MARDI GRAS, A MIRROR OF OUR TIMES?

Mardi Gras has become the Party for Everyone.

But it was not always so.

Time Magazine in the Feb. 9, 1948, issue, wrote that 

balls and "krewes" were for the city's elites only, and that situation lasted for decades.

The '50's were artificial and magazines, television, and movies gilded the times in the minds of many.

But there was the emergence of a new subversive culture growing 

beneath the smooth, stable surface of the decade that would explode in the 1960s.

  TheMardi Gras krewes may have multiplied, 

but they were still separated along racial and gender lines.

 As recently as 1991, 

the relative exclusivity of the Mardi Gras krewes was a source of controversy in New Orleans. 

That December, the city council voted to require the krewes to integrate by 1994, 

or else lose the right to hold parades.

 (The krewes are private clubs, but the city controls the streets.)

So, of course, the exclusivity in America has had to go underground as is chillingly portrayed 

in the latest horror film, GET OUT!

 Two decades later, things have changed with Mardi Gras:

The krewes have modernized and opened up: 

where they were once the domain of money and blue blood,

 these days membership applications to many krewes are available to anyone with an Internet connection.

 But violence has accelerated 

The bodies flying over the hood of a pick-up truck driven by a drunk driver 

injuring 28 this past Saturday is only one example.

Could movies like HOSTEL or SAW have been shown in the seventies, eighties or the nineties

much less have multiple sequels? 

Does our modern entertainment reflect the changing soul of America?

What do you think?