Paris is Burning

This semester I'm taking Social Work class called Confronting LGBTQ Oppression, which is taught by the education coordinator of the Gender & Sexuality Center at the SSB. The GSC offers a film library for anyone who comes through the doors, so last week I went by to check out their selection and found Paris is Burning, a 1990 documentary directed by Jennie Livingston, which I had seen parts of in RTF 316M (Communication & Ethnic Groups).

Paris is Burning offers a brief but friendly view into the fashion-obsessed world of New York drag balls and voguing competitions. With first-hand accounts by now world-famous drag queens, Mothers of the New York "houses," the film recounts the lives of many young, poor, black and Latino gay men and women as they struggle to live in New York city in the 1980s. Themes of poverty, AIDS, transsexualism, violence, and unfulfilled ambition abound but always behind the glitzy curtain of self-made cult success inside the arms-fashionably-wide-open ball subculture. There are many sad moments, stories of gay bashing and even murder, told by innocent drag queens and transsexuals who live as hustlers to make a few dollars. But in the beautiful honesty of the film, these characters are glorified and presented in only the most loving of lights as they struggle with their meager salaries and stolen couture to dress up and win trophies and prestige at the balls, often before they'll ever buy a meal.

Paris is Burning is, at times, hilarious and enlightening and, at others, heartwarming or heartbreaking. This is a great example of a director with great access; the characters open right up and reveal their darkest secrets and deepest desires. Somehow, the joy and struggle of the film's subjects is not lost on the audience, as their stories are just another example of a failed, but continuous reaching towards that ever-elusive American Dream. This conflicted but familiar ideology is perhaps best summed up in the film's final scene, in which Dorian Corey says...:

"I always had hopes of being a big star. But as you get older, you aim a little lower. Everybody wants to make an impression, some mark upon the world. Then you think, you've made a mark on the world if you just get through it, and a few people remember your name. Then you've left a mark. You don't have to bend the whole world. I think it's better to just enjoy it. Pay your dues, and just enjoy it. If you shoot and arrow and it goes real high, hooray for you."