Edwin Arnaudin
“This guy wants to tell me we’re living in a community. Don’t make me laugh. I’m living in America, and in America, you’re on your own. America’s not a country. It’s just a business. Now fucking pay me.” —Jackie Cogan, Killing Them Softly
Despite the cynicism of Brad Pitt’s hitman in regard to Barack Obama’s 2008 election victory speech, there truly was a sense of hope and change in the air during the junior Senator from Illinois’s U.S. presidential campaign. The first Black man to be nominated for president by a major political party, the Democrat united progressive voters of all skin colors with “Yes, we can” optimism and a sense that a broken country could repair old wounds and move forward together.
Buoyed by this wave of positivity and potential, open-hearted viewers craved stories of racial equity efforts that made one believe that better days lay ahead. They appreciated old, problematic behaviors and mindsets being challenged, even (especially?) if it made them and the institutions that enable white supremacy uncomfortable. Without that discomfort of confronting the nation’s ugly, racist past, the change at the heart of Obama’s rhetoric could not truly take root.
One of the films that most fully captured that spirit — and which could be just the balm many viewers need in these backasswards times — was Margaret Brown’s The Order of Myths. The documentary premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2008 and played at several other film festivals while Obama was sweeping the Democratic primaries.
The film chronicles Mobile, Ala.’s Mardi Gras celebrations, which began in 1703 — 15 years before New Orleans was established as a city. A Mobile native and the daughter of the 1966 Mardi Gras queen, Brown was granted behind-the-scenes access to the 2007 festivities and is sly about the order in which she introduces that year’s regal honorees. By first presenting white queen Helen Meaher and Black king Joseph Roberson, it appears that the royal couple is multiracial. But once Black queen Stefannie Lucas is identified, Brown drops the proverbial bomb: the city’s celebrations are segregated.
With that revelation in play, The Order of Myths — which takes its name from the oldest continually parading mystic society in existence — becomes a fascinating look at a place that’s emblematic of the nation’s racial woes. In typical Southern fashion, no one says anything explicitly racist on camera. But similar to the silent oppression that Confederate monuments symbolize, those divisive sentiments are evident beneath the facade of gentility, and some residents hide it better than others.
Earning her subjects’ trust, Brown captures candid conversations that convey lingering pain in the Black community and well-intentioned yet ignorant behavior among their white neighbors. During a post-screening Q&A at the film’s Mobile premiere in summer 2008, Brown said that her goal for viewers was to “get people talking about things we don’t talk about,” and many of the individuals whom she and her skeleton crew follow do just that as well — often to their own cringe-inducing detriment.
Documenting the opulence of festivities that one interviewee notes had a $227 million economic impact in 2004, Brown deftly combines photos of past Mardi Gras celebrations, footage of the extravagant 2007 celebrations, and insights from Black and white Mobile natives, presenting a vibrant portrait of traditions, secret societies, and Jim Crow separatism. Though numerous participants — including self-professed liberals — don’t come off well, their follies provide terrific fodder for the types of discussions that the director hopes her film will spark.
As more Mobile history is revealed, it becomes clear how necessary such dialogue is for the city’s residents. Home to one of the nation’s last reported lynchings in 1981, Mobile was also the site of the schooner Clotilda, the last known slave ship in the U.S. That vessel’s owner, Timothy Meaher, is an ancestor of Mardi Gras queen Helen Meaher, and when a stunned Lucas learns (on camera, no less) that her own ancestors were on the Clotilda, it adds a disturbing new layer to the queens’ subsequent mingling.
But mingle they do, and while no blunt conversations occur to relieve the deep-seated tension, merely attending each other’s celebrations and spending quality time together is viewed as significant progress. As Roberson notes in a post-Mardi Gras interview, he craves more genuine interaction with the white community, but thinks society has a ways to go before they can “break bread” and really get to know each other.
Seventeen years after The Order of Myths’ release and Obama’s ascension, Mobile Mardi Gras remains segregated and the nation feels as far from hope, change, and “Yes, we can” as we’ve been since the 44th U.S. President left office in 2017. The time couldn’t be better to experience those 2008 discomforts again and celebrate a moment not that long ago when great things seemed possible.
“The Order of Myths” is streaming on Netflix and Kanopy.
