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This is a documentary about the 1980s NYC drag ball scene. Directed by Jennie Livingston, then a student at Yale. Most of the "drag queens" shown here are Black, Latin, or both. It hints at some of the darker stuff about this scene, but not much of that is shown on screen.
One interesting thing is the variety of self-concepts among the subjects. Some want to be a "complete woman" (i.e., get bottom surgery), and others identify as men who wear women's clothing. There's one scene of two guys on the beach in women's swimsuits. One of them mentions how he finally got "the surgery," and now he's finally a woman, and his friend turns to the camera and says, "But that little boy is still in there."
One of the subjects was also murdered, probably by a disgruntled john, and only found under a grimy hotel bed after four days. A lot of the drag queens are prostitutes or hustlers of some kind. This was also the case in the early punk scene; a lot of those early bands were funded by their girlfriends stripping or hooking, and some of the men were hustlers as well.
Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k70tlLetqqw
I thought this would be a post about the WwIi movie where Paris is liberated
Not our first rodeo.
I taught this film for years. Judith Butler and bell hooks argued over this film. [Butler, Ch. 4].
It is odd to me to align Paris is Burning with the straight punk scene when it feels more akin to the queercore movement, although queercore was way more anti-capitalist than those at the balls who emulated (coveted) capitalism rather than critiqued it.
I'm not sure 1970s Drag and Punk are aligned. Not really. In both communities, some (maybe most) of the performers supported themselves by sex work, either done by themselves or by their girlfriends. Some of these punk guys were basically pimps, their girlfriends would work at a strip club, pay the rent, and give the guys money for drugs, clothes, etc. They would make a little money at music but not enough to live on. And some of the guys did sex work even if they were straight. Dee Dee Ramone was a street hustler, for example.
Paris is Burning doesn't go in-depth into the sex work part of drag, but they don't really hide it either. There's a scene where Venus Xtravaganza talks about how most clients want companionship more than sex, but sometimes they expect sex, and isn't that pretty similar to being a housewife in the end? It's really sad because many of these guys aspire to embody various feminine archetypes like the housewife, the model, the actress, the "spoiled, rich white girl," etc. It's as if they can't really have their own power, even in their fantasy life.
but it does speak to the trans cooptation and fantasy we see now, right? very prescient.
Oh yeah, absolutely. In real life, actually being a housewife, model, actress, etc. isn't always a great gig. Look at Britney Spears, would you want her life? Would you want to be where she is right now, mentally and all the rest? But they don't want the reality; they want the fantasy, e.g., the spoiled, rich, white girl who gets everything she wants when she wants, who never suffers, and never feels pain.
I feel for these guys because I wouldn't want to be a stripper/hooker either. If you're a feminine black gay guy in 1980s New York City, I do not begrudge you anything you need to get through the day, as long as it's not harming somebody else. They were really facing some pretty awful discrimination even before they put on women's clothes. But it's just sad that their fantasy world was still about being passive, an image, maybe a consumer, and not a person.
Man, (WoMan..), you and I understood different scenes. Most of the performers had day jobs, actual jobs they had to show up to, to pay the bills, with actual paychecks. I didn't know any girlfriend who was doing sex work, none of the performers were pimps. (I knew women who were prostituted, had zero to do with punk, everything to do with drugs and exploitation. Maybe that was going on in the NYC scene.) The scene had plenty of drugs however, like every rock and roll scene, as well as disco, funk, etc. There was some crossover with the kink scene.
I'll agree punk had no alignment with drag, drag was a "gay" scene, more musically aligned with disco and dance clubs, even in the later 80's. This doesn't mean there weren't gay / lesbian people in the scene, there were plenty. Just not drag.
A lot of people had regular day jobs in the NYC scenes, but there was also a lot of prostitution and prostitution-adjacent activity back then. And there were women who made a living through art, eg Patti Smith and Roberta Bayley. Other women like Lydia Lunch, Anya Philips, and Nancy Spungen worked in strip clubs, massage parlors, dominatrix clubs, etc.
I should also add this comes from reading books, interviews, etc. So a woman with a job as a bartender or executive assistant might have gone unremarked because that doesnt fit the "rock and roll" image. 70s rock was pretty grimy no matter the subgenre, with lots of predatory behavior towards teenage girls...sometimes not even teenage.
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