Treme: New Orleans Remix

Abstract

The three seasons of Treme broadcast so far on HBO show how life, in all its forms (economic, social, cultural), resumed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The multi-track dimension of the show (we see bits and pieces of the existence of common people, without a rigid narrative structure) falls into one form of the serial narrative, which tends to erase the notions of beginning and ending and gives the impression of a flow in which we get caught for the duration of each episode. The passages from one narrative arc to another occur very fluidly, evoking a musical construction. Indeed, by using as a main structure the different musical performances which punctuate the series, Treme is above all a recreation of the rhythm and beat of a city: music accompanies the important moments of the lives of these characters, and the major stages of the plot and of character development seem to follow the typical jazz structure – recurring phrases submitted to variations and improvisations. The combination of historical facts and fiction in this musical structure also alllows Treme to take up highly political issues: it reflects the specificity of a city that refuses to give in, and strongly defends its culture. This article focuses on the way these original narrative and aesthetic choices manage to echo a political questioning of the nature of the trauma that hit New Orleans in 2005. Far from being a natural, inevitable disaster like the hurricane itself, the flooding which ensued was, in Creighton Bernette’s terms (the character performed by John Goodman) “a man-made catastrophe, a federal fuck up of epic proportions, and decades in the making.” Treme’s fictional enterprise could thus be seen as an attempt to reorchestrate this recent history and its human consequences, unlike stereotypical media or political representations.