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Nice Carnaval:
A Joyous Celebration of the Often Absurd Story & Photos by Skip Kaltenheuser
My camera is trained on a shocked woman who is scooped up onto a tarp by a group of harlequins who repeatedly fling her into the air like volunteer firemen gone mad. I glance over at a squad of prying giant eyeballs bouncing on long flexible stems growing out of figures in purple robes, and then at a half dozen grim reapers, 12 feet tall, their huge skulls grinning out from black robes like judicial nominees run amok, chasing defendants through the crowd. Just in time, I turn to see a giant tank bearing down on me, driven by a papier maché Larry King, its turret, with a CNN microphone at its end, firing confetti. I retreat as a platoon of walking microphones and video cameras advances. The cadence of a military march is rarely heard, but the parades of Nice Carnaval are masterpieces of troop logistics, controlled chaos and technical prowess that bulls eye targets with minimal collateral damage to the funny bones of those who can take a joke. The theme for 2004's carnival, to be held February 13-25, is the King of Clownery, a play on the word "cloning." It playfully addresses the onslaught of technological development and the challenge of imposing limits in a non-comprehending society. The first Nice carnival procession was officially organized in 1873, since then missing in action only during the World Wars and the Gulf War. Nice's festival has built itself around diverse themes that capture local imagination, from Buffalo Bill in 1905 and the conquest of the North Pole in 1910, to the more ominous Sire of Madness in 1940. Oddly, the canceled carnivals of 1915 and the Gulf War also had madness themes. This year's theme is a worthy successor to 2003's, which also dealt with a bewildered society. Last year's "The King of .comMedi@", stretching the concept of media comedy, celebrated a burlesque view of the rapid ascension of communication and the media. Floats were created from ideas submitted by political cartoonists thoughout the world, just as the floats of 2004 are. The concepts chosen for .comMedi@ indicate a country weary of the impacts of high tech media on their culture, whether TV news, the Internet or cell phone connectivity. The French applied their artistic talents with good humor, and with more wit than that required to rename the greasy spuds Americans use to keep their aortas gurgling and to ward off any dietary accusations of an American paradox. One float paid homage to a sensational story that once tied France and the U.S. together. The Spirit of St. Louis is hoisted in the air, the pilot windblown by a large fan. A Walter Winchell-style reporter at a desk that is hoisted in the air comments on the flight as flappers dance about roaring printing presses. But that portrayed a media era that seems golden now. The other floats offered less affection for media.
Reality TV, France's payback harvest for being sown with Jerry Lewis comedies, was sent up by a float of a giant figure in his underwear brushing his teeth in front of a mirror behind which cameras recorded all. The heads of conservatively dressed men bob hypnotically before a hoochie-coochie dancer, her swaying hips surrounded by cell phones, satellite dishes acting as inverted pasties. A giant rat having its way with a computer mouse was getting hauled off for execution. One family suffered information overload, another was seemingly robotized by cell phones commandeering all personal dialogue. A giant infant was entertained by media fulfilling the role of baby-sitter. The sexual attraction of talking heads, as well as of public relations hacks, was a frequent theme. The floats of 2003 conveyed images of media conglomerates with sinister, octopus appearances. Authoritarian figures using media to manipulate society was a recurring idea. The top of a skull opened to reveal news stories dominated by scandal, sex, violence, and celebrity. Menacing ducks covered in newspaper headlines laid eggs hatching canards on politician's affairs. Books representing culture were adrift in a media flood, drowning, mocked by gadgets sheltered in an ark. In one float, a grim reaper, several stories tall, records judgment day with a news camera, accompanied by a squad of reaper cohorts. Too sexy for her shirt? A bevy of men in exaggerated drag took that premise as far as you'd want to go, and the real media went wild photographing them. Among the famed giant heads marching in the parade were various hybrid creatures, the fusing of humans with computers and monitor screens. As I experienced the parades' portrayals of irritations with media intrusiveness and with the shallowness of ever-present communications, I felt French and American societies were very close in their views of the slings and arrows of outrageous media, and probably closer in other viewpoints then one might assume from all the media sniping. The King of Clownery (cloning) will offer another round of insight on outlook.
The cartoonist sketches chosen for 2004's festival promise plenty of mischief potential. The artists of Nice turned themselves loose on 20 or so sketches that include Rome's legendary founding twins suckling at a humanoid wolf. A smug king surrounds himself with little king duplicates – with a slight error in the works, a pig wearing a crown. The familiar chart of evolution showing, walking in single file, ape ancestors branching into primitive early man to cave man with a spear now ends with a trio of identical modern men. Only one type of animal occupies Noah's Ark, which overflows with a species of sheep. Other sketches show a hunter pursuing a hare with a pack of dogs all bearing his face. A new, improved racing species is a hare in a tortoise shell. Containers stacked on a truck are filled with life-size Barbie clones. A crown tops a cornucopia of fruit and vegetables that form a face. A little girl licking a strawberry ice cream cone is suddenly licked by a giant strawberry plant. One sketch portrays Frankenstein's monster as a magician pulling rabbits with Frankenstein faces from his hat, his magician's assistant a playboy bunny assistant with a Frankenstein face. What better symbol conveys our fear of unknown wild cards, of life run amok and vengeful, then the Frankenstein monster, created from man's technology mastering nature? With such modern themes, it's easy to forget how far back the roots of carnival extend, of the dominant concepts of rebirth and renewal, though cloning may have a thematic inside edge. Nice is in the region of the oldest human habitations in Europe, over which many cultures cascaded, mix and matching mythologies convenient to the times. Echoes of the ancient world include the lingering worship of Dionysus, or Bacchus, rejuvenated by slaves and poor free men, eventually condemned by Rome as a sinister source of vice and revolutionary unrest. Dionysus was not just the god of wine, but of vegetation as a whole, his cult connected to nature's fertility. He was murdered by Titans, but reborn. His worship, back to the days of ancient Greece – the Port of Nice was founded by the Greeks in the 5th century B.C. – generated ecstatic emotional outlet, frenzied revels by women and much early theater. These traditions, celebrating man as a free being without hierarchy, blended easily with the various pagan rites of spring practiced by early European tribes. Christians knew a good thing when they saw it and layered on their beliefs. Carnival, or carne vale, comes from Latin, and means "flesh, farewell," and heralds in the Lenten fast leading in Easter. The feasting before the long period of abstinence acquired a license for unbridled frolic.
In the 11th century, the Grand Charivari, a masked cortege, crossed the city of Nice accompanied by musicians and entertainers. This grew into festivities noted by Charles of Anjou, the Count of Provence, in 1294, when he came "to enjoy the happy days of Carnival." Craftsmen, traders, fisherman, workers and the nobility all had balls in the works, but one could travel from one social strata into another providing one was properly masked. The church, entrusted to ride herd on carnival, was ultimately at a loss to refrain the excesses that flowed about the streets amid minstrels, mimes and bonfires. As Nice grew larger, so did the gap between upper and lower classes, and few fishermen were crashing the governor's ball. In 1830, the upper crust decided to go on parade in tribute to visiting royalty, including the Sardinian sovereign Charles-Felix, with costumes, coaches and floats that originated the Battle of Flowers, the throwing of flower bouquets, candy, and cigars for the top drawer observers, and chick peas, beans, and eggshells filled with soot or flour for their lessers. That tradition had lasting appeal, returning even after carnival was suspended during the military quakes of the French Revolution and First Napoleonic Empire. In a warehouse, I watched the meticulous creations for one of the four Battle of Flowers parades come together, as teams labored 45 hours around the clock with the seemingly endless wire, foam, tubs of water and cyclone fencing that form the structure of 30 floats that are six meters high, seven meters long, and two meters wide. Each float employs over 4,000 stems of fresh cut flowers: irises, roses, gladioli, dahlias, gerberas, tokios, lilies and, the symbol of Nice, mimosa. Each float's central petal decoration is adorned with 5,000 carnations. Ninety percent of the flowers, replaced for each parade, are supplied by local producers who've timed their plantings, often in November, to coincide their floral bounty with carnival. Costumed models each throw more than 20 kilograms of mimosa and flowers – a major upgrade over soot-filled eggs – to the crowds, amid numerous French and foreign bands, many wildly costumed. Unusual creatures also join these parades, last year giant bug-eyed butterflies entered the procession with multi-legged costumes convincing enough to panic parade-watchers who crossed their path along the seafront's Promenade des Anglais. The other parades include the arrival of His Majesty Carnival, who first entered Nice in 1873, with heralds on horseback, wolves, falcons, torches and lighting effects, and the election of the Carnival Queen. The Place Massena, a grand square, is the site of several parades of lights, with carnival floats and hundreds of "big heads," who also dance along in several daylight parades. The night parades are quite striking. Massive plywood murals illuminated by hundreds of thousands of colored lights are hung around the square, illustrating the chosen float themes parading beneath them. Last year, to those walking along the parade during a driving rain, the illuminated festivities offered a surreal quality, as increasingly giddy participants fired thousands of "string in a can" spaghetti bombs at each other and at the paraders, who fired back.
The canned string projectilists were relentless and without mercy. I constantly had to clear my camera lens, a favorite bulls eye. A beautiful Latin lady in a risqué Rio-styled costume was near tears, such a favorite target was she, and one of the drummers in her troop took off in a rage after a perpetrator, prepared to perform a drum solo on his head. So be forewarned, and keep a can in your pocket so you can get them before they get you.
The big heads, weighing a dozen kilograms, cover the distance of a marathon during their parades, each masquerader beneath is estimated to expend a mega-joule of energy during carnival. The floats are whimsical works of art grounded in clever engineering. The 20 or so themed floats weigh seven metric tons, are 10 meters long and up to a dozen meters high. Each contain two metric tons of iron, a metric ton of paper, a metric ton of electrical equipment, hundreds of kilograms of flour – used as glue – paint, foam, paper and wood. Each has generators, projectors, mechanical and hydraulic motors, thousands of lamps, 100 meters of neon lights and 250 meters of fabric. For each float, carnival artists volunteer a total of 4,000 hours over six months. Like many pre-Lenten carnivals, Nice's celebration, with the exception of one last flower parade, draws to a close as Ash Wednesday approaches. After an evening parade to the Carnival King's final act, fireworks follow his burning in effigy. Many carnival cultures believe that the departure of the carnival spirit takes with it all the cares and woes of the year, giving everyone a clean slate to start anew, with the spirit returning for hazard duty the following year. In Nice, a terminated King says, "I'll be back," not "You won't have me to kick around anymore."
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