Summary Of The Film 'Paris Is Burning': Scrutinizing Drags
1504 Words7 Pages
Hana Awadalla
900142735
Dr. Michael Ryan
19 December 2015
“Paris Is Burning”
Scrutinizing drags, where femininity and/or masculinity are executed by inverse genders, picks up significance for providing knowledge into gender issues. Jennie Livingston, a white privileged NYU student constructs a subculture that has its own standards, qualities and dialect, exhibiting a documentary "Paris is Burning." It chronicled the ball-culture of New York in the 1980s among African-American gay and transgender groups, the majority of whom are poor. Power, gender, race, trans issues and families all assume a noteworthy part building the fundamental thought of this film, depicting the significance of how drags are thought to be critical tools to comprehend…show more content… “I would like to be a spoiled, rich, white girl.” When the were asked whom they wanted to imitate throughout their life, drag queens of the older generations would merely pick Marilyn Monroe and the younger ones would mostly chose runway models, who are, nine out of ten, also white. Furthermore, since the way that white Americans dress consume a large part of why the minority look up to them, it is known that cheaply priced clothes don’t “win”.
Discrimination and marginalization are sometimes barriers for ethnic and racial minorities seeking to escape poverty (Corcoran & Nichols-Casebolt, 2004). It is clear that we are incognizant in regards to how minorities and hues are still isolated through class, vocation, and so on. Thus this is what this movie aims to do. “Blacks have a hard time getting anywhere, if they do, they are straight.” (Dorian Corey) To them, these drag balls are their real world; they can’t express themselves as much in the real world as they would in their small…show more content… Within Paris is Burning and the larger transsexual and drag culture, gender is quite literally a performance. Those in the movie are horrendously mindful of the repercussions of displaying a gender identity that falls outside of the heteronormative. Regardless its seeming triviality, the fulfilling of gender roles is vital to societal acknowledgment. Interestingly, ball society resists the thought of exaggerating so as to gendering and culminating gender performance. “When they're undetectable and they can walk out of that ballroom into the sunlight and onto the subway and get home, and still have all their clothes and no blood running off their bodies- those are the femme realness queens.” (Dorian Corey) The idea of “realness” is quite important throughout the movie; looking like your straight counterpart to, in a way, try to be the stereotype. Making their illusion perfect is the main key to what they are scored