Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras is the American version of Carnival which is mainly celebrated in New Orleans, Louisiana. Because of its commercial influences, this event has been given a lot of hype. It’s is a rare mix of local flare and participants from across the nation celebrating with drinks, beads and outlandish costumes. People check their identity at the door and become someone new. Crowley calls this the “’reversal phenomenon’ where adults play children, children play adults, men play women and women men, the rich poor and the poor rich” (218). People are able to come together in this form of expression, accepting and redefine their exterior. Shohat and Stam state, “By calling attention to the paradoxical attractiveness of the grotesque body, carnival rejects what might be called the ‘fascism of beauty,’ the construction of an ideal type of language of beauty in relation to which other types are seen as inferior, ‘dialectical’ variations” (46). Carnival is an ample medium to question traditional beauty and construct new forms of beauty.