The Moth Chase

It’s all gonna’ work out…

Episode 9: Wish Someone Would Care

“It’s all gonna work out…”

– Antoine Batiste

“I’d rather my head dipped in duck fat and shoved in the French oven…”

– Jannette

“Fucking is fucking, but music…that’s personal”

– Annie’s friend

“I’m from the state of Texas, and no insult, but y’all have a defective work ethic.”

– The Texican

Wow…what to say? So many huge moments in this week’s episode. Obviously, the biggest is Creighton’s suicide. Then we also have Jannette’s decision to leave. I am certain that the ramifications of both of these decisions will be felt exponentially as it affects more and more characters on our show.

I have been thinking a lot about the motivation for Creighton’s suicide (as much as one can give a motivation for such things). Obviously, we have all of the standard “cliché” reasons that one could impute to him: depression, alcoholism, shame, and his general inability to move beyond where he ended up. (And using “cliché” here is already problematic as it somehow implies—which is not what I intend to do at all—that these sorts of reasons are illegitimate.) I find myself attracted to the idea of viewing this as an issue of recognition. In this sense, I would want to counterpose Creighton to Albert. Albert says an interesting thing this week, when he states: “They gonna’ do what they gonna’ do—I’m gonna be heard.” Now, we’ve seen Davis abdicate his political voice for the promise of pleasure and we’ve seemingly watched Creighton begin to find a voice in his YouTube broadcasts. Albert, on the other hand, has only spoken with his actions and he still feels like he hasn’t been heard.

Where I think Creighton ends up is in realizing that his YouTube voice is not really a voice, but just, to quote Hegel, the “fury of destruction.” In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel describes a consciousness that he calls an “ironic” one that takes any sort of objective content and immediately destroys it through its subjective claims (which could take the form of mockery or sarcasm as much as anything else). I think Creighton is the perfect stand-in for such a shape here: although Creighton gets recognition from his YouTube broadcasts, it’s fickle because there is really no Creighton recognize—he is nothing except an opposition to more and more items in the world (from Bush to FEMA to whatever else). (This becomes obvious when Creighton doesn’t recognize himself in the recognition that a fellow professor gives him w.r.t. the videos.) Eventually, as the season progresses, Creighton loses interest in even his family and once that happens, Creighton disappears, since the very people who would give him existence—who would recognize him—are no longer recognized by him. In short, what seems to happen is that Creighton dissolves the possibility of his own existence, forgets his complex dependence on everyone else, including the worst elements of our government and culture, to which he is intimately bound. Once he decides (and quotes) that everyone is found wanting, then there is no one who could change his mind about this state of affairs.
I took Ladonna to embody the precise opposite of this position. Notice that she refuses to pursue Toni’s (Creightonesque, I would add) “search for truth.” She states quite unequivocally: “What if he got beat on by some inmate? Or a guard even? What then? You think getting’ my family all riled up over what happened to Damon gonna’ make this any easier? Hell no! All this gonna’ do is make it harder…boy is dead, it stays wrong for us no matter what else happens. And giving my momma’ someone to blame and hate on only makes it harder to get past it.” Here, we once again have a sort of dialectical moment. Often, Treme has presented us with the choice between justice on the one hand and democracy on the other. Here we are presented with the choice between truth (or justice) and life. Ladonna chooses the latter, Creighton the former. In choosing the latter, Ladonna makes possible mutual recognition: she recognizes the fundamental injustices of the world, but she also recognize how those elements and the ways in which she perceives those elements forms her very self and who she is and will be.

In this regard, I take Treme to have gotten infinitely more complex and interesting and I want to comment for a moment on the direction leading up to this point. I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch to argue that the majority of this season has been moralizing (although admittedly not in a bad way)—it’s rightfully put blame where blame should go. With this episode, however, those earlier seemingly “heavy-handed” moments are embedded in a dialectical structure that shows the complex mutual dependencies and mutual failures that makes up contemporary American life. There is much more to be said about all of this (a book’s worth or so, at least, by my estimation), but for now I just want to end by expressing my excitement for next week’s finale…

Until then,
Martin

Whatever comes next is just a dream of what used to be…

Episode 8: All on Mardi Gras Day

First of all, massive props to the writers up to now and director of this episode for not making Mardi Gras the last episode of this season. It was a bold, unexpected, and ultimately rewarding move.

I’m going to focus for a moment on Sonny. As much as pretty much everyone dislikes him (and rightly so), there is something fascinating about his character. Note that a dimension is added this week in whichwe see that perhaps his story (about rescuing people) was actually true. His attitude to the man is ambivalent enough that perhaps it’s not (and here Huisman’s acting chops need to be commended), but it also could be. If it is, it makes a great parallel to the theme of the episode, which is roughly that New Orleans after Katrina takes on an uncanny air (more on this shortly). We see that at a particular moment, Sonny became the man that he wants to be (and that we want him to be)…but it’s a fleeting moment, much like the constant triumphs in Treme (and in pretty much every show ever created by David Simon). Once he returns to his life, to cocaine, and so forth, that man disappears and is really just “a dream of what used to be.” This is the theme that unites pretty much everything that happens in this episode, from the meeting of Davis and Annie (a nice couple, but one that’s not quite right because both are in relationships that haven’t quite lived up to what they should, but haven’t quite broken down enough for them to forward), Ladonna and Antoine (we know that that wasn’t meant to go anywhere and was a mistake, albeit one that Antoine was perhaps looking for), Creighton and his daughter (where she used to appreciate and be amused by his venom, she is starting to dislike the fact that it is omnipresent), and so forth. (There is, of course, the exception of Delmond, who seems to have had a homecoming of sorts that parallels, inversely, the experiences of everyone else, including, most poignantly, his father.)

With all of that said, the broader theme that I took from episode and that it seemed to me to capture so well is the general tone of modernity, for which I take New Orleans to be a stand-in: “It’s sad, but it’s pretty…like New Orleans.” Everything in the world takes on a certain ambivalence after Katrina, but Katrina is again also more than Katrina, as Creighton’s excursion to the various calamities that have befallen the city throughout its course seems to illustrate. This isn’t a new thing, not for New Orleans, and not for us as moderns. Everything is ambivalent, doesn’t quite live up to its aspirations, but falls short of them in ways that are often hard to delineate in the sense that we are unsure whether the instantiation or the concept itself is what’s failing (and here, the government lawyer’s quip about “just doing her job” takes on a distinct light). Every once in awhile, we all can’t but help leave the “isle of denial,” and sail away on Woodford Reserve, cheap cocaine, or frantic sex…but the next morning we can’t but help wake up, ashamed and confused like someone wearing a blue tarp.

Remember you are dust…and to dust you shall return.

Only two more two go, unfortunately,

Martin

We are always our own worst enemy

Episode 7: Smoke My Peace Pipe

Well, it looks like I was right about Albert. We see him take action this week. What’s interesting about it is the way that the “community affairs” sergeant presents the problem: do we want justice or do we want democracy? In this sense, we see the same issue raised in a variety of arenas this week: from Creighton’s YouTube rant about the topic to the judge’s rant about New Orleans. The message that we seem to be getting this week is that the system is the problem, but we are the system, and so we are the problem.

All of this reminds me of Hegel’s famous injunction to see ourselves as an “I that is We” and a “We that is I.” It’s obvious that who these characters are is determined as much by those they find themselves in community with and/or opposed to as much as it is defined by who they take themselves to be or claim to be. This is as true of Davis’s and Creighton’s satiric escapades as it is of the most annoying New Orleans bureaucrat. It is also equally true of the entire New Orleans culture. This culture which seems to be revered universally by every segment of New Orleans, intimately depends on a culture that seems to be reviled and feared by the majority (i.e. the poor, which must of New Orleans wants to keep from coming home). These mutual dependencies, then, perfectly illustrate how Hegel’s injunction is precisely unrealized, perhaps even intentionally ignored. It also stresses the delicate balance between universality and particularity that not only the modern city, but especially New Orleans, and essentially modernity, embodies.

As a concluding point, I found the scene with Ladonna and the semis full of bodies (picture above) to be extremely touching. It reminded me of a quote by Solzhenitsyn, who wrote about Stalin’s camps that:

When we count up the millions of those who died in the camps, we forget to multiply them by two or three.

I think the scene here perfectly illustrates the same point. Khandi Alexander’s acting is so outstanding here, it is almost beyond words. As this realization dawns on her: that not only are there hundreds of other bodies here, but that their families will also be where she is right now, she truly realizes the extent of the suffering that is being inflicted and it literally brings her to her knees. It is one of the few moments on the show where we explicitly see the fragility of her character and it is an absolute classic moment in television.

Until next week,

Martin

Davis Can Save Us…

Episode 6: Shallow Water, Oh Mama

“Fuck those fucking fucks.”

– Toni Bernette

In this episode, it is once again reinforced how working within the system is ultimately fruitless. We see this most explicitly in the character of the cop who simply quits after working for 8 days straight; we see it in the futility of both Toni’s attempts at playing by the rules of the bureaucracy (even with proper paperwork, nothing’s going to happen), and in Albert’s getting a trailer, when all he asked for was for his crew to return to their projects…which weren’t flooded or damaged. I think we also see this in Janette’s refusing to ask her staff to work for free. She realizes that she could probably systemically convince her employees to work, but that ultimately it wouldn’t change anything.Her storyline (which as my friend Daniela points out, is one I haven’t commented on too much) is incredibly poignant and heartbreaking. And I’ve avoided largely because it’s so perfectly written and acted that I find myself having trouble saying anything interesting about it. Kim Dickens’s performance is so perfect and her character so impeccably fashioned that I find myself drawn completely into her world. It is interesting that both her and Annie find themselves returning to men who are completely not good for them (in this sense, of course, Sonny is much worse than Davis…and we finally see Sonny accomplishing everything we all thought he would). In Annie’s case, I think we can see it as a fear of being on her own, but in the case of Janette, I am not sure—curious to hear the thoughts of others.

To return to the broader point, the two mavens playing most outside of the system are, of course, Creighton and Davis. And they each show the pitfalls of not taking yourself seriously enough and taking yourself too seriously. They’re playing the same game, outside of the same rules, but but can’t seem to meet each other in the middle. Davis is too silly, while Creighton is too serious, but both fail to realize the opportunity that they have. Creighton finds himself in the strange predicament of wanting to have a voice while not speaking for anyone (quite the impossibility as Stanley Cavell has demonstrated), while Davis wants to speak for everyone without really having anyone to say that’s his own. It’s as if the two men are mirror images of each other and so it is so fascinating to see how Creighton consistently dislikes Davis: it’s like matter seeing anti-matter (or whatever the appropriate physics metaphor would be here).

In a sense, their brand of humor becomes the only viable means of resistance within the world of Treme. It is the only successful action (in that one can execute it without fail) in the face of what is going on, but ultimately it too is ineffective. It comes down to pretty much just saying, with the Creightons, “fuck you, you fucking fucks.” And maybe, sometimes, that’s enough.

Or maybe not…I submit that Albert, then, will be the interesting test case in this scenario as he seems to share the sentiment, but also manifestly seems to be not only a man of action, but a man of little humor. I am curious to see the directions in which his character will go.

Until next week,

Martin

The Wheels are off the Cart…

Episode 5: Shame, Shame, Shame

“Chaos is a given.”

– Toni Bernette

What a great episode. The question I want to raise off the bat is what everyone thought about the leaving of the Texican? I didn’t seem to grasp what it was all about. Was he leaving because Sonny felt insecure with him around?

Once again the theme of anger surfaces, albeit this time explicitly. As Creighton’s acquaintance states: “There are times when anger is the only proper response.” We see this on display not only with Albert’s pushing the politician (a brilliantly filmed and acted scene), but also with Davis’s bar mishap.

Davis’s change of heart seems interesting from a variety of angles. First, it seems that he is beginning to realize that his neighbors and his friends may or may not be the same, and may or may not be mutually exclusive. Second, he seems to be realizing that perhaps he himself is less authentically New Orleans than he realizes…or at the very least, that authentic New Orleans is significantly more complex, more tense, and more schizophrenic than he thought.

Similarly, I found Antoine’s encounter with the Japanese jazz fan to be a nexus for many of the issues I have touched on. Here we see a case of a genuine desire to help and we also see that it exists outside of the “system.” The Japanese fan comes on his own, helps on his own, and ultimately leaves on his own. He conducts his acts of generosity entirely outside of the systems set up for such things and manages thereby to achieve success with them. Analogously, jazz is an entirely lived experience for him and one that he truly only experiences (or experiences most) when in New Orleans. Similarly, in the tension that is exhibited between Antoine’s recollections of things and the fan’s we see expressed the neat economy between lived and studied knowledge. I found the whole storyline exceedingly well done.(I found the acting here absolutely top notch, incidentally.)

The title of the episode obviously has a multitude of meanings. It’s meant to highlight our shame for our involvement not only as spectators to Katrina, but in a sense, spectators to the show. It also describes the emotions that Antoine feels in response to the Japanese fans’s generosity as well as the emotion that Davis feels as he takes the speakers down. Of course, it also expresses the fact that the state of affairs in New Orleans is a shame. Not only with what Creighton’s points out in his YouTube message to George W. Bush, but also in what the police sergeant tells Toni Bernette: New Orleans is not ready for what’s coming and what’s coming is all of the worst that was already there. I wonder, though, whether the emotion that Albert expresses after pushing the politician is shame for doing it or shame for allowing himself to do it?

Until next week,

Martin

Respectfully, I know how they jail…

Episode 4: At the Foot of Canal Street

Guys tossed sandwiches over the wire and laughed like they was feeding zoo animals. And we fought over those sandwiches, moldy as they was.

– Kevon White

What an elaborate and rewarding episode! There was so much going on in this episode that I will make a few stray observations this time around.

I absolutely love all of the Wire cameos and references. Not only with the reference to “Hamsterdam,” but also the appearance of ‘Prez,’ Bubs’s sponsor, and, of course, ‘Slim Charles,’ who this time around is playing another fairly ferocious killer by the name of Kevon White.

I thought the scene between him and David Brooks’s sister and mother was exceptional. It is a striking counterpoint not only to the scene between Albert and the insurance clerk, but largely between most of the denizens of New Orleans and whatever other foreign, bureaucratic, or legal obstacles they seem to encounter. Notice that the encounter opens with a simple request by Ladonna, “Look at us.” This plea for recognition, initially ignored, turns into a violent slamming of her hands upon the table—so violent that it even catches the lawyer by surprise. Ladonna continues, “You look at us, goddammit! This is my mother. David’s mother.” Finally, she states simply: “Help us.” What is most interesting is White’s reaction: “Aight.” With this simple word, he acknowledges and recognizes them, the situations, his actions, and everything else that goes with it. Of course, we do not know if his story is true (although it sure sounds like it), but we do notice how he does not make any sort of recourse to legalese or loopholes. He does not find a way to ignore them or withhold recognition, he does not point to a distinction between floods and storms. Instead, he attempts, in his own way, to help them.  The juxtaposition between this accused killer and all of the elements in place to help our characters is striking and I do not think it is accidental. What is even more striking is that White immediately withdraws the entire act when it is to be assimilated into the broader systemic structure. As he says: “[This] conversation never happened.” Of course, the apparent justification is that he does not want to take another charge of the whole thing, but as a viewer you cannot but help wonder whether the point is precisely that the sort of recognition and acknowledgement that clearly occurs in the broader conversation precisely can only exist outside the confines of the systemic structures in place around our characters. It is striking how complex this whole scenario is.

I was also fascinated by the Sonny storyline—especially his influencing “the Texican” bouncer to come to New Orleans. I think the whole Sonny storyline is becoming quite interesting. Of course, there are the obvious themes that everyone loves to hate about him and Annie: she’s too good for him, he’s a poseur, uncaring, etc. We see an interesting dynamic this week: we realize he is from Amsterdam, not a native. We also see that he is definitely out of his league amongst New Orleans musicians…even when he’s in Texas. We also see that he realizes this. What’s interesting, however, is his attachment to New Orleans…so potent that it is infective. I am fascinated by the character of “the Texican” and I think the Annie/Sonny plotline will obviously come to a head, since she’s on the way up and he’s staying in place…

Until next week,

Martin

How to stop a bulldozer?

Episode 3: Right Place, Wrong Time

As we watch the Katrina tours bus drive away, we can’t but help ask this question which had earlier been posed to Albert: “how to stop a bulldozer?”Through so many different moments on the show, we see how fundamentally there is a continual mismatch of viewpoints, proposals, approaches, and, ultimately, lives. To my mind, this comes to a head in—what I took, surprisingly, to be the most interesting scene—the scene where Davis and Creighton meet. From the first two episodes of the show, we would expect these two absolutely to kick it off and to dig each other. Each of them loves their city, takes pride in it, is deeply affected by the way things have been mishandled, and so forth. Yet, in their encounter we can see that none of this registers. The same sorts of class barriers that inform their individual worldviews come to bear in their dialogue with each other, culminating in Creighton’s admonition to Davis that he should not worry about what his daughter will do.

Their encounter serves as a microcosm for the sorts of mismatches the show develops through this episode. We see this in the New York music session, where New Orleans Indian traditionals are taken and yet performed with a spirit of respect (the way this scene is shot shows the care and soul which Dr. John and the musicians put into this enterprise.) Nonetheless, we know that Albert would find the whole thing fundamentally wrong, as would others. The problem in this case is not so much with the taking of the music itself: but the taking of the music out of New Orleans. The music only has a meaning in the context of the city. Similarly, the Katrina bus tour is justified by the bus driver’s remark: “People want to see what happened.” I propose that we interpret this in the best possible way: people want to know what happened. They want to know in order to spread the word and perhaps to help as did our travelling youngsters last week. This move for a sort of hospitality from outside—and it’s done in a variety of contexts on the show, from Tim’s opportunity for Annie to the New York session to even the National Guard (which obviously doesn’t serve a merely negative function)—can always be misinterpreted, misappropriated, and, indeed, can misfire. Nonetheless, New Orleans cannot rebuild itself: it needs this outside help. Not everyone is an Albert; indeed, we see how some rely on outside aid, while others willingly abuse it.

Treme presents all of this concretely by showing how there are a variety of denizens in New Orleans who themselves have not properly worked through what has happened. The finding of the body under the boat serves as the perfect metaphor: the citizens of New Orleans themselves have not uncovered the extent to which they have been touched and affected by the trauma of Katrina; the outside influence, which is necessary, just serves to engender conflict as much as it does to quell it. This is all because the true fabric holding everything together is the city and the city has been damaged—perhaps irreparably—not only by Katrina, but also by the events leading up to and after Katrina. The only thing that can fix this state of affairs is the return of New Orleans: something that is precisely impossible because it requires all of the things and moments that allowed its destruction in the first place. This strange dialectic of inside and outside borders the show at every step. Of course, we see glimpses of “the city” in the moments where the city ceases to be some sort of ideal and becomes an experience: such as when Antoine and Annie duet. This musical scene is pure magic and it takes place in spite of and yet within the new New Orleans. In it we see a sort of “flattening out” of inside and outside: there is no inside or outside, there is merely the moment (the same goes for Albert’s ceremony at the end). The problem, however, is these moments do not—cannot—last: as they are irreparably tied to the things that interrupt them. Nonetheless, these moments show New Orleans in all of its glory: a glory which neither is captured by Davis’s idealizations nor by the snapshot flashes of a Katrina tour; it is a glory that can only be experienced—never represented.

Until next week,

Martin

A Man Made Catastrophe of Epic Proportions…

Episode 2: Do You Know What It Means
Epitsode 1: Meet De Boys on the Battlefront

“People do a lot of dumb shit ‘cuz it’s easier.” – Albert

First of all, I want to thank Kathryn and Natalie for allowing me to return to the web to blog on this show for the moth chase. I will be here every Tuesday and very much look forward to the conversation that I hope this show will generate.

As everyone knows by now, David Simon’s and Eric Overmyer’s new show, Treme, deals with New Orleans three months after Katrina. I want to start my musings on the first two episodes by reference to another disaster: the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. Forty years prior, the philosopher Leibniz had published a classic work of philosophy now generally called simply Theodicy: a justification of God. Leibniz’s argument, worked out in majestic and pain-staking detail, was that ours is the best of all possible worlds. The evil in our world exist in the precise amount for this world to be the best of all possible worlds: if one catastrophe or misgiving was missing, then the world, as a whole, would somehow be worst or simply could not have existed (i.e. would have been logically impossible). I mention this not because I want to dwell on the philosophical issues, but only to point out that nine years after the Lisbon earthquake, Voltaire published a novella called Candide, which mercilessly attacked Leibniz’s idea (and Leibniz himself in the famous character of Dr. Pangloss) as utterly vapid and simply unconscionable in the aftermath of Lisbon.

In turn, I mention all of this because two centuries later, Theodor Adorno, wrote in his masterpiece Negative Dialectics that:

The earthquake of Lisbon sufficed to cure Voltaire of the theodicy of Leibniz, and the visible disaster of the first nature was insignificant in comparison with the second, social one, which defies human imagination as it distills real hell from human evil.

Now, Adorno was writing as a response to the Nazi genocide, but I believe that the same general point is perfectly echoed by John Goodman’s character, Creighton Bernette, when he quips to a British reporter:

What hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast was a natural disaster, a hurricane, pure and simply. The flooding of New Orleans was a man made catastrophe, a Federal fuckup of epic proportions…

The question then becomes of what will this revelation suffice to cure us of?

I think this polemical stance seems to be precisely what is at stake in Treme. David Simon’s op-ed in the New Orleans Times Picayune acknowledging the historical omissions in Treme seems to highlight this point: Treme is not a documentary.

This question of action, in turn, drives not only the political, social, and aesthetic concerns that loom forefront to us as viewers, but also serves as a means of entering the minds of Treme’s characters. We see throughout these two episodes how anger and rage lurk behind a variety of moments and locales. There is no character on the show that doesn’t exhibit some form of anger and rage; often it is misdirected towards targets that are easy and simply present. From Bernette’s outburst to the British reporter to Toni Bernette’s rampage in the kitchen to David McAlary’s rage towards the managers of Tower Records and so forth. We see these characters lashing out at the various manifestations or representations of what they take to be obvious and significant systemic injustices. This culminates in Albert Lambreaux’s beating of the street punk who has been going around stealing tools, wiring, and other supplies.  Before the beating, Albert says: “I can build a house from scratch—roof to foundation. What can you do? Tear it down, that’s easy.” After informing the thief that he is responsible for stealing Albert’s tools he says: “You just didn’t know who you was taking it from.” Then, before the altercation he exclaims: “You need to understand what I’m telling you.” The entire conversation, but especially the last line, applies as much to the thief as it does to the Federal government as it does to us as viewers.

The genius of Treme, however, is that it provides no easy path through the minefield of such a conversation. I would read the scene immediately following this one, where Albert is washing his hands, as symbolizing this point: Albert, while feeling justified, is certainly not satisfied (Will we “have satisfaction?”). While certainly intentional, it’s obvious that Albert’s brutality surprises even him (as evidence by the sheer shortness of breath he exhibits).

The rage and anger that hovers just beneath the surface in Treme brings to the fore the precise way in which this country has not at all dealt with Katrina. We have not really understood the event and even its assimilation into our national narrative is shaky, uncertain, and thoroughly murky. In a very deep sense, it does not register for us and we do not see it. What Treme does is to launch a salvo that brings it, in all of its complexity, to the fore. Two important questions that remain (for us as much as for Treme’s characters) are: who will listen and what will we do?

Until next week,

Martin