GOOD MORNING, AMERICA, HOW ARE YOU?

Well, I'm still in grad student hell, madly writing my thesis, and doing technical rehearsals for Merchant of Venice. But I've got other tasks to perform, and one of them is writing a brief paper for my performance theory class on this topic:

Since New Orleans is likely to be hit by another hurricane, is it unwise to rebuild the city and fund its cultural activities?

This struck me as a very nice fit for Real Art, so I'm just going to answer that question as a blog post. Here goes.

The obvious answer to such a question, especially for people in a university theater department, is an unequivocal "no." After all, theater people greatly value culture, and generally believe that funding ought to be greatly increased, rather than decreased. Further, theater people are often compassionate liberals, who hate suffering: rebuilding New Orleans is a no-brainer. This question cannot be seriously aimed at me or my classmates. Rather, such a question strikes me as a sort of practice run for dealing with right-wingers, who cannot, in any case, be persuaded of anything, one way or the other, or, more likely, for dealing with moderates, who might see such a proposition as being not entirely unreasonable.

So, what can I say to a moderate who might think abandoning New Orleans isn't such a bad idea?

I can start with a general argument. If the US abandons one of its cities, we abandon all cities. That is, numerous cities on the Atlantic seaboard and up and down the Gulf Coast are also prone to hurricanes, and massive storms are not the only kind of disaster metropolitan areas face. California deals with earthquakes, and the midwest must endure tornadoes and floods. Needless, to say, terrorist strikes of the 9/11 variety continue to be a very real threat to American cities. There are also chemical plant explosions, massive fires, and disasters we haven't imagined that have yet to occur. Leaving behind the Big Easy sets an extraordinarily bad precedent. If we can turn our backs on New Orleans, then we can turn our backs on any city. One for all and all for one.

For me, such an argument is a winner at face value, but it might not be very persuasive to a moderate American who tends to value specifics. What is it about New Orleans, as opposed to other cities, that makes it worth saving? That's where the "fund its cultural activities" part of the question might come to play.

Obviously, New Orleans is utterly unlike any other city in the country, with an extraordinarily rich history, pulling in bits and pieces from French, English, Spanish, African, and Native American cultures, stewing it all in a gumbo pot, and serving it up as the Big Easy. New Orleans is the keeper of the American Mardi Gras tradition. Jazz was born there. The city nursed such diverse literary figures as Tennessee Williams and William Burroughs. The Crescent City has also done a much better job than most American cities of preserving its historic architecture--simply walking around in New Orleans is a deeply cultural experience.

Like I said, this is a no-brainer.

However, my fear is that, in a mass-media dominated mainstream culture such as ours, regular Americans might not understand why these things are so insanely valuable. That is, I'm afraid that America now views culture, conceptually, as something one buys at the Walmart, or watches on TV, that culture is plastic, made by corporations, and infinitely replaceable. If culture, then, is just another product among millions of products, what does it matter if New Orleans lives or dies?

What do you say to a person who thinks that way?

More Real Art Reruns tomorrow.

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