David Simon's new drama series, Treme, alights on post-Katrina New Orleans to find its inhabitants oddly preoccupied with the politics of cultural authenticity. There's a DJ played by Steve Zahn who rails against the corporatisation of the city's music; a bellicose college professor (John Goodman) who appears on TV and calls into radio stations to disabuse them of their preconceived "narratives" about the city; there's even a busker who tears a strip of the visiting church-members from Wisconsin who have turned up to lend a hand ("I bet you didn't even hear of the 9th quarter until the other week"). I have to say: that scene was where Simon lost me. It wasn't just the ingratitude of the busker, but the snarling mean-spiritedness with which the Wisconsin good samaritans were held up for ridicule. So they haven't hard of the 9th quarter until they saw it in the news: so what? Most people have never heard of half of the disaster areas that spring into the public consciousness: does that mean their attempts to help out are to be slapped down? In Simon's New Orleans, nobody can help unless they first understand New Orleans, and the only people who can understand are New Orleaners, and most of them only by constant self-purifying meditation on their irreducible New Orleanishness and its imperviousness to outsiders. Really? The immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and everyone's obsessing about the postmodern precariousness of cultural identity? Wouldn't they be more preoccupied with, you know, the level-five hurricane that had just decimated their city? Simon seems entirely turned in on himself — dramatising the self-conscious rite of passage by which outsiders like himself might give themselves permission to dare to dramatise the city. He treats the ninth quarter with the reverence usually accorded Auschwitz-Birkenau. The show is both self-conscious and snobbish in the manner of tourists who condescend to other tourists. It's enough to make you paranoid: do I measure up? Am I watching it for the right reasons? Am I pronouncing it right? I'm definitely tuning it for the wrong reasons. I'm watching it for some glimmer of the outstanding dramatist who constructed the first four seasons of The Wire. So far he doesn't seem to have shown up.
David Simon's new drama series, Treme, alights on post-Katrina New Orleans to find its inhabitants oddly preoccupied with the politics of cultural authenticity. There's a DJ played by Steve Zahn who rails against the corporatisation of the city's music; a bellicose college professor (John Goodman) who appears on TV and calls into radio stations to disabuse them of their preconceived "narratives" about the city; there's even a busker who tears a strip of the visiting church-members from Wisconsin who have turned up to lend a hand ("I bet you didn't even hear of the 9th quarter until the other week"). I have to say: that scene was where Simon lost me. It wasn't just the ingratitude of the busker, but the snarling mean-spiritedness with which the Wisconsin good samaritans were held up for ridicule. So they haven't hard of the 9th quarter until they saw it in the news: so what? Most people have never heard of half of the disaster areas that spring into the public consciousness: does that mean their attempts to help out are to be slapped down? In Simon's New Orleans, nobody can help unless they first understand New Orleans, and the only people who can understand are New Orleaners, and most of them only by constant self-purifying meditation on their irreducible New Orleanishness and its imperviousness to outsiders. Really? The immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and everyone's obsessing about the postmodern precariousness of cultural identity? Wouldn't they be more preoccupied with, you know, the level-five hurricane that had just decimated their city? Simon seems entirely turned in on himself — dramatising the self-conscious rite of passage by which outsiders like himself might give themselves permission to dare to dramatise the city. He treats the ninth quarter with the reverence usually accorded Auschwitz-Birkenau. The show is both self-conscious and snobbish in the manner of tourists who condescend to other tourists. It's enough to make you paranoid: do I measure up? Am I watching it for the right reasons? Am I pronouncing it right? I'm definitely tuning it for the wrong reasons. I'm watching it for some glimmer of the outstanding dramatist who constructed the first four seasons of The Wire. So far he doesn't seem to have shown up.
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Self-conscious and self-righteous--those bombastic, f-bomb tirades that John Goodman's retired prof delivers over YouTube are treated as rhetorical thunder, with guest star Roy Blount calling them "Shakespearean," rather extravagant praise for phrases such as "Lick my hairy balls" and "Fuck you, Atlanta," and Steve Zahn's hipster scold is equally indulged. Also, at the risk of sounding un-American, I find all the invocations to N.O. as "the cradle of jazz" a bore.
ReplyDeleteI didn't think everything was quite as one-sided as Tom made it out to be. Goodman's bombast was meant to appear desperate, ragged-edged and irrational; Blount's "Shakespearean" line struck me as an awkward attempt to compliment a friend. As for Zahn, he's portrayed as a flake, lovable at times, annoying at times....but an unreliable flake.
ReplyDelete1. Have you watched it all beyond the first episode?
ReplyDelete2. New Orleanians have always been concerned about their cultural identity. And definitely were more concerned then ever in the winter of 2005.
3. The obnoxious street busker is a recent transplant from Amsterdam, and has also been revealed to be an abusive brute in every way possible. (Again, you'd have to watch more than one episode to know this.)
4. You're thinking of "the Lower Ninth Ward." There is no "ninth quarter"
5. New Orleans was not decimated by a "level-five hurricane." Katrina's landfall in mississippi was Category Three. Its landfall in new orleans was mostly Category 1 winds; with some Category 2 winds in the eastern part of the city. New Orleans was decimated by the US Army's canal floodwalls which spontaneously crumbled in Category 1 winds; although they were supposed to withstand Category 3 winds. If you had paid attention to even the first episode (or say, any factual accounting or news report over the past five years), you would know this.
Is your ignorance real or feigned? Is this vitriol coming from a British hatred of the Francophile, or what?
At first I disliked the snotty superiority of Sonny, the street musician, at the expense of the Wisconsin church group. But later on, we see that they take the nightclub advice of Davis in his brief stint at the front desk of their hotel, and wind up having a mindblowing good time outside the French Quarter, blissfully unaware of the imminent arrival of parents, church elders, etc. convinced they've been kidnapped. The church goers were more open and appreciative than they appeared at first.
ReplyDeleteI dont think the author has a clue-from his rantings about the 9th quarter to the facts that he clearly doesnt understand. TREME is about the people, and Simon's story much like the wire pays tribute to their feelings, after the catastrophie as they attempt to rebuild their lives. Yes there is culture, yes there is plenty of Music, but its the people that truly makes New Orleans a great city, and watching this every week just reminds us of that.
ReplyDelete"...nobody can help unless they first understand New Orleans, and the only people who can understand are New Orleaners, and most of them only by constant self-purifying meditation on their irreducible New Orleanishness and its imperviousness to outsiders."
ReplyDeleteNews flash: Simon has this exactly, though accidentally, right. This was, is, and forever will be the New Orleans mentality. I grew up only 40 miles up the road, and lived in New Orleans for decades until displaced by Katrina. I lost my home, my insurance company went bankrupt without paying, and the Road Home was there only for the irreducibly New Orleanish. The cloying piety of these people is perfectly captured...again inadvertently...by the John Goodman character and wife.
Treme is a honking bore, for the very reasons Shone enumerates here.
ReplyDeleteI am baffled by Shone's misunderstanding of the obnoxious busker from Treme. Maybe the show is too subtle for a critic raised in a land of mushy peas, warm beer and Rick Astley, but the busker is portrayed an an ungrateful boor and, hoorah for Shone, he recognized that the character is an ungrateful boor. I commned you for your finely attuned critical apparatus.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, even if you don't accept the premise that New Orleans has a distinct culture, the people of New Orleans strongly believe that there is no place like that city, and that outsiders do not understand what was damaged and lost during the storm. In my view, Treme is pretty accurate in its portrayal of the seige mentality that many in that city had (and still have) after enduring the levee failure that devastated a great city.
Try watching more than one episode. David Simon is still smarter than you.
ReplyDelete