Reconstruction 8.2 (2008)
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Souther, J. Mark. New Orleans on Parade: Tourism and the Transformation of the Crescent City. Baton Rouge NO: Louisiana State University Press, 2006, 303 pp. ISBN-13: 978-0-8071-3193-0 (hbk).
<1> Souther's New Orleans on Parade is an examination of the role tourism has played in shaping the identity of New Orleans's French Quarter specifically and the city as a whole by extention. The major players in the struggle over tourism include the old time city elite versus the new. more diverse businessmen; the French Quarter preservationists versus the tourism promoters; city residents versus an influx of outsiders; and the white establishment versus a largely black labor pool. Ultimately, this book argues, New Orleans embraced its role as a tourist vacation spot (and, by extension, the idealized version of the past included in the quarter) as a survival mechanism in the face of industrial collapse, the fall of the oil boom, and the rise of urban crime.
<2> The first chapter, "A 'New' New Orleans?" focuses on the effects of World War II and the post war years on New Orleans's economy. Before the war. New Orleans socially was dominated by upper class white citizens, who favored "forms of economic development that enabled them to maintain their social standing" (17), including the exclusive and discriminating Marti Gras "krewes." World War II brought a boom to the New Orleans tourism industry in the form of thousands of visiting soldiers, but the post war years were also dominated with efforts to boost the business structure of the town, including a (failed) effort to become a major Latin America trade partner. Meanwhile, despite efforts from city hall, New Orleans failed to establish a set method for boosting the tourist trade, instead believing that the natural charm of the French Quarter would do their work for them, and phones would ring. One factor hampering the growth of this industry was the exclusivity and segregation against jews, blacks, and other non-elite groups.
<3> "Preservation and Profit in the French Quarter" focuses on the specific battle over the tourist district, largely between those who wanted to do whatever they could to boost tourism and those who wanted first and foremost to preserve the character, architecture, and feel of the district. From the late 40s, one of the venues of this battle was the struggle over sin and vice-oriented tourism, such as strip clubs, burlesque houses, and the general seedy entertainment that encroached particularly upon Bourbon Street. The city had to straddle a fine line between eliminating unsavory entertainment while not undermining the image of a city based on cathartic escape, as the image of sin was one which drew many of the tourists to the city in the first place. Another key struggle was over the building of hotels, which highlighted the desire to provide accommodations for tourists with the desire to keep the quarter unchanged architecturally, particularly in relation to ersatz modern recreations of French Quarter buildings. There was also a struggle over a planned downtown expressway that would have cut directly through the French Quarter.
<4> "Into the Big League" chronicles the city's efforts to gain a professional football team, efforts that were invariably colored by race. Segregation played a large role in New Orleans, where a 1956 statute prohibited any form of interracial contact in public accomodations often led to arrests when black and white bandmembers tried to share the same stage. Even after a law forbidding interracial audiences for sporting events was done away with, the segregationist nature of the tourist industry, which led to football players from the AFL all star game not being able to get taxis, made life increasingly difficult for any desegregated team coming to the city, and, as a result, many events (including the 1965 AFL all star game and the canceled 1963 American Legion conference) stayed away. A mass wave of convention cancellations in 1969, coupled with the desire to snag an NFL team, led to the eventual passage of the 1970 ordinance outlawing segregation in hotel establishments and to a greater intolerance to racial prejudice in the hospitality industry, all in the name of getting more tourist traffic.
<5> "Making the Birthplace of Jazz" traces the decline of the music genre in New Orleans, its appropriation for tourism/marketing purposes, and the unexpected rebirth of jazz in the marketing wake. While New Orleans had long been known as the birthplace of jaxx, the city's extreme racial prejudice and segregation policies had driven had driven many of the jazzmen to more tolerable climates. Jazz aficianados traveling to New Orleans were generally shocked at the derth of jazz clubs and performances, and many of the efforts to return an awareness of the genre to the city came from these outsiders, including the founders of Preservation Hall. Increasingly, jazz became a basis of tourism, as evident in the jazz festivals and the increasing desire to see jazz funerals, which led to the growth of several jazz big bands (including Olympia Brass Band); the appropriation of a city tradition often had mixed results, however, as when funerals would be crashed by picture-popping tourists, or when mock jazz funerals would be put on for either French Quarter crowds or tv/film cameras (including Live and Let Die). However, the increased exposure of jazz did eventually lead to some jazz brass bands reclaiming the music and tradition for community purposes, and many young people picked up jazz as an artform. In many ways, then, tourism rescued jazz from extinction.
<6> "Selling 'The Greatest Free Show on Earth'" focuses on the festival of Marti Gras. The fesitval was originally run by "krewes" of city elite, who would run parades through the town, complete with on-street revelry and masking; these parades would lead to exclusive balls/dances for the krewe members. Most of the original krewes contained city elite, and were by nature very segregated, and membership was tightly controlled; these krewes looked upon Marti Gras as a celebration that they threw for themselves but would share parts of with the city. A new krewe, Zulu, was formed by city blacks, and its parade floats focused on parody of African stereotypes, including the jungle origins and animalistic behavior; while this krewe saw itself as subverting existing stereotypes, many (both inside and outside the black community) viewed Zulu as approaching minstrel shows. Eventually, as Marti Gras became an increasing tourist draw and many of the new generation of city businessmen grew tired of the elitism of the traditional krewes, these new businessmen formed "super krewes" such as Bacchus, who threw more elaborate (some locals called them gaudy) parades that were open to a broader spectrum of the New Orleans population. These super krewes were also desegregated, and this helped the push to move Marti Gras from an elite, old-line tradition to one adopted by more inclusiveness, democratic samples of the city; this move also increased the commercialized/"disnification" of Marti Gras in many of the elite and preservationist's minds.
<7> "'Creole Disneyland'" focuses on the attempts to market tourism in New Orleans. Tourism was seen as the salve for loss of industrial and shipping jobs, and became the main thrust behind the city's economy. In this push, the traditional battles between those who wanted to preserve the old world charm of the quarter and those who wanted to clean it up and make it conform to tourist expectations arose again, especially in the battles over the revamping of the French Market and the waterfront. The ultimate battle for tourism, apart from the difficulties (and near impossibility) of coming up with a unified tourism plan and agency, came through New Orleans's bid for the 1984 World Fair, which was secured but had limited federal funding.
<8> "A City on Parade" takes up with the opening of the World Fair, which was not without incident. The fair was under tremendous debt and indeed went bankrupt after subpar attendance. However, the infrastructure that came with the fair, including a fesival shopping place, a riverside park, and a massively expanded convention center, gave New Orleans added life while cementing downtown, in particular the French Quarter but also many surrounding districts, as a tourist destination as a primary economic purpose. The economic collapse of the mid eighties led to a decimation of the local economy, and tourism became the ultimate financial center of the New Orleans economy. The desire to increase tourism also lead to African American tourism efforts, which finally invested the black community in the tourist process as something other than entry level working/service class.
<9> There's an epilogue that sums up (although with very little theorization) and a postscript which pays gentle nod to the possible effect of Katrina.
<10> Ultimately, one has to keep in mind that this is a history book in most senses of the word. Most of the effort is to painting a clear trail of the effects of tourism in New Orleans for the last 60+ years, specifically, the battle over the proper role of the French Quarter, the inclusiveness of the city (in terms of the old elite versus outsiders, blacks, tourists), and the role of tourism in the economic development of the city. This book does these things quite well and indeed highlights the multiple angles of the debate over tourism.
<11> Tourism itself is a loaded term in this book. It is not seen as either a dirty word or as a savior to the local economy. It has effects both positive and negative, to many groups. Without tourism, there would no doubt be very little jazz in New Orleans, let alone very little economic infrastructure. There would also very likely be no French Quarter, as the district wouldn't have survived the push to industrialization and past its collapse unless it had an economic selling point. Tourism most certainly helped New Orleans ultimately desegregate, and it helped the city's major attractions become more democratic and less elitist. However, tourism did fundamentally change the character of the city, did make the city an attraction to outsiders rather than a posession of the city itself and those who dwell in it. In his postscript, Souther speculates that in the post Katrina New Orleans, residents of the Big Easy might serve predominantly the role of providing authenticity and color to a city reconstructed for outside purposes, interests, and audiences. Is this a good thing? This book leaves this question essentially unanswered.
<12> This is how it should be, however. In spirit, this book treats "tourism" in New Orleans as a force quite similar to Michel Foucault's construction of power...it is not necessarily tied to a particular side or ideology, and when one side claims it, it does not necessarily produce the intended effects. Tourism, for instance, did appropriate Jazz, but it was through that appropriation that Jazz was reclaimed by many in the city, including the newer generation of Black musicians. Whenever tourism as a force came to bear on New Orleans, it tended to deal with multiple groups, which it affected in many (often unpredictable) ways
<13> These theoretical issues inform the analysis of New Orleans on Parade. However, they are not made explicit in this book, instead acting as an unspoken theoretical underpinnings. That is how theory tends to work here. The battle between preservationists and the tourist-minded is a continuing theme in this book, but it is not actually shown as a traditional battle. There isn't a winner, and one side doesn't have more validity or come out as victor. More important, that this battle really never was a battle in the traditional sense is never really made explicit in the text. It is never really theorized.
<14> Ultimately, New Orleans on Parade is a success in tracing the wide-reaching and seemingly unexpected effects of tourism on the city. In this sense, that is, as a historical overview, it is definitely a success. It does not, however, spend the time or space to theorizing these changes and providing an explicit framework for understanding tourism that can be applied to other situations, other contexts. This framework does exist in the text, but it has to be teased out by the reader rather than being explicitly presented; this is a fault, however, but it more likely sits with the conventions of the history genre than with the author, who, a reader can tell, has thought such matters out. A dose of cultural theorization would add to this book and would increase its usability across the disciplines rather than leaving the study as simply a history.
Dr. Mike
S. DuBose
University
of Toledo
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