“Throw Me Something, Mister!”: Emotional Artifacts in Carnival Parades in New Orleans

During carnival season in New Orleans, between Twelfth Night (January 6) and Mardi Gras, social clubs known as “krewes” stage over forty parades through the city. All these parades feature “throws”: trinkets thrown or handed from people on floats or on foot in the parade to people watching it in the audience. Some throws are mass-produced - strings of plastic beads made in China, flashing LED toys, plushies - while others are handmade - hand-painted coconuts, hand-glittered shoes, tiny comics or books of poems. The more elaborate throws are often witty and sometimes “intertextual”, in that throws from one parade “cite” or reference the form of throws from another. All throws are coveted, and it is not uncommon for homes in New Orleans to feature displays of the most prized. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork (participant observation and interviews) among carnival krewes, this paper explores the social and emotional significance of throws. How does “bead fever” - an insatiable, apparently irrational desire for supposedly worthless throws - come to strike even the most cynical spectator? How do krewe members labour to make throws that link to the theme of their float or costume? What feelings come into play as throws are assessed and valued, with some becoming treasures while others are instantly discarded? Scholarship on craft and making, on the social life of things, and on reciprocity and the gift will help answer these questions. The paper argues that the emotions that crystallize in these little gifts of throws say a great deal about the social significance of New Orleans’ carnival as a whole, which remains quite a unique form of urban public culture in North America.