Grumbling and whining and grumbling
Oh, TV. Plz to be desisting with ur rongness, kthnx?
There seems to be some sort of Law of Television: nobody gets New Orleans right.
Some of the RONG is easy stuff, too. Very fixable stuff.
"Bones" did a post-Katrina New Orleans episode, and the Duckie was seriously unimpressed. Now I'm mainlining "Criminal Minds," and I'm discovering that they sent the team to play in my backyard as well. And it was a good episode. A good episode that I really, truly enjoyed.
But, y'all. TV people. For real, y'all.
I'ma help you out. You ready?
The Two Most Common Errors in Portraying New Orleans:
I know I'm a ridiculous, picky whiner with far too much NOLA snobbery, and I can't expect the average actor or screenwriter to know what a muffuletta is.
But... it's where I live. Get it right, huh?
There seems to be some sort of Law of Television: nobody gets New Orleans right.
Some of the RONG is easy stuff, too. Very fixable stuff.
"Bones" did a post-Katrina New Orleans episode, and the Duckie was seriously unimpressed. Now I'm mainlining "Criminal Minds," and I'm discovering that they sent the team to play in my backyard as well. And it was a good episode. A good episode that I really, truly enjoyed.
But, y'all. TV people. For real, y'all.
I'ma help you out. You ready?
The Two Most Common Errors in Portraying New Orleans:
- First, any character supposedly born or living in the city should call the place by its name. It is "new OR-linz." Depending on what neighborhood you're from and how old you are, it might also be "new ALL-inz," "new ALL-ee-inz," or "new OR-lee-inz."
Non-native characters calling it "new or-LEENZ" will have outed themselves as Not From Here. New Orleanian characters will be patient and forgiving with this error, but inwardly they will cringe.
Non-native characters calling it "N'Awlins," especially in an attempt to be cute, will be hog-tied in City Park and left for the vicious geese.
- Would you please stop making your poor actors put on their best approximation of a Southern accent? Because we don't speak that here. There are numerous dialects, white and black, and they vary intensely by neighborhood. None of them is a standard-issue Deep South drawl. Go here and listen.
I also understand the temptation to write "Cajun" characters and force some guy who's lived in LA for the past five years to drop "cher" into sentences. (By the way, Criminal Minds, no dude whose last name is Thibodeaux is going to pronounce it "share." It's "sha." Short "a," as in "apple.") They almost never manage it convincingly, which is not their fault, given how little-understood Cajun culture is to begin with. But since New Orleans isn't Cajun, you have a wonderful excuse to stop embarrassing your cast! Yayyye!
I know I'm a ridiculous, picky whiner with far too much NOLA snobbery, and I can't expect the average actor or screenwriter to know what a muffuletta is.
But... it's where I live. Get it right, huh?