Pretentious Enlightenment in New Orleans

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Smug faces, military uniforms, a strange marking, an open window and a shopping cart full of ill gotten goods; those are the objects that can be seen in the Banksy Street art found on a damaged building in New Orleans, Louisiana.

On August 29th 2005, Hurricane Katrina, a category 3 storm, slammed into the Gulf Coast. In it’s wake, Katrina left a trail of destruction that killed over 1800 people and cost an estimated 108 billion dollars in damages, making it the most destructive natural disaster in US history. Right in the path of the most powerful part of the storm was the city of New Orleans. (Hurricane Katrina)

In the aftermath of the storm’s destruction, laughably bad response by state and national authorities and the large scale crime wave that ensued once anarchy broke out, New Orleans was a gold mine for political commentary.

Three years later, enter Banksy, a world famous street artist from England. Banksy has become famous ironically through his use of anonymity as an artist. Banksy will choose a city somewhere in the world and embark usually on a month long anonymous crusade where he “tags” different buildings with culturally and politically motivated works of “street art”. When Banksy descended on New Orleans, he painted 14 works of street art in total, but the painting that stood out as the most glaringly political was the painting called “Looters”. (Banksy story)

In Looters, there can be seen two white males dressed in green National Guard uniforms painted on to a white wall of a damaged building next to an open window. One of the soldiers can be seen leaning halfway out of a painted window passing a medium sized Tv to another soldier. Behind the soldiers there is a shopping cart with a large stereo system in it...

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...not alienate his base of followers, but is just edgy enough to gain publicity, and through that, money.

So in the end, everyone has to make their own interpretation of this piece of art. If the goal of art is to prompt a strong emotional response from those who view it, then ultimately, the Banksy painting “Looters” succeeded. However, the memory of the actions taken by the soldiers of the National Guard after Hurricane Katrina will live on in the hearts and minds of Katrina victims, not because of a painting by some European of them removing any valuables they could find, but by the little paintings of x’s that the soldiers left on all houses where they removed any survivors they could find.

Works Cited

"Hurricane Katrina." History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.

"The Story Behind Banksy." Smithsonian. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.

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