I deserve all the shade for neglecting my blog for almost a year. Oh, the shade of it all.
So, back again with a fabulous documentary that is still on the Netflix lineup for anyone who wants to check it out. Paris is Burning is as much the drag film as RuPaul's Drag Race has become the drag platform. There are huge controversies about whether Jennie Livingston had the right to document a mostly POC drag culture as a white lesbian, and about whether drag itself is worth documenting, because drag as performative femininity can be perceived as misogynistic and reductive of femininity. Which... my thoughts on the first is that at least someone was documenting the "Golden Age of Drag Balls", and that if you're offended by drag, then you should maybe meet a few drag queens, who tend to be a hell of a lot of fun. By the schools of theory that uphold the controversy, I shouldn't really be reviewing this movie as a white asexual, but here I am.
So rather than diving into radical feminist theory, queer theory, and radical feminist queer color theory, I'm just going to talk about Paris is Burning as a film/documentary experience. Is it entertaining? Is it educating? Is it or was it relevant? Do I understand why it was placed on the National Film Registry? The answer to all of those, for me, is yes. This is a documentary that illuminates a particular slice of history for a particular group: primarily black and Latino gay men and trans women. This film was made in 1990, two years before Isaac Asimov died of AIDS from heart surgery, and over 10 years before it was revealed that was his cause of death, because of fear of retaliation and controversy. The film doesn't talk much about AIDS, but you can see it as an undercurrent through the entire runtime. You see young men and women who have been forced out of their homes because of their parents homophobia or transphobia, and you see those young people shoplifting and hooking to survive. Unfortunately, you still see that, almost 30 years later. Statistics say that 1,600,000 youth are homeless, and 40% of them identify as LGBT. The most sobering moment of the film comes from the year-later check-ins, during which time it is revealed that one of the trans women interviewed was brutally murdered, presumably by a disgruntled client. The people in her life are saddened, but the truly heart-breaking thing is how resigned they are to the idea that a loved friend will never show up again because she was killed.
As a film, it's technically competent, though the flashing lights and overlapping shouts at the balls can drown out the audio. The color isn't particularly good - everything has kind of a washed out quality. Even the most ridiculously glam gowns look faded. I don't know if that was the camera quality or if it was meant as a kind of statement. I tend to lean towards the former, since many documentaries look awful. But it does add a quiet tinge of desperation, that even with the giant golden trophies, the glitzy gowns, the fierce makeup - everything that is done is dancing in the face of death.
