The New Orleans Rule

[sqbr]

On the whole, as a white Australian, I feel uncomfortable making independent statements about racism which is specific to America. But this rule has been so consistent I feel it's worth noting:

The New Orleans Rule
Any fictional story set in New Orleans will involve witch-doctors/Voodoo/zombies.
There may be some superficial guff about how it's a perfectly respectable religion and maybe you'll meet a nice Voodoo priest or something but in the end it will turn out to be Evil And Scary and chances are the nice non-threatening Voodoo practicing black girl who helps the white protagonist will turn out to be a Dangerous Evil Slut.

Recent stories will mention Hurricane Katrina for regional colour, but really it'll be about the Scary Voodoo.

EDIT: May apply more to movies/tv/games than books.

---

Hopefully you can all see why this is ever so slightly racist. Oh look, a religion created and practiced by black people. Let us exploit and demonize it! That and Hurricane Katrina was a terrible tragedy, and using it as an excuse to perpetuate racist stereotypes about New Orleans inhabitants is pretty fricking low.

Having formulated this rule, I thought about stories set in New Orleans I'd seen/read before, and those I saw/read afterwards.

Stories where this rule has turned out to be true:
Gabriel Knight (a video game)
Bones(*)
CSI (as I recall, this was early in the rule's formation)
Blood Ties
Live and Let Die
The Frog Princess, from what I just saw of the trailer.

Stories where it didn't:
Leverage. It was about evil white developers scamming nice black people who'd lost their house in Katrina. Voodoo wasn't even mentioned. Score!

The rule may or not apply to Haiti, I'm still collecting data.

Thanks to distantcam for directing me to the Frog Princess trailer after having heard me rant about this rule before.

Note: I don't think stories about Voodoo in New Orleans are inherently bad, but even I know that's not all there is to the city, and it's always done in a creepy exploitative way. And before anyone says "But Voodoo is evil" please at least read the Wikipedia page, and then you will know as much as me.

(*)They did make some effort to have not-evil Voodoo, but it was still the case that it started being about Hurricane Katrina and I said "Oh look, a Voodoo episode" and I was right.

I'm not anticipating trouble, but just as an experiment I'm going to screen comments to this entry to see how that works out.

Comments

[havocthecat]

*cackle* You are SO NOT WRONG. It's usually egregious and godawful.

[justadecoy]

I don't recall it being true of Poppy Z. Bright's "Liquor", "Prime" and "D*U*C*K" either.
I haven't read any of her other books so I'm not sure about them.

[sqbr]

Hmm. Looking at my list they're all movies/tv/games. Maybe books are more immune.

[havocthecat]

Books have a chance to develop an idea in greater depth. So we can hope, at least!

[leecetheartist]

That was an interesting article. Thank you for the pointer. I was in a freeform once where the Catholic priest and the voodoo practicioners collaborated to stop the Great Old One doing bad stuff - the voodoo guys were definitely the good guys in that scenario, the GM really had done her research!

[sqbr]

Huh. I looked at your comment and some part of me rebelled against " the voodoo guys were definitely the good guys in that scenario, the GM really had done her research!" and I eventually realised it wasn't anything in what you said, it's just that since Pretty Much Every Single Depiction of Voodoo I've seen has been racist part of me has trouble believing that non-racist depictions exist :)

[leecetheartist]

It was a great freeform!

In one of Kolchak: the Nightstalker episodes there was at least, to me, a sympathetic voodoo practicioner. Of course she then went on to try and off Kolchak as he was trying to stop her quite reasonably offing the bad guys for having her son killed. Sigh.

I don't remember it as being a particularly racist show, but I don't have your training. It seemed quite sympathetic. I think that one was made in the 70's, if that helps.

[sqbr]

Well, it sounds better than the default at least. Which admittedly leaves a lot of room for badness.

[ex_pippin880]

I've heard tell that The Princess and The Frog contains non-evil Voodoo practitioners. Dunno though.

Las Vegas went to New Orleans, but I can't remember what happened in the episode.

[sqbr]

Maybe, I guess we'll see.

Las Vegas went to New Orleans, but I can't remember what happened in the episode.

Oh I'm sure it was a nuanced and well researched serious meditation on the nature of human existence, as always :D

[ex_pippin880]

Oh, I, I think I'm remembering something from the episode, I think...

I think there may have been lots of cleavage shots?

:)

[sqbr]

LOL

That can't be right! :D

[sanguinity]

Criminal Minds went to New Orleans.

No Voodoo. Just jazz, alcohol, bar-hopping, and the serial-killer-of-the-week, who had a Jack-the-Ripper riff going on. And when the serial killer and motive are revealed, it turns out to be all about the French Quarter's bar scene. No hint of religion in any variety or capacity.

Katrina was mentioned, as follows: 1) all the investigative records of the serial killer's pre-Katrina murders had been destroyed in the storm, 2) the head detective had been killed in the storm, and 3) the storm had created a lengthy pause in the murder spree, to the point of the cops assuming the killer had died in the storm.

*thinks about the episode some more* Awful lot of white people in that episode. Not that I have the slightest idea what the French Quarter looks like, nor if you'd expect to see mostly white people there or not. (Many American cities still have neighborhoods where essentially only white people are visible.) But even though I noticed the blatant absence of black people in a black-majority city, I was kinda relieved that the story was so very white-person-centric, because that meant it wasn't a story about the Scary Criminal Murderin' Black People Of New Orleans. Which is worth worrying about, because it is a show about Scary Criminal Murderin' People, and that's what ALL the post-Katrina press was about, pretty much.

[sqbr]

I have heard many Good Things about Criminal Minds, good on it for breaking The Rule. The show never quite grabbed me, unfortunately.

[sanguinity]

There's a lot I like about the show. Hard on my sympathetic nervous system, though.

I was thinking about how that show handles race in general after writing that comment, and while it's got some of the ham-handed hallmarks of White People Trying To Get It Right, they've also obviously got a thought-out strategy for handling race on the show.

[sqbr]

Heh. Yeah, I saw a LOVELY vid for "sunshine" the other day and as pretty as it looks I don't think I could stand it, I get "hide behind the couch"y during "Back to the Future" :)