Image found online: DesignsbyMinaD on Etsy

In the crowds of the Money Wasters second line parade, a particular T-shirt slogan caught my eye. It read: “I’m from New Orleans NOT Louisiana.” This perfectly captured the uniqueness of the parade – the mix of dance, jazz, and eccentricity that could only be found in the city. While we did start our trip in Grand Isle, the past two weeks, we have been immersed in the culture of New Orleans. However, the t-shirt begs a crucial question: What is life like in Louisiana outside New Orleans? After traveling to Baton Rouge, the capital of the state, I have a glimpse of this.

The only excursion that Ignatius Reilly, the protagonist of John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, has taken out of New Orleans is to the city of Baton Rouge. Although, for us, it was just an hour and a half’s drive away, to Ignatius, it is comparable to venturing out into an unknown continent. Ignatius’ perspective is certainly unreliable: his failed attempt to land a job at LSU seems to retroactively color his experience of Baton Rouge and Toole exaggerates this for comic effect. This exaggeration nevertheless touches on the great sense of change as we moved upriver and North from New Orleans to Baton Rouge.

Geographically, it is instantly noticeable that, unlike New Orleans, Baton Rouge is slightly elevated over the Mississippi. Driving in, it was incredible to see the vast empty stretches of swamps and fields. While New Orleans is a lot larger and sprawling, the buildings and streets of Baton Rouge are more spaced out. As a capital city, its buildings feel imposing and authoritative.

Although Ignatius seems to have detested Baton Rouge, a lot of what he idealizes politically seems to resonate with its history. Ignatius seeks a “good, strong monarchy,” and a “good, authoritarian Pope.” In our seminar, we talked about Louisiana’s former governor Huey Long and watched the 2006 film adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s All The King’s Men, based fictively on the life of Huey Long. He has a near legendary status in the city – his infrastructure, education, and health programs modernized the state – and is remembered as a champion of the causes of the poor against big oil industrialists. At the same time, he is also remembered as a near-dictator and demagogue who used corrupt political tactics, including violence, to eliminate and threaten opposition.

“A perfect democracy can come close to looking like a dictatorship, a democracy in which the people are so satisfied they have no complaint.
”

— Huey Long

While he was assassinated on September 10, 1935, I can sense the specter of his authority in the buildings he constructed. The imposing feeling that struck me when we initially drove into the city seems to be tied to Huey Long.

I walk a few blocks down the road from our hotel and see the Old Governor’s Mansion that Huey Long built in 1929. The house is painted all white. It is on a slight elevation from the large green lawn that surrounds it. The entrance is held up by four large pillars that emulate Greek columns. The sheer size of the mansion exudes a sense of power that distinguishes it from the buildings that surround it.

The New State Capitol building, however, epitomizes this sensation of power and authority. Huey Long’s tombstone statue towers over the capitol’s gardens. Towering over this statue is the art-deco style building itself. The inside of the building has immense grandeur, and I could feel the importance of the space as I observed the governmental representatives working at their desks. Yet, when I walk outside the building, I feel like I am meant to be intimidated.

On either side of the grand steps to the entrance of the building are the two statues, “Pioneers,” and “Patriots.” The “Patriots” statue, which intends to commemorate those who have died defending the country, has a large medieval soldier thrusting his sword into the ground.

Andrew remarked that the art-deco style often could teeter into fascistic realms, and this unnerving statue gave off that impression. The “Pioneers” statue features a giant woman, supposedly representing progress, surrounded by French and Spanish explorers, as well as the Native American inhabitants of the land. While it is nice to see an acknowledgement of the indegenious population, seeing them grouped under the colonial label ‘pioneer,’ has an unsettling effect.

The Old Capitol building, by comparison, is not nearly as imposing. While the eagles sitting atop the iron fence that surrounds the building, and its fort-like appearance do signify authority, I remember Andrew telling us about what Mark Twain felt about the building – it was a “whitewashed castle,” an “architectural falsehood.” While striking, it does stick out like a sore thumb amidst its surroundings.

The place seems caught between the idealization of the past and the celebration of progress. The gothic-revival architecture echoes the middle ages. Some plaques right outside the building remember the 1779 Battle of Baton Rouge, where French and Spanish forces captured the British fort here. This was before the capitol building was even built.

A model of how the capitol looked in 1852

Inside, there is a museum of political history that describes the repeated restorations of the building. Originally constructed in 1852, the building had to be reconstructed after the civil war in 1882, and then restored yet again in the 1990s since the building had fallen into disrepair after the capitol was shifted by Huey Long. There seems to be a need to continually reconstruct what Twain would see as an artificial medieval image of the past.

Yet, the museum itself is built around teleological progress. A video exhibit, describing the history of Baton Rouge, goes over enslavement and segregation, proclaiming that this was supposedly ‘short-lived.’ Another room documents the history of voting rights and the progress toward democracy. Yet, this simplistic notion of progress seems to be at odds with the very building the exhibits are set in.

A plaque outside one of the rooms marked that it was underwritten by the “Shell Oil Company Foundation.” This is the type of corporation that Huey Long was fighting against.

On the second floor of the old capitol building, I walked into a room that was filled with images of weddings – especially, pictures of the bride in front of stained glass. Looking at these wonderful images, the cynical part of me remembered Mark Twain. It was almost as if this room revealed the real significance of the building; not the museum exhibits. Perhaps this was part of what Huey Long wanted to leave behind when he created the New Capitol.