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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 August 2010
This essay examines detective fiction that takes New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina as setting and theme. It explores the ways in which stories told in novels and prime-time TV shows across the interlocking genres of police procedural and crime thriller have steered a sensationalist course through the recovery of the city over the last five years. It considers the role and representation of the New Orleans Police Department in particular, and of law enforcement officials more broadly, as post-Katrina protagonists who protect and serve the city, a rejoinder to media-made myths according to which they deserted their posts in the days after the storm. It closes with a case study of FOX TV's K-Ville, the first television series to depict New Orleans post-Katrina in a sustained way, and investigates the extent to which it was judged harshly for translating the disaster into a formulaic cop show. Deep-seated assumptions about genre, narrative form, the burden of representation and popular ideas about this particular locale inform the reception of these genre fictions.
1 Joyce Carol Oates, “Imaginary Cities: America,” in Michael C. Jaye and Ann Chalmers Watts, eds., Literature and the Urban Experience: Essays on the City and Literature (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1981), available at http://jco.usfca.edu/bellow03.html, last accessed 10 Sept. 2009.
2 Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (London: Picador, 1999; first published 1998), 6. The photograph is entitled “January 1995 Storm (Long Beach)”.
3 Fossett, Judith Jackson, “Sold Down the River,” PMLA, 122, 1 (Jan. 2007), 325–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 328.
4 For example, Rosemary Radford Ruether comments on The Economist in “After Katrina: Poverty, Race and Environmental Degradation,” Dialog: A Journal of Theology, 45, 2 (Summer 2006), 176–83, 176; Derrick Price in a paper entitled “Photographing Dereliction and Disaster: The FSA Archive and the Katrina Exposed Exhibition,” the Society for Southern Literature conference, New Orleans, April 2010.
5 John Gregory Brown, Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery (London: Sceptre, 1994), 1.
6 For a reading of Déjà Vu, see Briallen Hopper's “The City that Déjà Vu Forgot: Memory, Mapping, and the Americanization of New Orleans,” in Deborah Barker and Kathryn McKee, eds., American Cinema and the Southern Imaginary (Athens: University of Georgia Press, forthcoming 2010).
7 Wroe, Nicholas, “After the Storm,” The Guardian, 17 Nov. 2007, 11Google Scholar.
8 James Lee Burke, The Tin Roof Blowdown (London: Orion, 2007), 148. Subsequent references will be included in the text.
9 Tony Dunbar, Tubby Meets Katrina (Montgomery, AL: New South Books, 2006), 123. Subsequent references will be included in the text.
10 Virginia Heffernan, “Faster New Orleans Cops, Your Drams Want You Back,” New York Times, 17 Sept. 2007.
11 Greg Herren, Murder in the Rues Chartres (New York: Alyson, 2007), 22.
12 Bob Adamov, Promised Land (Cuyahoga Falls, OH: Packard Island Publishing, 2006), iv, ix.
13 David Carr, “More Horrible than Truth: News Reports,” New York Times, 19 Sept. 2005, at http://ww.nytimes.com/2005/09/19/business/media/, accessed 20 Sept. 2005.
14 Barry, Ellen, Gold, Scott and Braun, Stephen, “In Katrina's Aftermath: Chaos and Survival; New Orleans Slides into Chaos; U.S. Scrambles to Send Troops; Snipers Fire on Rescue Efforts, and Corpses Litter Public Areas as Rage Builds among Refugees. Bush Is to Visit the Stricken Region Today,” Los Angeles Times, 2 Sept. 2005, A1Google Scholar.
15 Rosenblatt, Susannah and Rainey, James, “Katrina Takes a Toll on Truth, News Accuracy,” Los Angeles Times, 27 Sept. 2005, A16Google Scholar.
16 NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, 29 Sept. 2005.
17 Anderson Cooper, CNN News, 1 Sept. 2005.
18 Brian Williams quoted in Time, 11 Jan. 2010, 2.
19 A. C. Thomas, “Katrina's Hidden Race War,” The Nation, 5 Jan. 2009, at http://www.thenation.com/doc/200901505/, accessed 20 Jan. 2009.
20 CBS, Without A Trace, season 5, episode 6, “The Calm Before,” aired 29 Oct. 2006.
21 Heroes, season 2, episode 4, aired 17 Oct. 2007.
22 Bones, season 1, episode 19, “The Man in the Morgue,” aired 19 April 2006.
23 Mark Lorando, “Last Week's K-ville Episode Was Probably Its Last,” Times-Picayune, 24 Dec. 2007.
24 Robert Bianco, “Tasteless K-ville is the big sleazy,” USA Today, 18 Sept. 2007.
25 James Lee Burke quoted in Wroe, “After the Storm,” 11.
26 Berlins, Marcel, “Blowing Up a Storm,” The Times, 15 Dec. 2007, 1GGoogle Scholar.
27 Gilbert, Matthew, “New Orleans Provides Turbulent Backdrop for K-ville,” Boston Globe, 17 Sept. 2007, C1Google Scholar.
28 Weber, Wendy Fox, “K-ville puts harsh spotlight on post-Katrina New Orleans,” Napierville Sun (IL), 17 Sept. 2007, B1Google Scholar.
29 Jonathan Storm, “K-ville Blows Ill for New Orleans,” Philadelphia Enquirer, 17 Sept. 2007.
30 Royce Osborn quoted in Christine Cupaiuolo, “The Culture of K-Ville,” American Prospect, 17 Sept. 2007.
31 Chris Rose, “K-ville Gets It,” Times-Picayune, 18 Sept. 2007, at blog.nola.com/chrisrose/2007/09/kville_gets_it.html, accessed 10 Sept. 2009.
32 Mike Davis, “Who Is Killing New Orleans?”, The Nation, 23 March 2006, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060410/davis/2. Rukmini Callimachi, “FEMA Closes Office in New Orleans,” Washington Post, 2 May 2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/05/02/AR20060502011_72_pf.html. Josh P. Hamilton, “New Orleans Offers $8 Billion of Aid for Rebuilding, Gets No Takers,” Bloomberg.com, 6 March 2006, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a2t9fF32tfoU&refer=us.
33 Oliver Thomas in January 2006, referenced in Baum, Dan, “Letter from New Orleans. The Lost Year: Behind the Failure to Rebuild,” New Yorker, 21 Aug. 2006, 53Google Scholar.
34 Rose.
35 Rose, Chris, “An Open Letter to the Producers of K-ville,” Times-Picayune, 23 Sept. 2007, 11Google Scholar.
36 Chris Rose, “Gumbo Party Time! K-Ville spawns a new Monday-night Tradition,” Times-Picayune, 7 Oct. 2007, at http://blog.nola.com/chrisrose/2007/10/gumbo_party_time_kville_spawns.html.
37 Jonathan Lisco in conversation with Josh Lesser, “Getting to K-Ville: Jonathan Lisco Talks About New Fox TV Series,” 21 Aug. 2007. Blog Critics at http://blogcritics.org/video/article/getting-to-k-ville-jonathan-lisco/, accessed 12 March 2010.
38 Jonathan Lisco in conversation with Josh Lesser.
39 Lorando, “Last Week's K-ville Episode Was Probably Its Last.
40 David Simon quoted in Higgins, Charlotte, “Hurricane Katrina Drama,” The Guardian, 20 May 2009, 11Google Scholar.
41 Blumenfeld, Larry, “How Treme Can Get It Right,” Village Voice, 30 March 2010, 1Google Scholar.
42 Hank Stuever, “From ‘The Wire’ Creator Is Treme, Insightful Look at Post-Katrina New Orleans,” 8 April 2010, at www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/../AR2010040704026.html, accessed 16 April 2010.
