Screen Machine

Feature: A love letter to Treme

At the end of episode three of Treme, a group of Mardi Gras Indians gather in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans to pay their respects to one of their members who died in the flood. As they perform a traditional chant, a Katrina Tour Bus pulls up with a gaggle of tourists inside, excited to stumble across an example of “authentic” New Orleans culture. The Indian chief, played by Clarke Peters (Lester Freamon from The Wire) orders them away with righteous fury. The bus driver, embarrassed at this trespass, respects his wishes and drives the bus away. It’s a moment that forces the viewer to consider their own position as something of a televisual tourist. The televisual tourist trade is booming with such films as Slumdog Millionaire, District 9 and Sin Nombre utilising their exotically impoverished locations to find success in award ceremonies and at the box office. Yet with the television show Treme, creator David Simon proves himself (as he did with The Wire) adept at transcending such fare. And he does this by taking seriously the responsibility of representing the reality of the milieu that is Treme’s setting: the various suburbs of New Orleans, some months after the catastrophe of 2005.

Treme is something of a creative risk for David Simon. As deliberately paced and expansive as The Wire was, the “War on Drugs” was a sexy enough issue to propel its story forward in a way that was comfortable to an audience brought up on SVU. That is, even with its complexities, The Wire benefited from the narrative hook common to all cop shows: we want to see whether the good guys will get the bad guys. Treme doesn’t have this kind of implicit destination. With a large cast of characters ranging from local musicians to lawyers, DJs and chefs, Treme’s concerns are much more elusive than that of The Wire: it’s concerned with the business of how life goes on, and on a larger scale, with how culture and communities are built and sustained.

This differentiation is something that David Simon is able to work to the series’ advantage. The Wire, as a sustained critique of the institutions that perpetuate misery and injustice in the American city, did not find much time to discuss the beauty in life that might make justice worth fighting for. Treme, on the other hand, is primarily interested in that which is essential about New Orleans: its music. This allows the series to luxuriate in the visceral pleasure of performing and experiencing music in New Orleans, making Treme something of a musical. Episode one opens with a truly bravura 7-minute musical sequence. Beginning with a montage of extreme close-ups – a mouth sucking on a saxophone reed, a tattooed arm, the white synthetic feathers of an Indian costume blowing in the breeze – we are introduced to textures that make us attuned to the environment in its specificity.

On the soundtrack we hear horns warming up and a crowd gathering. As drums flare up, the shots widen and we see the downtrodden neighbourhood, the crowd of mostly black people and the National Guard looking on. Suddenly a booming rap song interjects, dominating the soundtrack as a car of young black men drive past a policeman – momentarily recalling Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing in its deft negotiation of identity through music. As the rap music dies down, we’re introduced to musicians slowly coming to a pay agreement for the second line march that is about to begin. A lone tuba starts up an upbeat riff and gradually all the musicians join in, spilling through the streets, gradually building to an impossibly joyous climax as the musicians chant in unison: I feel like funkin’ it up! I feel like funkin’ it up!

Treme’s achievement with music goes way beyond merely presenting music that is fun to listen to. The sound design is phenomenal in the way it highlights instruments based on their proximity to the camera, giving the music a different quality depending on where the band is located. For whether the music is “good” or “bad” isn’t so important as is giving the viewer an impression of how this music is experienced by a specific community within a certain space. It’s indicative of a theme running through all Simon’s projects – a journalistic impulse to let the environment tell its own story. The creators’ dedication to detail extends from the presentation of the music to even costume design. Remember at this year’s Oscars when the winner for Best Costume Design, Sandy Powell, spoke out for the overlooked work of designers who work on contemporary films? Treme is a great example of what she was talking about. The costuming of Treme is astounding, giving us insight not just into individual characters but also social-economic situations in a way that is eloquent but never cartoonish or broad.

Yet despite the change in subject matter from The Wire (from analysing institutional dysfunction to music culture), David Simon continues with Treme his exploration of the way larger social forces effect individuals. One story arc has Melissa Leo (Frozen River) as a civil rights lawyer attempting to trace a missing person, exploring the bungled management of prison inmates after Katrina. Another story arc has Clarke Peters head towards a violent confrontation with authorities after he attempts to open up the Cooper projects, which have been kept closed by Federal authorities despite being unharmed by Katrina, so that his Indian tribe may return to the city.

What I like about Treme’s representation of New Orleans culture is its refusal to homogenise the community. You could say that a theme of Treme is “the People versus the Man” but the creators resist reductively presenting New Orleans’ people as a singular People. I think I respond to this especially coming from Melbourne where we are often looking outside to communities overseas we perceive as “more real” or “more authentic” or “more cool”. We have a pretty great local music culture yet New York and London still exist in the Melbourne imagination as fetishized ideals for creative aspirants. We believe that New York ‘s streets will make you feel brand new; that its big lights will inspire you. We believe that if we could be a New York hipster that life would literally be like this:

New Orleans is easily as mythic as New York yet Treme is kinda refreshing in that it allows New Orleans to be a complex place full of individuals, each with their own messy, individual desires. Its New Orleans consists not just of the music legends but also the mediocre street busker or the jazz musician forced to play greeting music at an airport to make a buck. Some of the inhabitants are politically engaged. Some are apathetic. Some inhabitants are cool like Kermit Ruffins who plays himself in the series. Some are kind of obnoxious like Davis McAlary (Steve Zahn), the community radio DJ slash aspiring musician.

McAlary is actually a great character: He’s simultaneously self-important and clueless, one moment waging war against his new gay neighbours he believes are gentrifying the neighbourhood then getting beaten up in a bar for using the word “nigger”, thinking he’s  entitled to do so because his friends are black. McAlary is a pretentious knob who, despite everything, manages to remain loveable, redeemed by his unwavering support for the musicians of New Orleans. He makes you cringe but he’s also an essential part of the city’s fabric. There’s a lesson to be learnt in how we respond as an audience to McAlary, that the ideal of community is not about an ideal way of living as such but about learning to live with others in all their imperfection. Treme may make you fall in love with New Orleans. It may even make you want to visit there as a tourist. But in a crazy way, Treme makes New Orleans seem a lot like Melbourne, and in doing so it also made me fall in love with home again.

Brad Nguyen is a co-editor of Screen Machine. He studied Cinema Studies at the University of Melbourne, was the film reviewer for Triple R Breakfasters and has written for Senses of Cinema.

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