The Krewe du Vieux parade makes its way through the French Quarter, mocking public officials and the tragedy of hurricane Katrina. Photograph: Mary Ann Chastain/AP
As the carnival season gets into its Mardi Gras swing over the next couple of weekends, attention turns to the cities where the day is most famed. One of those is New Orleans, and after Katrina it is impossible it can proceed as if the hurricane never hit.
A report in the Times suggests some find the prospect of bacchanalian revelry inappropriate in the circumstances. There are millions of tonnes of debris, scores of uninhabitable neighbourhoods and the memories of 700 dead. In a rather bleak reflection of life in the city, the only corporate sponsor who has answered an appeal for donations is a company that makes rubbish sacks.
But the show, as shows do, will go on.
The front page of the New Orleans Times-Picayune - which existed as a website alone when the printworks were flooded - sums up the two sides. The top half is devoted to Mardi Gras 2006 - the parades and the parties - while the bottom focuses news that concerns the city - the management of the flood defences, the investigation into the disaster. One video report combines the two, covering the Krewe du Vieux parade mocking Katrina and public officials. This year's parade was titled "C'est Levee," a play on "C'est la vie".
Bearing in mind carnival likely began as festival of irreverence and mocking of authority before the strictures of Lent, such sentiments seem doubly appropriate. The great carnival theorist, Russian writer Mikhail Bakhtin, wrote of it as a mood that turns the normal order on its head.
It is also about having fun, but with purpose. A post on the New Orleans Metroblogging site points out that carnival is not just a distraction from the "grim realities" of life in the city. "We don't do this as a circus to bring in tourist money. We do it for ourselves. We do it for a release," writes Chris Martel. "We're not ignoring our problems or trying to bring attention to them; we're laughing about them. That's what makes New Orleans so great."
