Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2009 - (Page 29) AN ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATION FOR “BEST WRITING, MOTION PICTURE STORY”AND THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR MUSIC ADDED TO THE FILM’S MYSTIQUE. Story’s footsteps, the James Stewart film Thunder Bay (1953) revisited Louisiana’s relationship with the petroleum industry. Stewart in the role of a wildcatter hopes to strike it rich in a hostile town of Cajun fishermen south of Lake Charles. Hollywood complicated Flaherty’s Cajun isolation trope, however, by equating violence with backwardness. Similar characterizations continued to make their way onto film such as Southern Comfort (1981), No Mercy (1986), and most recently, The Water Boy (1998). Film’s great power then lies in the medium’s ability to project ethnic stereotypes as cultural reality. Especially under the label “documentary,” films like Louisiana Story suggest an “authentic” rendering of cultural information even though scenes are staged and cutand-paste editing viscerally creates a sense of behavioral continuity. Flaherty created magical sequences by harnessing the power of moving pictures. Alongside Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie, Louisiana Story became a foundational reference from which Americans created stereotypical caricatures of Cajun Louisiana. As the film circulated in theatres, at international film festivals, and eventually on national American television when ABC broadcast Louisiana Story in February 1957, the “documentary” projected the illusion of authenticity to an unsuspecting and uninformed audience. Perhaps we should rethink our perception of Louisiana Story as documenting the post-World War II Cajun reality. Rather, as Helen van Dongen suggests, “Flaherty is not a documentarian; he makes it all up … [His films] are part of our history of film-making, but I do hesitate to call them documentaries. They are Flaherty-films, and worthwhile enjoying.” LCV Louisiana native Ryan André Brasseaux is a doctoral candidate at Yale University. A former research associate for public radio’s American Routes hosted by Nick Spitzer, Brasseaux has served as a Cajun cultural expert for the National Council for the Traditional Arts, Associated Press, National Public Radio, Public Radio International, Canadian Broadcast Corporation, National Film Board of Canada, and the Food Network. His newest book, Cajun Breakdown: The Emergence of an American Made Music (Oxford University Press), will debut in June 2009. All photographs were restored by Tika Laudun. PHOTO BY ELEMORE MORGAN, SR. Frank’s Theater in Abbeville was the site of the regional premiere of Louisiana Story on February 20, 1949. Spring 2009/LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 29
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