Language-External Context
BALLROOM HER-STORY
Once an underground culture restricted to New York City, drag queens and their roots in the ballroom circuit have since proliferated to mainstream recognition throughout the entire world. From Japan (Szpara), to Thailand (Nolfi), and finally to Paris itself (Culand), the evolution of the ballroom scene has garnered international attention. The extravagant and lavish nature of drag queens and their respective culture which exists today is reflective of its origins in the neighborhood of Harlem. Though this scene can be seen as being relatively “new”, its roots reach back to the late 19th century with the queer masquerade balls hosted by the Hamilton Lodge (Lawrence). These balls provided queer people with the opportunity to dance with the same gender as well as don unconventional attire.
The community then evolved during the 1920’s into what could be recognized as the ballroom community in the modern sense (Green), notably including the presence of drag queens. It is significant, for both the purposes of this project and to understand the general history of ballroom culture, to recognize the racial disparity that separated the white and black communities within this scene during the 1960’s. As the balls began adopting contests for members to compete in, the standard of achieving a “white” appearance became prevalent (Lawrence). This led to inequality in the contests, with white drag queens having a clear advantage.
Discontent with the trajectory of the balls and competitions, another ball was co-founded and promoted by Crystal LaBeija in 1972 (Lawrence). This led to the creation of a fundamental component of ballroom culture and the drag community which still exists today: houses. These tight-knit social groups often adopted either the names of their creator (such as LaBeija, Ninja, and Xtravaganza) or of luxury fashion brands (such as Dior, Chanel, and St. Laurent). Houses served as a family for their members, providing social support and protecting each other, and were headed by a “mother” or “father” (Lawrence). These houses continued to compete in balls, often walking in specific “categories”. These provided a standard for whichever persona or identity they were attempting to “pass as” (Barrett). Categories range from “femme queen realness”, in which a drag queen attempts to appear as a cisgender woman, to “school boy realness”, where the contestant presents a high school-aged, heterosexual male persona. These categories are judged upon the contestant’s ability to pass, both in appearance and demeanor (Barrett).
QUEER CIVIL RIGHTS
A significant portion of the ballroom and general queer identity is the marginalization of the community at an individual and institutional level. This is apparent even at the beginning of the ballroom scene in the 1920’s with the enforcement of sodomy and “homosexual solicitation” laws (Lawrence). Though bribes often staved off harassment by the police, regular raids were common to remind ball-goers of their vulnerable position within this relationship. Facing brutality from the police, tensions rose to a breaking point on June 28, 1969. At Greenwich Village’s Stonewall Inn, a typical raid turned violent after community members fought back against the officers. Notable participants in this altercation included Sylvia Ray Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, both gender non-conforming street queens. This led to riots by queer people and their supporters, and eventually started the annual celebration of the Stonewall Riots with the Pride parades that now occur around the world.
Recognizing the sociopolitical milieu that surrounds the subjects of Paris is Burning is critical for understanding how they operate in terms of negotiating their identity in a public space and how this impacts their language use. The people featured within the documentary consistently show a self-awareness of this fact, and this understanding is highlighted by the first piece of dialogue within the film:
I remember my dad said, "You have three strikes against you in this world. Every black man has two, that they're just black and they're male. But you're black and you're male and you're gay. You're gonna have a hard fucking time." Then he said, "If you're gonna do this, you're gonna have to be stronger than you ever imagined.
At the time of the filming of the documentary, marriage was of course not yet legalized for same-sex couples, and would not be until at least 25 years after its release. Additionally, the World Health Organization had not declassified homosexuality as a mental disease until 1990 (WHO), nor had the United States decriminalized homosexuality until 2003 (CNN). The combination of these factors puts the queer community, especially gender non-conforming people of color (which are heavily featured within the documentary) in the extremely difficult situation in which their identities are threatened by the larger society.
THE AIDS CRISIS
Emphasis should be given to the impact of the AIDS crisis that occurred during the 1980’s, as it deeply impacts the people featured within the film. The virus and its subsequent syndrome were first noticed by the medical community in 1981 (Lawrence) and by the time of the documentary’s release it had claimed the lives of approximately 120,453 people (amfAR). The subject of AIDS is not highlighted within the film, with only Venus Xtravaganza mentioning the syndrome once. However, of the six primary people presented in the documentary, three have since died of AIDS-related complications.
FILM STRUCTURE
Though Paris is Burning is not a qualitative study that specifically analyzes the subjects’ language use, it nonetheless has certain qualities of an ethnography. Livingston structures the documentary by interpolating interviews with notable figures from the ballroom scene with ballroom performances or various daily scenes in the drag queens’ daily lives. Dorian Corey and Pepper LaBeija provide a significant portion of the exposition within the film, describing the history of drag and the ballroom community. Other subjects, such as Venus Xtravaganza or Freddie Pendavis also provide insight into their community, but represent the “newer” generation of the scene.
A clear obstacle for this project is created due to the nature of this film being a documentary that did not intend to produce academic or scholarly claims about the community in question: the observer’s paradox. Since Livingston represents an “outsider” to the community her presence (especially with a camera) undoubtedly causes shifts in how speakers employ their language to present their identities. As such, we must be aware of this and take it into account while providing linguistic descriptions of the documentary’s subjects.