Space, Place, and New Orleans on Television From Frank’s Place to Treme

• Published in: Television & new media Vol. 13; no. 3; pp. 193 - 212
• Main Author: Morgan Parmett, Helen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.05.2012
• Subjects: Cities; Corporations; Hiring Practices; Mass media; Mass Media Images; Media; Natural disasters; New Orleans, Louisiana; Place; Programming (Broadcast); Race; Social representations; Social Responsibility; Social responsibility of business; Space; Television; Tourism; U.S.A; cultural politics; race; cities; cultural economy; television; media; critical media studies; and space
• ISSN: 1527-4764; 1552-8316
• DOI: 10.1177/1527476411421351

This article compares the HBO series Treme to an earlier television series that was also set in the Tremé neighborhood—Frank’s Place. I suggest that whereas for Frank’s Place, media scholars’ emphasis on the show’s representational practices of race and place was entirely appropriate, these questions are not sufficient to make sense of Treme. The latter enjoins media scholars to ask a different set of questions that examine both the show’s practices within the city as well as the city’s practices that implicate the show. Specifically, I suggest that the show requires an analysis of labor and hiring practices, tourism, and corporate social responsibility in the city. In so doing, I propose considering Treme not in terms of its representational practices, but rather, as a set of spatial practices bound up with the material production of city space as well as its citizen-subjects.