact of the festival since the 1980s, and in the early 21st century total expenditure from Mardi Gras already reached $1 billion, as reported by an economist. Marc Morial, New Orleans’s mayor from 1994 to 2002, declared that “economically, it is by far the single largest special event. It’s bigger than Jazzfest, it’s bigger than the Sugar Bowl, it’s bigger than the SuperBowl” (Gotham 2007d, 171). Michele Moore, the representative of the major’s office, explained that “It’s the major annual event for this city; we build many of our tourism and marketing strategies around Mardi Gras” (Gotham 2007d, 171). From 2005 onwards, the destruction of Hurricane Katrina has raised new demands to commercialise Mardi Gras and endorse the festival to investors to help rebuild New Orleans. Commercialisation, on the one hand, has been historically present in the city’s Mardi Gras. Large companies have traditionally applied Mardi Gras motifs to their ads to promote their products, and the tourism sector has long tried to organise Carnival parades and balls for tourists (Souther 132). Leaders and inhabitants, on the other hand, have opposed corporate funding and open advertising in Mardi Gras in an attempt to protect the exclusivity of the festival as a genuine and native celebration. Over time, the not-for-profit features of the city’s Mardi Gras has aroused the mantra ‘the world’s greatest free show’ (Souther 132) to differentiate Carnival from other commercialised festivals in the U.S. and highlight the localised and all-encompassing character of the celebration. Nevertheless, recently, Carnival organisers and inhabitants have grieved that commercialisation has become damaging to the uniqueness and genuineness of Mardi Gras and transformed the festival into an unnatural or artificial tourist attraction that is hostile to collective value and wellbeing (Gotham 2007a, 311). In general, debates over Mardi Gras and commercialisation reveal differences of opinion over the value of authenticity in New Orleans’s symbolic festival and how should people celebrate and exploit Mardi Gras to revitalise local culture. Competing Interests One of the distinctive aspects of New Orleans’s Mardi Gras is the dominance of enduring cultural practices that oppose corporate advertising and patronage in parades. The City of New Orleans prohibits ads on Mardi Gras parades, and the city law states: “No parade shall be of a commercial nature or convey or contain a commercial message, corporate or commercial sign, logo, or symbol… No advertising of any kind shall be displayed or used in any parade” (Gotham 2007d, 188). The policy also forbids the distribution of beads that are marked with corporate signs. However, in spite of New Orleans’s prohibition on advertising, more elusive kinds of commercialisation have surfaced recently in the metropolis, occurrences that have provoked intense oppositions. Mayor Sidney Barthelemey declared in 1993 that he had commissioned a marketing company to look for corporate patrons that will authorise and sell ‘official’ Mardi Gras items. This decision raised a great deal of controversy as detractors scorned Mayor Barthelemy for trying to commodify a local celebration and change it into a profitmaking tourist spectacle (Gotham 2007a, 317). Although the idea of Barthelemy was never realised, future politicians kept on trying to authorise ‘official’ Mardi Gras items, recruit corporate Mardi Gras patrons, and create merchandising and marketing systems. In 2005, as one of the strategies to speed up the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, the City Council and Major Ray Nagin collaborated to look for an “official sponsor of Mardi Gras 2006” (Gotham 2007d, 188). The city government is still planning to look for companies willing to become corporate patrons in the future even though New Orleans failed to acquire a ‘presenting sponsor’ for 2006 (Gotham 2007d, 188). It is vital to understand the unclear divisions between sponsorship and commercialisation in Mardi Gras and the dilemmas and issues of attempting to ‘sell’ and/or ‘market’ the festival to corporate patrons. Not like celebrations that happen in ticketed sites, Mardi Gras is an unstructured festival that happen throughout New Orleans. No company can be the exclusive promoter of Mardi Gras because it is not legitimately possible to grant them special or private rights to the festival. As a complex and far-reaching celebration, Mardi Gras grants every company the right to be actual or ‘informal’ patrons (Gotham 2002, 1744). Furthermore, because Mardi Gras occurs publicly it implies that local events cannot be as fully commercialised as celebrations that demand a paid ticket. The essence and attainment of commercialisation rely on the promotion of economies of scale, product presentation and standardisation, and rationalisation of space (Gotham 2007d, 188-9). Celebrations that do not have unique cultural ties and local relations are more easily altered into common attractions that are controlled by corporate patrons and the marketing and selling of ‘official’ products. Recommendations and Conclusions Cultural tourism is a vital component of the social and economic life of New Orleans; and there are forceful arguments for protecting the city’s cultural traditions, such as Mardi Gras. In order to reconcile the conflict between commercial interests and desires to preserve the non-commercial nature of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, two interconnected strategies must be implemented. The first strategy is to reconcile urban needs with the local culture. The second strategy is to integrate commercial interests with social norms. In tourism, this implies dealing with and addressing the supremacy of tourism over local interests and needs. As a quite localised celebration, the complex and distinctive features of Mardi Gras are counteracting forces to the rigidly practical and rational quest for profit that rules tourist activities. Furthermore, the absence of normalisation and certainty in public space confounds attempts to commercialise Mardi Gras and peddle the festival to corporate patrons. Works Cited Davis, Alan. The Fun Seeker’s North America: The Ultimate Travel Guide to the Most Fun Events and Destinations. New York: ASDavis Media Group, 2003. Print. Gaudet, Marcia & James McDonald. Mardi Gras, Gumbo, and Zydeco: Readings in Louisiana Culture. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2003. Print. Gotham, Kevin Fox. “Marketing Mardi Gras: Commodification, Spectacle and the Political Economy of Tourism in New Orleans,” Urban Studies 39.10 (2002): 1735-56. Print. Gotham, Kevin Fox. “Destination New Orleans: Commodification, Rationalisation, and the Rise of Urban Tourism,” Journal of Consumer Culture 7.3 (2007a): 305-34. Print. Gotham, Kevin Fox. “(Re)Branding the Big Easy: Tourism Rebuilding in Post-Katrina New Orleans,” Urban Affairs Review 42.6 (2007b): 823-50. Print. Gotham, Kevin Fox. “Selling New Orleans to New Orleans: Tourism authenticity and the construction of community identity,” Tourist Studies 7.3 (2007c): 317-39. Print. Gotham, Kevin Fox. Authentic New Orleans: Tourism, Culture, and Race in the Big Easy. New York: NYU Press, 2007d. Print. Souther, Jonathan. New Orleans on Parade: Tourism and the Transformation of the Crescent City. Louisiana: LSU Press, 2006. Print. Stanonis, Anthony. Creating the Big Easy: New Orleans and the Emergence of Modern Tourism, 1918-1945. Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2011. Print. Ware, Carolyn. “Marketing Mardi Gras: Heritage Tourism in Rural Acadiana,” Western Folklore 62.3 (2003): 157+ Print. 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