Marketing Mardi Gras: Heritage Tourism In Rural Acadiana

Western Folklore, Summer 2003 by Ware, Carolyn E

The town of Mamou was the first to self-consciously refashion its Mardi Gras identity in the early 1950s. A group of local cultural activists, guided by a "deliberate sense of tradition" (Ancelet and Edmonds 1989:34), decided to revive and rehabilitate Mamou's dormant courir, making it more respectable and less dangerous than in the past. The Mamou run soon became widely-known, the first courir to draw large crowds of visitors. Still, most community runs continued to struggle for survival and community acceptance throughout the next few decades. Long-time participants in other courirs recall police turning Mardi Gras riders away from towns, and local club owners refusing to host the maskers' Mardi Gras dance (Durio 1992, Lejeune 1992).

The advent of what Nicholas Spitzer calls a "romantic cultural revival" (1986:7) began changing the public image of French Louisiana culture in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Cajuns took new pride in their French music, language, and other traditions. Heritage tourism followed in the 1980s in the wake of two trends: a national craze for Cajun food and music, and a serious recession in the region's oil-based economy following an oil glut. Community leaders "began desperately to look around for other ideas to develop and diversification became the buzz word of the decade" (Ancelet 1992:257). Their solution was to promote their own heritage, especially music and food. Today, Mardi Gras also is an important seasonal attraction.

ADVERTISING IMAGES

Advertising on local, parish, and state levels has played a crucial part in transforming the Cajun Mardi Gras into what Barbara KirshenblattGimblett calls a "destination." Places become destinations, she suggests, through the "production of difference" (1998:152). Promoters distinguish their place, or festival, from others by establishing its uniqueness. Marketing for the Cajun courir de Mardi Gras employs a few central motifs to create an identity based on apartness-from the rest of the country, from the quotidian, from modernity, and especially from New Orleans. Advertisements define the Cajun Mardi Gras against the big city Carnival, using a series of binary oppositions such as historical versus modern, personal versus impersonal, wholesome versus debauched, and authentic versus spurious or commercialized.

The most pervasive image is a tradition forgotten by time. French Louisiana as a whole is often seen as quaint, isolated by geography and culture, and in Barry Ancelet's words, "part of 'lost America'" (1992:256-257). Mardi Gras advertising builds on this sense of quaintness, stressing the courir's deep connections to a rural past. A Louisiana Office of Tourism Mardi Gras brochure characterizes the event as a kind of living history, suggesting that "in rural communities . . . 'the running of the Mardi Gras'-takes a 9 19th century flavor" as horseback riders go from farm to farm (Louisana Office of Tourism 1991). Photographs reinforce this message of an idealized pastoral setting. Most show male riders on horseback against a hazy backdrop of prairie countryside, although some present-day runs use trucks, include women, or make stops in town, and captains and riders carry cell phones.