Exploring Race Amid Revelry
|
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
What does history mean to you? To Helen Meaher, the young queen of the all-white Mardi Gras in Mobile, Ala., history is a sense of pride in one's past, the vague emotional force that impels her to accept the same ceremonial position her grandmother did more than 70 years before.
But to Stefannie Lucas, an elementary school teacher and Helen's counterpart in Mobile's all-black Mardi Gras, history is sharper and much more specific. Recalling that a wealthy member of the Meaher family sailed the last slave ship to enter American waters into Mobile Bay, Lucas matter-of-factly explains the connection between the two Mardi Gras queens: "My people was on her people's ship."
A well-constructed documentary about a surprising remnant of segregation in the new South, Margaret Brown's "The Order of Myths" gracefully explores Mobile's Mardi Gras celebrations and profiles the young people playing at royalty at these ceremonies' hearts.
Amid the flamboyant dresses, 30-pound trains and spectacular hats, Brown's camera captures both casual racism and earnest reconciliation. White revelers defend the traditional racial divide on camera, some of them sporting creepy, blank ceremonial masks -- this in a city that saw a Ku Klux Klan lynching as recently as 1981. Meanwhile, each Mardi Gras queen makes an unprecedented appearance at her counterpart's coronation -- a hopeful step, but one still reminiscent of heads of state visiting foreign lands.
-- Dan Kois
The Order of Myths Unrated, 80 minutes Contains a disturbing historical image of a lynching. At Landmark's E Street Cinema.
