Mardi Gras, Public Affection [read online | download PDF]

A related article called "Marketing Mardi Gras: Commodification, Spectacle and the Political Economy of Tourism in New Orleans" by Kevin Gotham is available to download as a PDF here.

TEACHING SOCIOLOGY (Review of Mardi Gras: Made in China)

The documentary Mardi Gras: Made in China looks behind the scenes of the global “bead trade” –the brightly-colored plastic beads that are thrown from floats and balconies to celebrants in the French Quarter of New Orleans.  The director/producer, David Redmon, juxtaposes interviews and images of the young women working in a Chinese bead factory, located in a rural region of Fuzhou, with young American women and men celebrating in the streets of New Orleans during the annual Mardi Gras carnival.  Redmon also interviews the wealthy Chinese owner of the bead factory; the owner’s American counterpart, who distributes the beads; and a long-time local resident of New Orleans, Ms. Pearl.  There are no voiceover comments on the conditions or behaviors in either location; rather Redmon allows the individuals on both ends of this global market to speak for themselves.
 
Mardi Gras: Made in China has several potential sociological uses in either an undergraduate or graduate-level classroom.  From one perspective, the film is a commentary on global trade.  Cheap, plastic beads are produced in China by women who make $62 a month.  The beads are then sent halfway across the globe to become a trinket tossed by the handfuls to New Orleans partygoers.  The documentary recounts a single case of how the consumer capitalism enjoyed in wealthy nations like the United States is built upon the labor of poorly paid workers in a less developed country.  The operating principle of global capitalism is to obtain the lower costs for production.  Thus, the beads, once produced in Czechoslovakia, are now manufactured in China.  The future of Chinese bead manufacturing is uncertain; the factory owner describes growing competition in the bead market from other less developed countries, like Vietnam, that do not have the same level of safety regulations.  In a moment of apparent cognitive dissonance, this self-described capitalist owner justifies the dynamics of free market competition while simultaneously portraying his relationship with American distributor as one of traditionally-based “loyalty.”
 
The film can also be used to analyze gender relations in two very different cultural contexts.  The majority of the bead factory workers are poor, young women, some of whom left school as young as age 15 to start working in a factory that has made the male owner very wealthy.  One young woman describes her own life goal as working for the future success of her younger brother.  When she visits home, a tenement-like apartment, she presents her adolescent brother with a cheap plastic watch despite his protests of not knowing how to tell time.
 
Life in the factory compound is strict, and the factory owner describes his own role as instilling proper (gender) values.  Male and female workers are housed separately and any interaction between a male and female inside the compound can result in lost wages.  The young Chinese women seem childlike as they dance to popular music during their time off, display their stuffed animals, and walk arm-in-arm around the factory compound.  By sharp contrast, the young women on the streets of New Orleans appear jaded as they move freely around the streets of the city at night, where they unreflectively/playfully expose their breasts or other body parts to the gawking young men in exchange for cheap plastic beads.  In between these two extremes is Ms. Pearl, a woman in her late 50s, who dresses in a clown like costume for the carnival in hopes of getting beads and other small trinkets, which she plans to give to her grandchildren.
 
In a brilliant directing strategy, Redmon lets the individuals at each end of the global market see each other.  Redmon show pictures of the New Orleans celebrants to the Chinese factory workers, who exhibit embarrassment looking at the exposed body parts of the young American women.  The photos are eagerly passed around the shop floor.  One Chinese woman wonders why anyone would expose her body for these “ugly” beads.  Back in New Orleans, many of the individuals demonstrate ignorance or a lack of caring when asked where they thought the beads came from.  When asked to view images of the Chinese factory workers, some young Americans were reluctant to even view pictures; several expressed concerns that the Chinese workers might be toiling in sweatshop conditions and they didn’t want to ruin their party mood with such knowledge.  Once the Americans viewed the digital images, they described a feeling of shame in continuing to wear the beads.
 
Finally, one of the most important ways Mardi Gras: Made in China can be used in sociology classroom is to illustrate how artifacts/products are embedded with social and cultural meaning; rather the context shapes the way an individual perceives the beads.  The factory owner beams with pride because he has heard that Americans call out for his beads in the streets of New Orleans and that people treasure them.  For the factory workers,  the beads are a cheap product that Americans wear while the factory itself provides a wage for millions of unskilled Chinese laborers.  The American distributor, who goes bankrupt by the end of the film, identifies the beads as one of the many products in a vast global marketplace.  And for the young women and men in New Orleans, the beads are a token of representing either an act of sexual liberation or moment of public voyeurism, largely depending upon your gender perspective.  Finally, Redmon seems to be commenting on the disposability of many consumer good: At the end of the documentary he includes a street scene filmed the morning after carnival has ended.  A mechanical street sweeper vacuums up thousands of discarded beads left lying throughout the French Quarter.
 
Mardi Gras: Made in China was released before the summer of 2005.  In our post-Katrina environment, this documentary could open up a classroom discussion about the dynamics of class and race in the city of New Orleans or about social structure factors, such as the collapse of the tourist trade, which will make infrastructure rebuilding a challenge.  In this new social environment, the beads have taken on yet another cultural meaning.  Volunteer organizations like the Red Cross are giving beads to the disaster relief workers to show support for and solidarity with the people of New Orleans.
 
The pivotal learning – and – teaching moment comes towards the end of the film when individuals at each end of the global market see the other.  For the sociology teacher, this moment can be used to facilitate a classroom discussion about globalizations, gender, and/or social and cultural meanings.  Moving from questions such as “Whom made those beads?”  to more personal questions about who made the students’ Nike shoes, Abercrombie and Fitch sweatshirts, or Prada handbags can increase a students; level of critical analysis about significant social changes.  Without the traditional voiceover found in many educational documentaries, Redmon leaves the film open to the potential interpretations that can be based on the various perspectives recounted in his documentary.  While this means a teacher or a student may be required to gather her or his own background information about specific points raised, Mardi Gras: Made in China’s documentary style also allows the film to be used in multiple ways depending upon the teacher and the focus of the course.
 
Susan M. Alexander
Saint Mary’s College