Returning to Paris, Which Was Burning

This week-end, I will be in North Carolina for the wedding of a dear Create in Me friend.  Yesterday, I tried to work ahead a bit, so I watched Paris Is Burning, a film that we'll discuss in Queer Theology on Tuesday.  It will be interesting to see the connections we will make.

You may or may not remember the film which was released in 1990 or so.  It explores the world of NYC drag shows, the ball culture scene.  Is it documenting the lives of transgender people in the 80's?  Sort of.  Some of the people who talk clearly feel they are living in the wrong gender body.  Others seem to just like creating interesting garments--it felt more like we were watching fashion designers frustrated by their lack of options.  And there was a whisper of people participating or watching because it was the only community they could find.  

If they had had a wide range of options, the way they do today (sort of), would they have cared about/participated in the ball culture?

Watching the film again yesterday made me feel unsettled, and I'm not sure why.  So I went on a bit of an internet search, and realized why I was feeling unsettled.  The film sort of celebrates its subjects, yet it is clear that these stories begin and end in tears.  If we look at the interviewees and look beyond the human talking, it's clear that they are living in very shabby surroundings--there's more than a suggestion of extreme poverty.

And after doing some internet searching, I felt even more unsettled.  Almost all of the people in the film have died, and they were almost all very young in the film, in their late teens and early twenties.  The film barely mentions AIDS.  The film barely mentions the poverty and the risks that the people interviewed take to get money.  When I did some internet wandering to see how many people were still alive, there was discussion of their drug use, but the film itself didn't mention it.

I would have sworn that I saw the film at some point in the 90's, and I still think that I did, but none of it felt familiar.  The Kristin that I was in the 90's probably would not have glommed onto this film as a touchstone kind of experience/encounter with art.  I'm sure I would have been puzzled.  Drag culture, the traditional kind that emulates fashion models and haute couture fashion shows, has always puzzled me, and for that matter, high fashion has also puzzled me.   It's an approach to gender that I don't aspire to, in part because I would have absolutely no chance of success.  I have not met any males who do aspire to that aspect of gender, although I realize I might not have known it if they did.

If I had watched this film, I'd have been watching through a different lens, not a "we're watching trans history being recorded" kind of lens.  I'd have wondered why we had to document such extreme examples of gay culture.  It was a different time, the early-to-mid 1990's, and while I was more well educated/read than many, there was still much to learn.

I will be interested to see how my classmates react, since they are significantly younger than I am.