PARIS IS BURNING
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1991 Frank Maloney
PARIS IS BURNING is a documentary film by Jennie Livingstone. It stars Dorian Corey, Pepper Labeija, Venus Xtravaganza, Octavia St. Laurent, Willi Ninja, Anji Xtravaganza, and Freddie Pendavis. Running time approx. 75 minutes.
I have only one complaint about PARIS IS BURNING: at 75 minutes, it is too short. The film was shot mainly in 1987, and its subject is somewhat more familiar to the mainstream now than then thanks to Madonna's video, "Vogue", and other commercializations. But the subject, the culture built around Harlem drag balls, and the subjects, the people who have structured their lives around the balls and their culture, remain deeply moving, shocking, astonishing, fascinating, foreign, and near.
One of the great strengths -- and there are many -- of PARIS IS BURNING is the clarity with which the film explains this culture to those of us who have never been exposed to it. As I have had occasion to mention from time to time, I am gay; I'm all white, middle-class, Seattle-born and -bred, and far, far away from Harlem both in geography and mind. The ball culture comes as a revelation, like discovering a colony of Martians in woods behind Microsoft.
And yet, I know these people. I recognize their hopes and fears. We do talk a common language. And I come to love and care for them, as much as one can for any flickering, celluloid ghost. They have vision and purpose, and they live to express that vision with guts and dedication and vast reservoirs of courage.
It is the people in PARIS IS BURNING who continue to live in my mind. The wonderful old queen (Dorian Corey?), sits at her make-up table, working on the paint job, and saying wonderful things to the camera (is this Harvey Fierstein when he grows up?). She has the last lines in the movie and they come as the kind of revelatory *mot* that is so *juste* that one's breath is taken away, as if from a blow to the gut.
There's Venus Xtravaganza the petite, tragic transsexual who wants The Operation, a home in the 'burbs, the hubby and picket fence. She has completely, perhaps insanely, bought into the Great American Dream, and she breaks your heart doing it.
There's Pepper Labeija, the Mother of the House of Labeija, looking and talking like a truly hip Eddie Murphy or Arsenio Hall; wise, protective, seeing the troubles as well as the triumphs. There's Willi Ninja, who wants to take the House of Ninja to Paris. There's the Freddie Pendavis, who not only wants to be star, but may make it, if any of them does.
Two things are made achingly clear in the movie: the cruel hoax of our material culture -- the idea that things make us happy; and aggressive, combative nature of drag.
The private dreams of many of the interviewees is for wealth, success, stardom, beautiful clothes, beautiful things that they don't have to steal. And there is the concept of "realness" -- the different categories at the balls emphasize the criterion of a total verisimilitude in not only the look but the attitude of being a "schoolgirl," "town and country," "executive," or "high-fashion Parisian." This is not satire or burlesque, this is striving for the length of time it takes to walk the floor of being a prep or businessman. These people are three-times outside the white, suburban culture they emulate in their drag. Many of them are transvestites or transsexuals, all of them are outsiders, even in the context of Harlem. And the balls are how they survive the clash between their dreams and their reality.
There's a longish section in the middle of the film about several levels of drag war that culminates in a dance of domination -- two people dancing against each other, never touching, each seeking to outdo the other's contortionist poses -- the one more successful is in trying oneself into a knot is the winner in this stylized and stylish surrogate for street fighting. As people remark from time to time, it's tough being gay in New York.
I've had occasion to talk to other people -- straight and gay -- about this film. Every one of them was, if you will forgive the antique locution, blown away by it. We all have our favorite moments, our personal revelations. It's speaks to us, each of us, regardless of our backgrounds or experiences. Octavia St. Laurent, Anji Xtravaganza are us and Jennie Livingston's direction and awareness make this all too clear.
By all means, see PARIS IS BURNING. It may be the year's best movie.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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