[-empyre-] Throws

[M White <mwhite@michelewhite.org>]

Thanks to everyone for their comments. I appreciated
the parts of the Robert Pinsky poem that Mendi
forwarded. I find the line, "Culture the lock, culture
the key" particularly intriguing. The first part of
this line is what I was alluding to when suggesting
some of the ways that cultures and people?including
cultures in peril?try to establish authority by
creating further outcasts. 

I hope that Ana will expand on her enquiry: "where are
our boundaries, where are our borders and our
belongings?" I have been thinking a great deal about
belongings (stuff that connects us and the things that
we have to own) as well as belonging recently. I have
been trying to wrap my mind around the ethical and
cultural tensions between the imperiled New Orleanians
(present in the city and those unable and uninvited to
return) and the ways New Orleans has/and continues to
be built on the backs of the disenfranchised and
ostracized. Part of my earlier exploration of The Big
Hard and the New Orleans' bead culture is related to
this problem.

Shiny plastic beads, the French Quarter, and Mardi
Gras are key aspects of how New Orleans is understood
globally and an important part of its tourist
industry. Many businesses, and the infrastructure that
relies on taxes, are struggling in New Orleans. We
would do better with an economy that pays its workers
more equitable salaries but how can this be balanced
with the ways that losing the tourist industry (at
least in the short term) is going to create further
problems for most residents and the city
infrastructure. 

I keep thinking about the varied ways that these beads
mean New Orleans and what we pay for this image. The
Big Hard should invoke the crunch of hundreds of
pounds of beads discarded underfoot and carted off in
gigantic coolers after each Mardi Gras parade. These
beads and other plastic "throws" are beloved by New
Orleanians of every age. Nevertheless, most of these
beads are quickly thrown away. If tourism remains one
of our key economies then New Orleans may be a city
rebuilt on beads. However, this also means it will be
a city further built on the backs and through the
painful work of women in other countries. In David
Redmon's provocative Mardi Gras: Made in China, the
viewer learns that Mardi Gras beads are made by women
under oppressive conditions in China. Their pay is
low, workweek very long, there are health risks from
the heated toxic plastics that they breathe all day,
and they face the loss of limbs or death from machines
with no safety features. Most people in New Orleans
don't think about where their beads come from and the
greater price of such economies. I keep wondering what
it means to live in a city that is so enmeshed with
this product and to participate in a recent diversity
conference where of course beads become a symbol of
being in New Orleans. How can we be ethical visitors
and residents after the intense media spectacles that
have unfolded in the area? What are the better options
in order to rescript New Orleans and these global
circulations of beads?