With New Orleans’ Carnival forthcoming, a look back at last year’s chaos

Submitted to It’s Going Down

Carnival is right around the corner, and with it boundless opportunities for upsetting the status quo in New Orleans. In fact the Carnival chaos has been generalizing in recent years — as hostility towards gentrification repeatedly outmaneuvers the city’s hopelessly undermanned police force — but rarely have such newfangled techniques been employed to capture the hijinks. In the lead up to this year’s early Mardi Gras on February 9, the following newly released video recaps one of this past year’s rowdiest parades, Krewe of Heiress.

Now in its fourth year, Heiress is the parade of discord that unrepentantly arose from the ashes of the more longstanding Krewe of Eris following its massive mardi gras brawl with the cops back in 2011. Legally unpermitted, politically uncircumscribed, Heiress is part of an ongoing Carnival tradition whose only apparent mainstays are music, fire, and reckless disregard for order. This year Heiress slipped past police attempting to prevent it from entering the city’s most coveted neighborhood, the French Quarter, before ending with a bonfire on the tourist-ridden Frenchman Street.

For a more in-depth critical history and analysis of New Orleans’ Carnival, check out the article: Farewell to the Flesh: Notes on a Cybernetic Carnival