Spike Lee and the ‘Bipolar Parlance of Life’ in New Orleans

Travel Blog  •  Eva Holland  •  08.24.10 | 5:24 PM ET

Spike Lee’s new documentary, If God is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise, is airing on HBO this week. It’s a follow-up to his award-winning 2006 Katrina documentary, “When the Levees Broke,” and Salon’s Billy Sothern, a NOLA resident, says it nails the voice of the city. Money quote:

The people telling the story in this documentary are many of the same people whose names appear in the paper. Some are policy wonks; others, activists or artists; but nearly all are fervent New Orleanians. Some of them speak in a strongly held hyperbole that hints at madness or mania, both about the good and the bad here. There are angry words, never precisely defined, about “the powers that be” and their efforts at “ethnic cleansing” on the one hand, and on the other, references to the Saints’ Super Bowl win that suggest a local belief that the victory was an act of God, as if New Orleans, like the long-suffering Job, had been rewarded for its faith. This is the bipolar parlance of life here, stemming from the widely held belief that the city is vastly better than, worse than, and not really a part of the rest of the country.

(Via The Atlantic)

Tags: Documentaries, Hurricane Katrina, North America, United States, Louisiana, New Orleans, News and Briefs

Eva Holland is co-editor of World Hum. She is a former associate editor at Up Here and Up Here Business magazines, and a contributor to Vela. She's based in Canada's Yukon territory.


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