Paris is Burning. https://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/gallery/19978/6/gangs-of-new-york. Accessed 13 Feb. 2021.
It’s the 1980s. You're sitting inside the Savoy Manor Ballroom on a corner in New York City. The music is doing something magical, and a friend seated next to you shouts in approval at the queen taking center stage. The 1980s film Paris is Burning has been championed as an exploratory and outstanding work. It provides a glimpse into New York City ball culture, where queens can compete in categories such as fem realness, butch queen, high fashion, and executive realness. Fabulous drag queens take to the floor as they walk in categories shimmering in glamor, sassiness, or stealth, attempting to mesmerize the audience and, most importantly, the judges who decide just how “real” they are.
The ballroom culture displayed in Paris is Burning provides ample tools to challenge and reimagine gender construction while humanizing drag and the lived experiences of those participating in it. Ultimately, Paris is Burning provides a glimpse into how gender, hierarchy, and performativity can continually be interrogated and critiqued. While ball culture does provide a space for gender critique, I also argue that it is imperfect and can champion white Western ideas of “realness”. By analyzing drag and the opportunities it presents to critique gender while also recognizing its imperfections, individuals can begin to grapple with socially constructed systems and transform how gender is understood and performed in the present.
I. Gender & Hierarchy Critique: Social Construction
Gender is a category that has existed in society for ages. Much of what is known about gender is often conflated with understandings around biological sex. Scientifically, sex is assigned based on the appearance of external genitalia in addition to chromosomal makeup: XY chromosomes or XX chromosomes. From these sex-based categories, gender is assigned: XY chromosomes are usually male, and XX chromosomes are usually female[1]. While gender is assigned based on sex characteristics, it is also informed by the performance of gender itself – everything from how to walk, sit, dress, and move. Therefore, gender, as opposed to sex, is indeed socially constructed – something not rooted in biology but rather a series of continued performances.
In the article, Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory, Judith Butler analyzes the social construction of gender and its relation to performativity. Butler argues that gender is created through “the stylization of the body”, whether through gestures, movements, or enactments [2]. Butler states that gender is indeed socially constructed and contingent on this stylized repetition of acts. Pulling on the work of Merleau-Ponty and Simone de Beauvoir, Butler emphasizes how our bodies do not exist without a historical context that bears the cultural meaning of what constitutes a man or a woman. Therefore, gender, as opposed to sex, informs the lens through which the body can be understood: “gender appears to the popular imagination as a psychological correlate of biological sex … if gender attributes, however, are not expressive but performative, then these attributes effectively constitute the identity they are said to express or reveal"[3].
Butler's analysis and its implications are embedded in every aspect of drag culture in Paris is Burning. Take, for example, Pepper LaBeija, a gay Black man dazzling the ballroom, covered in jewels, sashaying his way towards the judges, all to receive nothing but the highest score of a ten. The crowd of onlookers erupts, applauding at LaBeija’s achievement of successfully passing as a “real” woman. In this small but glamorous ballroom on some corner in New York City, that the question: "What is a woman?" becomes apparent. Here, gender is revealed as a way of being. It is a performance that individuals choose to put on each day – from what to wear, to how to sit, to how to laugh. The ball scene in Paris is Burning forces viewers to reckon with this fact -- gender is indeed socially constructed and an act that everyone performs drag queen or not.
In the film, Pepper LaBeija describes white America as clips of queens walking in categories such as executive and military realness grace the floor. LaBeija states, “This is white America…when they showing you a commercial from Honey Grahams to Crest, or Lestoil or Pine-sol - everybody's in their own home”[5]. Here the film pans to a queen walking with pearls around her neck and a fur scarf draped elegantly over her shoulder as she picks up a small pooch who also happens to be wearing pearls. The clip quickly switches over to a blonde white woman walking through the streets of New York with similar pearls draped around her neck and her hair elegantly placed in an up-do that conveys an aura of wealth and power. LaBeija continues, “The little kids with Fisher Price toys; they're not in no concrete playground… they're riding around the lawn…the pool is in the back…this is white America”[6]. The camera pans to a young white boy eating a popsicle holding his father’s hand and then switches to a white man walking in a dapper blue suit smoking a cigar – perhaps on his way to the investment bank where he works. The camera flashes back to the ballroom where two queens sit at a fancy table with a white linen cloth as they sip champagne and wear fancy military uniforms. An onlooker shouts, “You own everything, everything is yours.”[7]
Similar to how gender as opposed to sex is socially constructed, the racial categories associated with superiority and inferiority are also socially constructed. As queens take to the floor draped in pearls, emulating an aura of wealth through their walk and dress, the idea of superiority and therefore hierarchy falls into question. If a Black queen can embody superiority through dress and performance, is the category of superiority that has been generationally tied to white people really about inherent worth? Or, is it about access and opportunity? As Black queens sip champagne and walk as if they had been generationally socially assigned the category of superiority, it becomes apparent that current racial categories are not rooted in what is biologically inherent. Rather, who has access to superiority is assigned based on socially constructed ideas around race.
Paris is Burning. https://www.gq.com/story/paris-is-burning. Accessed 13 Feb. 2021.
II. Gender Critique: Challenging Performance vs Reality
The lived experiences highlighted by trans protagonists within this film also challenge the distinction between performance and reality. Butler mentions the contrast in the way in which the sight of a transvestite on a stage can compel pleasure and applause, whereas that same transvestite seated next to someone on a bus may compel rage or violence. Butler writes, “on the street or in the bus, the act [or performance] becomes dangerous… on the street or in the bus, there is no presumption that the act is distinct from reality.”[8] In drawing this comparison Butler touches on mainstream perceptions of trans folks. Butler writes, “if the ‘reality” of gender is constituted by the performance itself, then there is no recourse to an essential and unrealized ‘sex’ or ‘gender’ which gender performance ostensibly express.”[9] This is to say, that popular understanding of gender is rooted in the performance of gender itself which inherently challenges popular thinking about the relationship between gender and sex.
Dorian Corey, one of the older queens in the film states, “when they’re undetectable, when they can walk out into the sunlight onto the subways and get home and still have no blood running off their body, those are the femme realness queens.”[10] Corey highlights that by simply existing, not on stage or at a ball but in the confines of the “real world”, trans folks and people who cross dress, or transcend rigid gender binaries , face routine violence. A key trans protagonist in the film, Venus Xtravaganza, provides insight into her experience existing in the “real” world outside of the ballroom. She speaks of her desire to not have to struggle with finances and how she used to “hustle” to make money but stopped as the practice got more dangerous. Towards the end of the film, it is revealed that Venus has been murdered, found dead strangled under a bed in New York City. Through this aspect of the film, the tangible financial and social implications of crossing rigid gender binaries, not on a stage, but in the “real” world are extremely apparent.
Since there are only small clips of Venus Xtravaganza and other trans protagonists in the film, I seek to provide an additional narrative from a study by Julian Glover on Black transgender women in the Chicago ball scene. Glover interviewed Mel, “a five-foot five-inch, twenty-three year old Black trans woman with dark skin and a full figure.”[11] Mel walks realness and has attributed her success to “both her complexion and her body, which help her be more “real” since her ‘ass is fat as fuck and shape on point’ (Mel’s words).”[12] Mel holds a full-time job at an HIV-nonprofit which has allowed her to expand her income sources beyond sex work. Mel turned to sex work after being denied employment from a national retailer. She prepared vigorously for the interview only to be treated dismissively by the interviewer and denied the role. Mel describes how being Black and trans effects her financial wellbeing due to social stigmas which make it challenging to acquire jobs. Simultaneously, her embodiment as a Black trans woman keeps her employed doing sex work. Glover writes, “here…Black trans women [are presented] with an opportunity to leverage a client’s sexual fascination with their embodiment for material gain, and a threat as job prospects beyond sex work remain elusive.”[13]
In other words, real-life financial implications are imposed on Mel because of her identity as a Black trans woman. Mel is positively compensated for what her clients might see as a “performance” as a sex worker, but routinely denied compensation in applying for “non-performative” work at retail stores where her existence cannot be distinct from reality. A similar dichotomy exists in the film for Venus Xtravaganza. Venus is applauded and uplifted when she is performing in the ballroom, but out in the real world her life is brutally ended as a result of extreme violence. The experiences of both women demonstrate how violence occurs, financially and socially, when a clear line between performance and reality can no longer be drawn.
Venus and Mel’s existence as trans women, highlighted both within the ball scene and out in the real world, challenge fundamental assumptions about gender. Mainstream society has failed to grapple with the reality that the gender identity of trans people is just as real as anyone whose gender performance aligns with their biological sex. Through the lived experiences of trans protagonists the distinction between performance and reality can be challenged, further distorting how gender is understood.
Smoking...Paris is Burning . https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2015/jan/29/sundance-2015-paris-is-burning-restored-jennie-livingston. Accessed 13 Feb. 2021.
III. Realness: Notions of Beauty and Success
While the film does provide an in-depth view into ball culture it also perpetuates white western notions of beauty and success. Throughout the film these ideals are depicted as synonymous with “realness”. Notably, one of the queens in the film, Octavia St. Laurent, provides an example of sought-after embodiments of womanhood and realness. In one of the scenes the camera pans to Octavia’s bedroom where she stands in her satin blue nightgown discussing a range of famous models she admires. Many of the images plastered against her bedroom wall are of white women, one of whom she deeply admires, Paulina Porizkova. Octavia proclaims as she points to Paulina's picture, “this is my idle, if that could be me I think I would be the happiest person in the world just knowing that I could compare to Paulina ... to stand next to her.”[15] Many other queens in the film go on to describe the seductive nature of wealthy white cis culture – all of which is used as a benchmark for realness in the ball scene. LaBeija states “it is everyone’s dream and ambition as a minority to live and look as well as a white person in America.''[16] Octavia’s idealized perception of "realness" demonstrates how the visual representation and embodiment of femininity referred to the in film is largely associated with white beauty norms.
In the chapter “Is Paris Burning '' in Black Looks: Race and Representation, bell hooks provides a critique on these ideals. Hooks calls specific attention to a central protagonist in the film, Dorian Corey. Corey serves almost as a historical and cultural critic as an older queen who has bore witness to the evolution of sought-after ideals. Corey explains that during her time, “no Black drag queens wanted to look like Lena Horne.”[17] In other words, Corey calls attention to how currently the femininity that is most sought after in ball culture is the kind that can exclusively be embodied by white women. Hooks writes, “the film was a… portrait of the way in which colonized black people… worship at the throne of whiteness, even when such worship demands that we live in perpetual self-hate, steal, lie, go hungry, and even die in pursuit.”[18] Hooks seems to question for example, Octavia and many other queens in the film deep longing for aspects of whiteness. Namely, Octavia and many other queens in the film describe doing whatever it takes to embody white beauty norms under the premise that it will grant them access to capital, resources, and satisfaction with themselves among other things.
As an older queen, Corey describes the limiting nature of utilizing this space to escape reality and attain the unattainable. Instead, Corey advocates for drag as a redemptive space where unique imaginative costumes and conceptions of gender can be contemplated outside the confines of whiteness. Corey reminisces in the film describing how “drag balls were traditionally a place where the aesthetics of imagination in relation to Black gay life could be explored with complexity and grace.”[19]
Hooks argues that this dynamic, in predominantly Black spaces, inadvertently limits drag to the use of fantasy as a means of escape as opposed to fantasy in ritualized play and true self-love. It is in this way that hooks describes the film as, “both progressive and reactionary.”[20] Although drag does allow for the constant challenging of gender and performance, it can also be limiting by placing white western notions of beauty and success on a pedestal. Bell hooks and queens like Dorian Corey add a critical perspective to this film. They demand that queens use true imagination and creativity to confront and love themselves as they are, as opposed to longing for an illusory white western idea of realness.
IV. The Power of the Ball
Through this analysis of Paris is Burning I have attempted to reveal the many ways in which ball culture and drag provide a space for the continual critique of gender. Ball culture has the power to demonstrate the socially constructed nature of gender through its performance and push back on the validity of racial categories associated with superiority and inferiority. Furthermore, the presence of trans folks within ball culture can implicitly challenge the distinction between performance and reality therefore placing into question popular constructions of gender. While ball culture provides the tools through which gender can be critiqued it is also imperfect and requires continued efforts to reimagine non-white western ideals of beauty and realness. In recognizing the unique power embedded in ball culture popular understanding around gender can begin to transform, fostering more flexible and autonomous relationships to gender identity.
Sources
[1] Fausto-Sterling, Anne. “The Five Sexes.” The Sciences 33, no. 2 (1993): 22–24. [2] Butler, Judith. ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.’ Feminist Theory Reader, 2016, 519. [3] Butler, 528.
[5] Paris Is Burning, 1990. [6] Paris Is Burning, 1990. [7]Paris Is Burning, 1990. [8] Butler, 527 [9] Butler, 527 [10] Paris Is Burning, 1990. [11] Glover, Julian Kevon. “Customer Service Representatives: Sex Work among Black Transgender Women in Chicago's Ballroom Scene.” South Atlantic Quarterly 120, no. 3 (2021): 556. [12] Glover, 556. [13] Glover, 557. [14] Butler, 527. [15] Paris Is Burning, 1990. [16] Paris Is Burning, 1990. [17] Hooks, Bell. “Is Paris Burning.” Essay. In Black Looks: Race and Representation. New York: Routledge, 1992, 148. [18] Hooks, 149. [19] Hooks, 155 [20] Hooks, 149.
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