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.

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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]

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