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DGSmith
Damon Smith is a New York-based film journalist. He has written features, profiles, and reviews for The Boston Globe, Time Out New York, Filmmaker magazine, Senses of Cinema ...
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Ball and Trains: "The Order of Myths" Unmasks America's Oldest Mardi GrasBy Damon Smith Alabama native Margaret Brown made a strong impression four years ago with “Be Here to Love Me,” her tender docu-portrait of late Texas troubadour Townes Van Zandt, the renowned songwriter (and drinker) who died in 1997 of a heart embolism. For her second feature, Brown travels to her hometown of Mobile to examine the noxiously persistent racial segregation of that city’s tradition-soaked Mardi Gras festivities. Home to America’s first Mardi Gras, celebrated since 1703, Mobile today hosts mystic societies, masked balls, exotic pageants and parades, and two glitzy coronation ceremonies—one all-black, one all-white—that reflect and reinforce embarrassingly hoary social codes inherited from the antebellum South. With unprecedented access to the full-tilt preparations and events surrounding the separate carnivals, Brown interviews members of the Order of Myths and the Strikers, two of the oldest secret societies, as well as tailors, float makers, couturiers, and one black activist, Dora Finley, who seeks to raise consciousness about Mobile’s Jim Crow–style celebrations. But the true subjects of her film are elementary schoolteachers Joseph Roberson and Steffanie Lucas, the 2007 black Mardi Gras king and queen, and Helen Meaher, the latter’s wealthy counterpart in the white royal court. Little by little, she reveals the intriguing subtleties of race and class at work beneath all the revelry, and how Lucas and Meaher have a shared history revolving around the Clothilde, a slave ship illegally smuggled into the U.S. by Meaher’s ancestor. (Brown’s own intriguing personal connection to Mardi Gras surfaces even more delicately at the end of the film.) Gorgeously photographed by DP Michael Simmonds (“Man Push Cart,” “Chop Shop”) and crisply edited by Brown, who hews close to the pure observational style of traditional documentary, “The Order of Myths” is an exemplary exercise in highly localized, quasi-ethnographic filmmaking. We see and learn a great deal about Mardi Gras, local Mobile history (some of it, like the founding of Africatown, shameful), the importance of tradition in the Deep South, and the racially coded social attitudes that accompany its 21st-century modes of expression. Despite a wealth of potential gotcha moments, Brown never allows the film to adopt a snidely didactic or indignant tone, even though certain moments — as when riders on a white carnival float deliberately refrain from tossing Moon Pies to black children—seem to scream out for Michael Moore’s derisive touch. To her credit, Brown is more interested in dynamics than polemics. One of the most sympathetic voices in the film, in fact, belongs to Brittain Youngblood, a smart, classically pretty blonde debutante whose Brown University pedigree and progressive outlook on the race divide can’t quite cover the oddly patronizing relationship she has with her black nanny. But those contradictions and complexities are what buoy the sociological interest of “Myths.” Though site-specific, the film unravels the knotted racial politics of an age-old ritual, but it’s ultimately a reflecting pool for how strained race relations are in the United States as a whole, evident in daily news reports on the neck-and-neck presidential race between John McCain and Barack Obama. Ambivalence is fundamental to our all-American rituals, Brown’s film suggests, as well as the elaborate myths and masks that sustain our self-identity. The Order of Myths, 2008. CinemaGuild. Posted on 07/23/08 by: DGSmith 4 Comments
Margaret Posted on 07/28/08 
TheDailyKirk Posted on 08/04/08 
Between Damon's review and this response I have to see this movie now. I remember about 2 years ago I read about a highschool that had their first non-segregated prom ever. I was amazed that segregation could have persisted so long. It challenges the idea of race and racism in America on many levels. It is a charged subject for sure and i am really interested to see how Ms. Brown deals with the dynamite. I think Margaret (the commenter) makes a good point. No one wants to be reduced to some stupid morality tale about how everyone is the same color inside. From Damon's description, the movie sounds like it is trying to deal with the situation on a very nuanced level, seeing the complexities and shades of grey instead of making everything (for lack of a better term) black and white. DGSmith Posted on 08/05/08
Margaret, What I found so intriguing about Brown's film was its nonjudgmental stance toward what it depicted: a cultural expression of history and tradition, to be sure, but also a social dynamic that, like it or not, reflects a larger divisiveness in our society as a whole. You are right to point out that people often point to the South as the only place where racial disparity persists. If you've ever been to Boston or Hartford or Pittsburgh or heck, even New York City, you know that things are much more complicated than that. I guess that was my point in linking Brown's film--which is about a very specific ritual in a very specific locale--to the larger reality we all live with in the U.S. Obama's campaign, for instance, has polarized people within the black community. And it has galvanized people as well, both because of his race and in spite of it. You may have an elected black mayor, but that doesn't tell me much about the attitudes that have sustained a segregated parade and coronation ceremony in Mobile. Kirk hasn't seen the movie yet, but he hit the nail square on when he said that an overt display of voluntary segregation, such as the high-school prom he read about or the Mardi Gras in Mobile, "challenges the idea of race and racism in America." Indeed, it does. It also challenges our most treasured myths about equality and social advancement. I think Brown's film is very respectful of Mobile and its traditions. But it also subtly invites us to ponder what we witness through her camera, the history that forces people apart, and what it all means to our collective sense of identity. At least that's how I experienced it. Now if you'll please excuse me, I'm off to lunch with a minority. Chabela Posted on 08/06/08 
And FilmCatcher's actually run by a Jew and a Spic, so I think they're doing pretty good! Post a Comment
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Dear DG,
I am not posting to defend what needs not defending but to embellish the whole of Mobile and the South. We live today together in great numbers and with the browning of America so goes Mobile.I am a middle class liberal democrat and I work at a very high end boutique with many trust fund babies. I am not priviledged and I accept the place in my life that has been given but it is not anyone's fault. I find some of the stuffiness ridiculous but snobbery is not a southern thing. I feel pretty certain that Trump is not lunching with the kitchen staff, in his New York Tower, though he should. We are singled out as the only city with these elitest attitudes and it just isn't so. Also, Maggie the designer in the documentary is friends with the ladies she sews for. She makes lots of money and they shop together as well. She is well respected. Also, my fondest memories as a girl was the black parades. I understand maybe that the wealthest in our city were unaware of them but the peasants were in the streets "together". We do not do anything else separate and we have an elected black mayor. Don't misjudge everything about our city based on two weeks of a year where the "haves" of both races want the opportunity to show off. It does reign money on our city and it most certainly does "trickle down". Have you lunched with a minority this week? I have.