Paris Is Burning is one of my all-time favorite documentaries, which is odd considering that I was bought up Christian fundamentalist, but not so unexpected because I was born in New York and am a child of the eighties. Even my mom—you know, the one who brought me up to be a Christian fundamentalist (failed)—watched and enjoyed the documentary. When someone is memorable, no ideology can make them forgettable, and only a liar can deny excellence. It is a film that captures New York from 1987 through 1989 and focuses on a community that gay men and trans women formed in which they belong to houses, and the members of these houses compete at balls in a wide variety of categories. They win trophies and fame which bestow upon them the excellence that society unjustly denies them.
Paris Is Burning brought to film what the balls brought to those who walked in them-a space to appreciate individuals who were right to believe that they were stars and gave them a stage to present themselves as they want to be seen. While I definitely enjoyed the spectacle, the fashion, the dancing, the music and the cadence of their voices, but am still horrible with names, I remember the stories, personalities, hopes and dreams of each person interviewed. Every time that I rewatch this documentary, I recall and love each unique individual featured in it. While someone from their community did not make this documentary, their words rigorously form it, and without them, there is no film. I decided to rewatch it after watching Kiki, a 2017 documentary that returns to New York to depict the same scene decades later, but has a different director and vision.
Paris Is Burning is simultaneously a primer on the ball circuit and mini-biographies of the competitors’ lives. It is a narrative framed to define the terminology and familiarize viewers with the members of this community. Intertitles punctuate the interviews and orient us to what will follow-a confessional interview in the surroundings of the interviewee’s choice, which range from one on one interviews to recording a person surrounded by adoring children or their partners. Each house seems to have its own distinct manner, and some have a history that predate the mother and/or father of the house, who may not be the founder.
Paris Is Burning is a living, breathing school of hard knocks delivering PhD level theory on gender, sexuality, race and socioeconomic status. No professional talking heads need apply. The older the contestant, the more introspective and analytical the contestant is in terms of their lives and place in society. The younger the contestant, the more likely that the contestant cosigns society’s values such as gender norms and tries to achieve heteronormative relationships without critiquing them, which makes for a tragic vein throughout the film of striving to belong to a world that does not want them. Without having terminology regarding systematic racism, white privilege or white supremacy, the contestants are either conscious of the phenomenon or victim to it. It is reminiscent of the doll test that contributed to Brown v Board of Education in terms of awareness of society’s rejection of gay men and trans women while also being proud of their identity and completely immersing oneself in their gay and trans identity. They walk a tightrope of physical and psychological survival.
Paris Is Burning’s older interviewees, particularly Dorian Corey, an older woman with a great memory, a cat and healthy perspective, reflects on the role that consumerism and changes in the media affected the balls. The idols used to be movie stars, which gradually gave way to movie stars until supermodels in magazines like Vogue took center stage. Contestants stopped making their outfits and started buying or stealing them. This documentary was eye opening for me because this phenomenon was not endemic to some transwomen or gay men who challenged gender norms by running to the other side of the spectrum, but was also an intrinsic part of my life as a young cis gendered girl/woman who faithfully poured over Vogue, knew all the supermodel names (my favorites were Naomi Campbell and Kara Young), but ultimately felt as if that world was not one that could be entered or adopted because it felt exclusive to me in terms of finances and physical comfort. I rejected wholesale application of media images of femininity to my personal aesthetic.
By virtue of being other for a variety of reasons, we, cis girls/women of color and gay men/trans women drink from the same stream. The dissonance between what we admired and who we are, though particular in the way that admiration was expressed, was universal. The gay man or trans woman became more like the relatable, every person than the media’s offering of the every (white, hetero) man. They made this world work for them, and it only became harmful when they tried to enter that world. To a high achieving nerd, it was recognizable as becoming a part of the establishment in order to destroy it from within. It was only a cautionary tale if you fell too in love with the image. It was possible to be critical, adore and participate in the mainstream culture. The ball world provided a road map of joy, community, acceptance immersed in a world that did not want them and in which they did not belong. For many, Paris Is Burning embodies this process-critically admiring a world that one cannot belong to, but taking what was achievable from it and applying it to your own life. At its best, it elevates gay men and trans women as people to look up to, not denigrate, and provides a seismic cultural shift that gradually made being out and proud an accessible goal.
Amazingly in the short space of two years, Paris Is Burning shows how a world on the borders of society was rapidly commodified and consumed, and the creators were erased or altered to be more palatable for the mainstream world. Willi Ninja’s dreams came true, but in a music video, he is almost kissing a woman. The documentary is a time capsule in a short period of time. In more quotidian ways, it is quaint in the proliferation of department stores and malls as accessible entries to luxury whereas now department stores are barely surviving and malls are the next ones on the extinction line.
Because the participants strove for respectability and belonging, most of them were decorous when discussing sex work, only alluded to drug use and threw in euphemisms such as mopping to describe stealing. The balls may be a competition, but it is largely an incredibly structured affair. The MCs are as essential to the program as the competitors and are as essential as the music. A well-placed fan can be essential to any category. The audience, though lively, acts like an audience. The categories are distinct and self-explanatory. The judges obviously got to their position from vast experience and are still on display. It feels like the Olympics of drag with the most innocent reward, a trophy.
Paris Is Burning reminds me of a time, a city, music and style that I forget does not still exist. It is a classic that did need an official sequel. Each interviewee deserved a standalone documentary, especially Corey, who died literally getting away with having a dead body in her home, which based on only her demeanor, was probably from self-defense and understanding her place in the world. Legend!
