Paris is Burning with DoctorJonPaul

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the Bechdelcast. The questions asked if movies have women
and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands
or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephyn bast
start changing with the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Hello, and welcome to the Bechdel Cast. My name is
Caitlin Drante, my.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Name is Jamie Loftus, and this is our podcast where
we talk about your favorite movies using an intersectional feminist lens.
Starting beta test Kitlan, what's that.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Well? It's a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel,
sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace Test as it was co
created with Liz Wallace. It is a media metric that
has many permutations. Ours is do two characters of a
marginalized gender have names? Do they speak to each other?

(00:57):
And is their conversation about something other than a man?
And we particularly like it when it's a narratively relevant
conversation or just something significant and not just like Hi,
how's the weather or whatever?

Speaker 1 (01:14):
And today's a very special episode. It's one of a
handful of documentaries that we've covered on this show before.
But it just if you've seen this documentary. It begs
to be talked about. There's no shortage of story and
if you haven't seen it, it's streaming in so many places.
Get it together.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
The documentary of course, Being Paris is Burning from nineteen
ninety directed by Jenny Livingston. It is yeah, widely accessible,
it's iconic, and we have a wonderful guest here with
us to talk about it.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
They are an award winning creator, writer, author. They are
a co host of BFF Black Fat theem podcast. Their
book Fat Femme, Revealing the Power of visibly queer voices
in Media and Learning to Love Yourself comes out March
twenty fifth.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
It's John Yay, welcome, dum hey everybody. How you doing.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
We're great, happy almost release.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
Yeah, you know we're wait, oh god, oh my god.
There's like thirty one with thirty two more days last.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, it's like exactly, no, it's sooner because it's.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
February that part. Yeah, you know what, there aren't that many. Yeah,
so it is a little bit sooner. So it's somewhere
around like the like twenty nine thirty days or something
like that. But yeah, you know, I'm a little excited,
a little nervous, but I will say this. I sent
it to my mom and sheat my mom she reads
very quickly, and she called me one day and she

(02:46):
was like, I'm on page one oh seven and I
just want to say I'm very proud of you. And
I was like, thanks, Mom, So yeah, So I'm very
much in the mind of like, I'm happy that it
landed with her. I was worried for a moment, but
it landed, so.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
That's so beautiful. I sent my dad my first draft
of my book, and if the response was a little muted,
he was like, you know, Jamie, I really like what
you're going for here. There are some grammar mistakes. Would
you like me to send them to you in a document?
And I was like, yeah, I guess yeah. And then

(03:19):
like six months later he was like, by the way,
I enjoyed it, yeah, yeah, yeah, so cool.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
I love that. Well, tell us more about your book, John.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
Yeah, so quickly. You know, one of the things that
I had I've always been very vigilant about is the
idea of how black and specifically black queer voices are
either not uplifted or celebrated in media. And that's kind
of what I built my whole platform one, right, how
do I continue to uplift the voices of those who

(03:47):
often don't have the mic? And so I like to
tell people that I started this book back, and this
is also just a testament to how long it can
take to write a book. I started. I went to
a Lambda literary retreat back in twenty seventeen, started playing
with the idea of writing a book there, and it
just kind of set in my Google drafts forever. And

(04:07):
then the pandemic came and all my friends wrote books,
and everyone got one, you know, everyone got one in
or even got two in, and I was just still
kind of like, no, no, no, no, I don't think
I could do it. And then I just got to
a point. You know what ended up happening was I was,
you know, playing with it, going back and forth with
different agents. And then in twenty twenty three ish, you know,

(04:28):
or twenty twenty four, actually, I went to sun Dance
and I saw the Luther documentary. And I tell everybody
that that was kind of like the catalyst of me
wanting to be like, oh god, I know what I'm writing.
I saw the documentary, I saw the way that they
danced around his queerness, how they didn't talk about his queerness,
but also how they did, And I said, you know,
there's got to be a way for us to kind

(04:49):
of celebrate, you know, like even just looking at Luther
and looking at Luther's story, I went back into my
own memories about how I thought about queerness from the
lens of how my family talked about Luther. And that's
kind of how I opened the book. I talk about
the idea of how people what they said and what
they didn't say about Luther and what that said to
me as a young queer kid in southern California. And

(05:11):
so I basically get to a point where I start
talking about this idea of how I literally had to
figure out how to find myself through media, like writing
about Luther and his experience and what I got from that.
It really helped me understand how I found myself through media.
And so that's really what the book is. I talk
about Luther, and again it's not about his sexuality per se.

(05:33):
It's about all the things I was afraid to delve
into because of how my family talked about Luther. And
then my first time meeting Andre Leon Talley on the
show America's next top model, Miss Jay, you know, Derek j.
Miss Lawrence, Like all of these black queer figures I'm
seeing in television and what that's telling me about my
own identity and how I'm learning through them to find myself.

(05:55):
So it's a lot of you know, there's also like
moments I talk about what happened to me in college.
I talk about fat phobia. I talk about the idea
of how much we live, Like how the two thousands
lie to us. I talk very, very very vocally about
how much the two thousands was. It was just it
was shit. It was awful, Like the two thousands was terrible.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
I mean it's like just such a period of like
absurd regression. It's wild to look back on lucky us.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
Yeah, And so I talk about that, like how two
thousands shaped my you know, body dysmorphia, and you know,
all the things I was doing to try to lose
weight while I was in college, to keep up with
the other queer kids I was running in groups with,
and just really this this overall kind of like how
did I get to this place? You know, I get
asked out a lot, how do you how are you
so confident? How are you so happy in who you are?

(06:43):
Like a lot of therapy and a lot of writing.
So that's really what it is. But yeah, that's pretty
much what my book is. In a nutshell, it's just
kind of an ode and a celebration of those who
came before us and those who are still here because
I know that no one else is going to give
them their flowers, and so ultimately I thought, why not?
Why not me? Why not I do that?

Speaker 2 (07:01):
So why not? Yeah? That's amazing. I can't wait to
read It's sing And it's also a component of the
documentary we'll be discussing is kind of an examination of
how media influences the participants of the ballroom scene and
how they emulate certain people or certain TV shows or

(07:21):
stars or you know, all that kind of stuff. So
that'll be fun to dive into.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
And there's also so much of like the legacy of
Paris is burning that there's which I that was the
thing I was not familiar with going in, is like
the year's long legacy that the Spavia's had, positive, negative,
everything in between.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
So John, what's your relationship slash history with this documentary? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (07:46):
You know, so it was one of the documentaries. So
I'll say this, I did not know really anything. Again,
obviously I tell people, you know, if you go out
and get my book, you know, I talk very openly
about how I grew up in a cult, and so
I do believe that, you know, Jehovah Witnesses are cults,
they are part of the cult sect. And so growing
up in the cult, you know, I was very very

(08:09):
what's the word, not even protected, but I was scared
to indulge anything that had queer content. And so I
didn't really get to Paris's Burning until probably two thousand
and four. And so this is a time where you know,
I know about ball room, you know, miss right. I
know I know about it, but I don't know it
per se right. And so in two thousand and four,

(08:31):
I'm in college, you know, I take an Art of
film class and that was one of you know, Aaron
Race may may he rest in peace. He was one
of I'm gonna say he was my favorite instructor. But
I really appreciate it the way he did his class.
He did his class, and so it was an art
of film and I was very much into writing at
the time, and he basically had positive you know, this

(08:53):
is what a good you know, a good drama is,
this is what a good comedy is, and this is
what a good documentary is. And so Paris Is Burning
was the documentary that he posited for that class. We
watched it in class. It was a four hour It
was a summer class, and so the summer classes were
hell along. If anybody's ever taken the summer class out
of college, you know, you're in class for like six hours.

(09:13):
And so, you know, we watched the class. We watched
the film for two hours, and then we worked in
groups and we had to dissect what made the documentary great.
And that was my first, you know, entrance into that film.
And I think what I really loved about the film
was that it was giving so many people, specifically trans
women or non binary people. It was giving them airtime,

(09:34):
like they had a voice. And I had never seen
anyone who looked like you know, Peppala Basia or anyone
who looked like, you know, Willie Ninja or anything like that,
and so it just felt like I was like, oh
my god, these are my people. Even though this film
was made almost fifteen years ago, you know, I still
feel like I found my home right, and so it
was just it was a very awakening. I feel like

(09:56):
the film really awakened something in me in regards to
not only narrative storytelling, but it also awakened kind of
this notion of like, wow, this is a subculture, you know,
in a subculture that I feel like I have some
type of home in if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
Yeah, of course, yeah, Jamie. What's your history with the documentary?

Speaker 1 (10:17):
I saw this documentary in high school in uh. I
think it was from my music teacher. She also like
did the dance stuff in our like plays and stuff,
and so she would just kind of show us whatever
she felt like, and so she showed us Paris's Burning.
I want to say I was in like tenth or
eleventh grade and I hadn't revisited since, but it was

(10:41):
I'm very glad I saw it as young as I did,
so thanks miss Bolani shout out to her. But I mean,
I just remember, you know, being this like big class
full of teenagers that you know, it was whatever, the
late two thousands, So some kids were total assholes, but
most of most everyone was like really really really pulled in.

(11:03):
I had never seen a documentary like it before. I
think at that point, perhaps tragically, the closest I was
familiar with was like the Madonna Vogue music video that
I was like obsessed with anytime, like my mom would
turn it on for me, which I you know, that
is an element of this very complicated conversation around ballroom

(11:24):
culture and how white celebrities have sort of co opted
it over the years. But when I saw Paris Is Burning,
I was like, oh, this is what this is, this
is what she saw, and was like, you know, I
want to present this in my whatever Madonna way, But yeah,
I was really taken with it, particularly obviously, I mean

(11:46):
we'll talk about everyone in the in the film, particularly Venus,
and yeah, I don't know, I just I was really
taken by it, and I hadn't revisited it in years,
and I had just rewatched it anyways, because I've been
working on a project about this feels weirdly tangential but
drag in comedy, because I interviewed that do you remember

(12:09):
the YouTube video with Kelly.

Speaker 3 (12:11):
Shoes Shoes Yeah, yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
So I was doing just like some background on on
on drag and the history of drag because I interviewed
Liam Kyle's all and who plays Kelly. And I just
read a book that I would highly recommend called Decolonized
Drag by Kareem Kupchandani that I think came out a
couple of years ago. So I don't know, I mean
it's Paris's Burning. I know it is just like a

(12:38):
huge touchstone for a lot of people, and it was
definitely my first gateway into, you know, seeing this world
and also like revisiting it. I was so happy to
see again just how inclusive the world of this documentary
is and how I mean, like you're saying, John, how

(13:00):
you know on drag race trans people weren't allowed to
compete for years and years in this really restrictive way.
And again, like Paris is Burning is the real deal.
It is a full community, and it's just it's beautiful.
So it's really fun to revisit. Caitlyn, what is your
history with this field?

Speaker 2 (13:21):
I saw it during the great Caitlin movie binge of
two thousand and four slash two thousand and five. Yes,
I was a It was like during my freshman slash
sophomore year in college and I was a film student,
and I realized how few movies I'd actually seen I

(13:45):
went into film school being like, I'm a scholar already.
I don't even know why I'm here. I already know
everything about movies.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
I've seen Indiana Jones, one, two, and three.

Speaker 4 (13:55):
Yeah, you thinkom because I know the I know film
And it turns out I didn't know shit.

Speaker 2 (14:08):
So I started compiling just like a list of all
the movies I felt like I needed to watch. And
I was getting all the Netflix DVDs back when that
was still a bad What a time? What a time?
I got three at a time at a time you.

Speaker 3 (14:25):
Had the premium.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
Oh, you have the money. So I was cycling through
those and Paris Is Burning is one of the ones
I watched, and it was probably my first exposure to
actually seeing a trans person on screen who was not
a like CIS actor playing a trans person because for

(14:51):
some reason, I was like really attached to the movie
Boys Don't Cry in high school. I watched it many
many times, but of course that is an example of
a SIS actor playing a trans character slash trans real
life person, So I think, yeah, seeing this documentary was probably,

(15:12):
if not the first, one of the very first times
I saw an actual transperson on screen, and I learned
a lot, and I enjoyed the documentary very much. But
like you, Jamie, I hadn't revisited it in many, many years,
so I was very excited to dive back in and
revisited it. And there's so much to talk about. It's

(15:34):
really interesting to see the ways in which, like things
discussed in the documentary are still very relevant and also
some of the ways in which things feel quite dated
by our standards today. So lots to discuss. Excited to
get into it. Before we do. Let's take a quick

(15:56):
break and then we'll come back for the recap and
we're back, okay. So here's the recap of Paris is Burning.

(16:16):
It's a little tricky to do a recap for a
documentary because it doesn't follow, you know, a standard narrative
three x structure. But I think I did a pretty
swell job here. But feel free to jump in and
fill in any blanks. But this is, of course, a
documentary about the ballroom scene in New York City, specifically

(16:39):
Harlem in nineteen eighty seven. Ballroom, of course, referring to
a subculture of the LGBTQ plus community, where predominantly black
and LATINX queer folk put on balls, which are shows
slash competitions where participants walk on a runway, so to speak,

(17:04):
they model their outfit. There is often a component of
drag and or costumes. There's often dancing, especially voguing. There
are different categories.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
There's music, there's dynasties, there's families. There's family rivalries.

Speaker 3 (17:21):
Yes, there is. The rivalry is where it's at.

Speaker 2 (17:26):
Those were some of my favorite parts of the doc
where I think it's Freddie who says House of Lebasia,
I wouldn't be caught dead there. Yeah, but the ballroom
scene is all about self expression and being in a
space where you can be safe and comfortable and celebrated
in your queer identity.

Speaker 3 (17:48):
Can I also make a no, I'm not to cut
you off, but I also think it's it's also imperative
to note that there was also as much as it
was fun, there was a lot of tension in those spaces,
Like specifically that's seen with the jack it right, and
they were saying that the person who was walking men's
but they said it was a woman's jacket and they
were like going, there was like a hole. It literally
stopped the entire event, this jacket that they proclaimed to

(18:12):
be a woman's jacket. So it just I felt it
was important to note that because I think as much
as it was fun and celebratory, it was also there
was a lot of drama. There was a lot of.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Drama for sure, and the response, it's the buttons are
on the right side was set, Mama was up set.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
It was also really I mean, there's one of the
things that I guess I hadn't really remembered about. It
was the generational tension as well, like that is really
really interesting to explore, and all I know in ways
that we'll talk about, but I was like, oh, yeah,
this is like sort of a It really is like
generations of a family trying to all be at the

(18:54):
same event, which always ends in a fight of some sort.
So it's not shocking.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
It's like Thanksgiving every day at the ball, like, you know,
the older auntie says something to the younger cousin, and
the younger cousin is like, you know what, you don't
know anything like let's talk about your your dirt, right,
you want to talk about my dirt, Let's talk about yours.
And I was going to say that, like you know,
as much as you know, I have the privilege. So
recently I went to Creating Change earlier this year, and

(19:20):
earlier this year, like we literally January felt like it
was eighteen months. So January I've spent, let me tell you, right,
And so I went to Creating Change back last month,
I should say, and they had a ball there. It
was an actual ball, and it was the same thing.
It was very much like as I'm watching the event

(19:41):
play out at Creating Change, I'm watching, like, you know,
Paris's burning play out in my head, where you have
people who are like legends coming up to walk and
they're being cut off by people who think that they
are currently a legend, and so now there's tension between
people and who's walking. What It's just, it was. It
was fun, but I could see like Paris is burning

(20:02):
playing out in my head as I'm watching the ball
take place, So it's still present, It's still present.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
The drama remains.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
One of the I think most heavily featured queens in
the in the documentary is Dorian Corey, who just like
the number of like both extremely shady and funny and
also profoundly wise, like those are Dorian's two settings. But
I think Dorian really really really sets this like this

(20:32):
generational divide between the older generation and the newer generation
in a way that is like really fascinating and also
super funny because she's super funny.

Speaker 2 (20:45):
Yeah. Yeah, it felt like Dorian Corey and Pepper Labasia
being the ta who like the generational differences on what
they say in their attitudes about things are most prominent.

Speaker 1 (20:58):
But yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
Over the course of the doc documentary, we meet several
people in this scene, starting with Pepper Labasia, the mother
of the House of Lebasia and has been for two decades.
We also meet some younger members in the scene, like
Kim Pendavis and Kim's friend in protege, Freddie Pendavis. Kim

(21:22):
is an aspiring legend. The goal of participating in Balls
is to become a legend or to be legendary. Pepper Labasia,
for example, is considered a legend. We also meet Dorian
Corey shortly after this, another legend. In the scene, Dorian
Corey talks about the differences between Ballroom now aka in

(21:46):
the late eighties when this documentary was filmed, and Ballroom
from when Dorian was first starting out, which I believe
would have been I don't know if it was like
the fifties or sixties. But first it was like elaborate
drag where people were dressing similar to like Vegas showgirls.
Then it was people trying to emulate movie stars. Then

(22:09):
it became about emulating model like supermodels walking down the runway.
As time went on, more categories were created to be
more inclusive. So there's categories like high fashion, winter sportswear,
luscious body, schoolboy slash schoolgirl, realness, town and Country, executive realness, military,

(22:34):
high fashion, eveningwear, and a very specific category butch Queen
first time in drags at a ball, to name just
a few of the categories.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
It is so this dock. The categories are not all
of them, but some of them are so profoundly eighties
that you're like, okay, yes, right, it's wild. And it
was also interesting here Dorian speak to the philosophy in
costuming and how that's changed, not just like to reflect

(23:07):
the whatever the western beauty ideals of the period are,
but also like the price of costumes.

Speaker 3 (23:15):
Where we're gonna say that yeah, right, like.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
There's this there's a class component to it as well,
where it sounds like when Dorian was coming up, you know,
everyone made their own costumes. It was very scrappy, and
that was understood where by the time the documentary is
being filmed, it's again very eighty thing of like designer
labels by any means necessary, and in Dorian's opinion, something

(23:37):
that required an equal amount of scrappiness but less creativity.
Like it was interesting.

Speaker 3 (23:44):
Yeah, I was going to say to that point, that
was actually one of the things that one of the
first things that was on my mind was that it
really this film really shows not even just depression, but
it shows the the gap that so many of you know,
trans specifically trans black women were experiencing in that moment,
right It shows the pay disparity, It shows you know,

(24:08):
a lot of them being houseless, and you know a
lot of them talking about what they have to do
to survive. And I think, you know, I don't want
to get ahead of myself, but what I will say
is that I think that them opening talking about that,
right about this classism that lives in it, you know,
that lives in this ball world, really says a lot
to what's actually happening to them outside of these ballrooms, right, Like,

(24:30):
it's really giving you a greater understanding of what the
disparity was, and I thought it was actually very interesting.
I forget who it was, I have such a hard
time remembering names, but the woman who was talking about
wanting to go model, and you know, and how they
did that inner cut to all at the time, it's
you know, very eighties, but you know all these high

(24:51):
level fashion you know, high level stores and all of
these high level things, right even and then you you
talk about like even just the different categories. I think
one of the category was dynasty, right, so the whole
notion of you know, people trying to pretend to be
opulent and you know, I want to say herbaceous, but
I don't know if that's the right word. But like,

(25:12):
you just had a lot of people trying to live
in a financial category that they could never attain, at
least in that moment or in that time. It was
very very far fetched and it was really hard for
them to attain it, and so they were playing this
out in different categories in the ball and I always
thought that was so interesting.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
Yeah, lots to discuss there, and throughout the documentary there
are various discussions about race, class, gender, sexuality, the intersections
of all of those things and how systemic biases affect
the participants in the ballroom community. So yeah, we'll get

(25:52):
more into that in a bit. There's also talk of
essentially code switching and efforts to quote unquote pass as straight,
which is characterized as realness. In this context. Realness also
refers to passing as a different gender than the one

(26:12):
you were assigned at birth. There's lots we can discuss
there as well. Pepper Labasia talks about her parents discovering
that she had breasts and wore women's clothing, and how
she was ostracized for this. Side note here, From what
I understand, Pepper Lebasia had breast implants and preferred she

(26:36):
her pronouns, but did not identify as a woman. She
goes into this a little bit later in the documentary,
but she talks about how young teens would come to
her looking for a parental figure after they've been kicked
out of their house for being queer, and this kind
of leads into a discussion of found family chosen family,

(27:00):
which is connected to houses in the ballroom community where
people belong to different houses such as the house of Labasia,
House of Chanel, House of Dupre, house of Extravaganza, etc.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
And they like function as real families family.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:16):
Yeah, that section with Pepper explaining like I'm a mother,
but I'm also like a mother, like I'm buying birthday
presents and which is just I don't know, as a
really moving section totally.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
We meet Venus Extravaganza, a young trans woman who was
brought into the House of Extravaganza. We'll see more and
more of her throughout the documentary. We also meet the
mother of this house, Angie Extravaganza, who we see winning
an award for being like best mother of a house.

(27:55):
We also meet Willie Ninja, mother of the House Ninja,
and there's talk of you know, like you said, Jimmy,
like mothers providing care and support and buying birthday presents
and sometimes like giving younger members.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
Really right, who talks about buying birthday presents? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (28:14):
Yeah, well also and Angie Extravaganta, Like, I think a
lot of them touch on this, but yeah, they're basically
like providing care for the like children aka members of
their house. There's also talk of like this house is
the best, yeah, the most legendary, the most popular. Oh
that house, I wouldn't be caught dead in that house.

(28:37):
So there's rivalries. As we discussed earlier, fights breakout, people
throw shade at each other and fist.

Speaker 3 (28:45):
The girls fight, they do fight.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
They talk about something called reading, which is throwing very
specific insults at one another, the idea being like, oh, well,
if straight people insult a member of the queer community,
that's very different than members of the queer community in
insulting each other. So that's the idea behind reading, and

(29:11):
then throwing shade is like similar but more like subtextual,
where the insults are a little bit more you know,
it's shady for lack of a better word.

Speaker 3 (29:23):
Yes, Dorian said, I don't have to tell you you're ugly. Yes,
you just know you're ugly.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
Like it's it's yeah, it's reading, but like with telepathy.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
It's.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
That's such a cute shirt.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
I was like, I would not last a day. I'm
too sensitive.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Same yeah. And then from this came voguing, a dance
that would happen between two or more people who were
like feuding and throwing shade at each other other. There's
also talk of class and wealth. None of the people

(30:06):
featured in the documentary have much money, but part of
Ballroom is fashion oriented and fashion costs money. High fashion
costs a lot of money. So we learn about something
called mopping, which and I think it's Freddy Pandavis, who
is my favorite moment of the movie, was like, oh,

(30:26):
you know, yeah, mopping. That's when you know, you go
into a store and you see something and you see
something that you want, and then you're looking at it
and you look at the thing you want. Mopping is stealing.
So yeah, it's basically you just take the outfit you
want and you don't pay for it. And it's because

(30:47):
again racism and homophobia and transphobia and all of these
systemic prejudices make it so that members of this community
are often living in poverty, and we also learn that
many of them earn money through sex work. There is
discussion of gender and transitioning and gender affirming surgeries, where

(31:14):
different people who are interviewed have different opinions and experiences,
where in some cases we see trans women living openly
and happily as such, people like Octavia's Stan Laurent Brooke
and Carmen Extravaganza Venus Extravaganza, and then in other cases,
especially when Pepper Labasia is talking about it. There are

(31:38):
like just more sort of dated attitudes and hints of
transphobian misogyny. We can talk more about that, and then
we cut to nineteen eighty nine, so a few years
have passed. We check back in with a few of

(31:59):
the major plays of the scene, such as Willie, Ninja,
Dori and Corey and Angie Extravaganza, who says that Venus
Extravaganza had been murdered. She was the one who had
to go and identify the body and pass the news

(32:19):
along to Angie Extravaganza's biological family. And that's the note
more or less that the documentary ends on. So that
is Paris is burning in a nutshell. Let's take another
quick break and then we'll come back to discuss further.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
And we're back.

Speaker 2 (32:50):
We're back.

Speaker 1 (32:50):
Where shall we start? There's so many places start? Yeah, John,
does anything stand out to you? Where would you like
to start?

Speaker 3 (32:57):
You know? So, I think it's I think the one
thing for me that has always really struck me about
this film is the idea of like and again. When
I saw it in two thousand and four, it was
it was always like a foreign concept and foreign thought
to me. But this idea of chosen family, this idea
of like, you know, your family turns you know, because

(33:18):
you you as you grow up hearing this, right, your
family is the only people who always love you. And
then you come out and then they're like, no, I
don't just kidding, you know, just kidding by you have
to go and so, you know, finding people that you
you vibe with, people who truly are there for you
and care for you and want to see you not
just you know, survive, but like really thrive. That's the thing.

(33:40):
You know. As much as I always thought Dorian and
Pepper were really shady, I could tell by the way
they talked about their chosen you know, the folks in
their different homes and their houses. You could tell that
there was just this very deep love and admiration that
they both had for the people in their houses. And
you know, I don't if you don't have you know,

(34:01):
I'll say this. If you're a listener and you identify
as straight and sists, I think there's just this And
maybe I don't know how the two of you identify,
but I know for me, the friends that I have
and the community I've built, it's the same concept, right,
you can genuinely feel that they just want the best
for you. And so this film really kind of opened
my mind up to that of, like, you don't necessarily

(34:25):
have to just rely on your family to be happy.
In this world. You can find people who truly want
the best for you, and you can live and thrive
and be happy and have a full live life, and
you can also have fun. As much as these balls
were shady and you know, drama was going down, there
were moments where people were really happy, and there were

(34:45):
moments when people were celebrating, you know, each other, And
so I just thought that was really funny. And the
last thing I'll say, I always thought it was really
funny in the scene where Dorian is talking and that
cat is walking behind her, Oh my god. I always
said that Dorian reminds me of like, not, lady, what
movie is that with the cat? It's a Disney movie.
And for his New Groove, there's another movie where these

(35:07):
cats are walking and they're just really is it the
Siamese Ones? We are Siamese. It's always in the Lady
in the Tramp. Okay, I was right. I was gonna
say that, but I wasn't wasn't sure she reminds me
of like a Siamese cat in the sense of like
she just knows she's regal, she just knows she's better
than everyone else. And I was like, it just was
so funny to me as I was watching that doc

(35:29):
I was like, of course there would be a cat
behind her because her personality is so much like a
Siamese cat. So it's just I thought that was funny.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
But yeah, yeah, I loved the cat.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
It was really I mean, I I going off of
what you were just talking about, John, it was really cool.
I mean the I mean, there's so many benefits to
this being a documentary obviously, but where on this show.
Over the years, we've talked about so many movies that
have really appealed to queer audiences because of the element
it's a found family in fiction. But there's no coding here.

(36:03):
You're just seeing the families. There is no like, you know,
mental hoops that you have to go through to feel
seen in a movie like Paris is Burning and that's
so singular and so, you know, not completely unheard of
at this time, but certainly on it seems like this
scale of success, which is really amazing but brings me

(36:26):
there's something I wanted to just touch on that. I mean,
I wasn't aware really about anything when it came to
the production of this movie, and wow, there's a lot.
There's a lot going on that have also echoed conversations
we've had before. I did not know that this movie
was directed by a white woman, for example. But the

(36:47):
director of this movie, Jenny Livingston, directed it when she
was in I believe her late twenties. It's her first feature,
and that and other elements of this production has garnered
quite a bit of controversy over the years. I think
rightfully so Jenny Livingston, I can share some quotes, but

(37:09):
has generally stood her ground on this that there's a
few different buckets of conversation and how Paris's Burning has
been criticized. It's been criticized for having a white director
and primarily featuring Black and Latin people in this community.
There's also a compensation that I would really like to

(37:30):
talk about because it reminds me a lot of way
back when when we covered Tangerine by Sean Baker, where
because white filmmakers statistically have a better chance of getting
their film made scene and profiting from it, while it
can produce really amazing work. It doesn't mean that those

(37:50):
who are featured, like the entire cast of Paris Is Burning,
is getting equally compensated for literally making the movie. What
it is not that Jenny Livings and did nothing. Obviously
a lot of great work went into making this film,
but it's their stories and that is the appeal of
the film. And so there's been a lot of conversation
about that. At the time. I mean, this gets into

(38:13):
like one of my pet peeves, so we'll I'll just
shut up about it as quickly as possible. But compensating
interviewees and how taboo that is across nonfiction filmmaking. I
just think it's such a crack of shit. But you know,
when this film was being made, that was the general
agreement that you know, everyone signed off and agreed to.

(38:34):
But as is unpacked in both Hollywood Reporter article from
a twenty twenty one and a Vanity Fair article from
twenty nineteen that reflects on this, a lot of why
the subjects of this film agreed to do it is
because they really wanted their stories out there. And so

(38:56):
there is the argument that cast members have subsequently made
that like, yes, I did sign the piece of paper.
I wanted our community and I wanted my story out there.
I agreed to not be compensated. But then the movie
was acquired by Miramax and one stuff at sun Dance,
and you know, eventually made four million dollars and is

(39:16):
the basis of polls. And who's seen most of that
money is Jenny Livingston, and so there have been rivalries.
It does, I guess to her credit. It seems like
Jenny Livingston has you know, attempted to correct this overtime.
But it was it was a long, a long standing conversation.
I won't unpack it beat by beat because it's literally

(39:38):
thirty five years of back and forth. But I do
want to share a quote from Jenny Livingston defending herself
as a white woman. Let's see what she has to say.
This is her, you know, disputing that Paris's Burning was
made for white people. She says, the sense that this

(39:59):
was a production by white pa before white people, that's
not historical. That is a projection rather than a truth.
You have to see paris Is Burning in the context
of nonfiction. She said versions of this over the years.
What she mainly appears to be alluding to is the
fact that she feels that this erases many of her
black collaborators who were working as producers and consultants. But

(40:20):
the compensation issue, I think there's just she doesn't have
much of a leg to stand on, I feel. So
I wanted to share a quote from Pepper, who is now,
as is most of the cast of this movie is
no longer with us. But this is from an interview
Pepper did when she was forty four, So nineteen ninety three,

(40:46):
a California magazine said I had sued Miramax in one
untold millions and was seen shopping with Diana Ross on
Rodeo Drive in a roles But I really just live
in the Bronx with my mom, and I am so
desperate to get out of here. It's hard to be
the mother of a house when you're living with your
own mother. And so, as we've seen for many marginalized performers,

(41:06):
there is a lot of publicity, there's this big cultural moment,
but it doesn't translate to sustained financials, and that is always, always,
always the case. I know we talked about it with
Tangerine as well, but it really stands out here too
where it's you know, a very similar you know, one's fiction,
one's nonfiction, but a very similar setup where the white

(41:28):
filmmaker makes a really good film but does not compensate
her collaborators appropriately. And it seems like I want to wait,
there's so many names. Let me see if I can
find the three names I'm looking for. As of twenty
twenty one, there were still three surviving cast members from

(41:48):
Paris Is Burning. I actually didn't know that Poe's was
like based based on Paris's Burning. I know there's I
knew that they were like they both surround ballroom culture,
but it's like officially based. Jenny Livingston was a consultant
on the first two seasons, and that is a Ryan
Murphy joint. And we don't have enough time to unpack

(42:09):
Ryan Murphy today. But the surviving cast members were invited
to be consultants, including Junior le Beajia, who is in
Paris Is Burning, but he was the one of three
that said no because he felt that there it was
history repeating itself with Poe's being another story about predominantly

(42:30):
black and brown communities in ballroom, this time by Ryan Murphy.
So it's again there's a white creative at the top,
and he's like, you know, I would love to get
a check here, but like you're doing it again, and
it's you know, twenty five years later, so we can
link those pieces in the description. But yeah, I mean,
this was just a conversation I was not aware of

(42:52):
at all and found very interesting.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
Definitely that kind of brings me to Belle Hooks his
critics of this movie. I believe this quote comes from
her book entitled Black Looks, Race and Representation. Bell Hooks
said quote, watching Paris's Burning, I began to think that

(43:15):
the many yuppy looking, straight acting, pushy, predominantly white folks
in the audience were there because the film in no
way interrogates whiteness. These folks left the film saying it
was amazing, marvelous, incredibly funny, worthy of statements like didn't
you just love it? And no, I didn't love it,

(43:37):
for in many ways, the film was a graphic documentary
portrait of the way in which colonized black people, in
this case black gay brothers, some of whom were drag
Queen's worship at the throne of whiteness, even when such
worship demands that we live in perpetual self hate, steal,
go hungry, and even die in its pursuit. We evoked

(44:00):
here is all of us black people, slash people of color,
who are daily bombarded by a powerful colonizing whiteness that
seduces us away from ourselves, that negates that there is
beauty to be found in any form of blackness that
is not imitation whiteness. And I see where she's coming

(44:21):
from with this criticism because different people being interviewed in
the documentary will say things like how they long to
be rich, and they point out that part of the
appeal of balls is that you can be whoever you
want to be at a ball and you can live
a fantasy of being able to be an executive or

(44:43):
a socialite or other type of wealthy person because society
will not afford you those opportunities if you are black, brown, queer.
But this mentality of putting being wealthy on a pedestal
and emulating business ex executives and like doing ceo drag.

Speaker 1 (45:07):
Like Dorian lays that out like really eloquently.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
Yeah yeah right, But this mentality is very reflective of
the times. You know, it's the Reagan era economic ideals
of the eighties, and there wasn't a ton of pushback
on that at the time, even from marginalized communities, because
those ideals were just so pervasive, to the point where
it was not super common to interrogate things like capitalism

(45:33):
and white supremacy because they had just been so so
so normalized. And you know, pre Internet, there weren't as
many ways or resources to educate yourself or to spread
information widely except by mainstream media, which was perpetuating these
white supremacist, capitalist, cis, heteronormative ideologies. And I know Bell

(45:57):
Hooks's criticism is like, yeah, but you still can and
should interrogate those things. So why didn't this documentary which
also fair, but like, I don't know, it's very tricky,
and it also just speaks to how influential media is,
where ballroom contestants through the decades were you know, emulating

(46:20):
movie stars and characters from shows like Dynasty, which I
was like, oh, yeah, that is a show that I've
never watched and don't know anything about, but it was
very popular in the eighties.

Speaker 1 (46:33):
It really been lost to time. I don't think anyone
like revisits it really, right.

Speaker 3 (46:37):
Yeah, I mean, and they did redo it recently they
did it.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
Was in like twenty seventeen.

Speaker 3 (46:43):
Yeah, they did for ABC. I think ABC redid it
and it didn't go anywhere. But I think you speak
to so that I think that's the love hate that
I have with this film, right. I love what this
film stands for because I am a blackquar person who
is also you know, recognizing that even in twenty twenty five,
a lot of the stuff that they said in the

(47:05):
nineties was extreme. I mean twenty five years was it
twenty five years ago, thirty five years ago or thirty
five thirty five? Okay, so we're thirty five years out
from this film. You know, even thirty five years ago,
there were folks who were still dealing with a lot
of the stuff we're dealing in twenty twenty five. And
I think that's, like I said, the thing that I
love is that you see the resilience of these people saying,

(47:27):
you know, regardless, I'm going to live the life I
want to live, i want to be happy, I'm going
to find my people, I'm going to find joy. But also,
like I think that's the real issue I had with
the film is that we don't interrogate anything like we
leave these people kind of where we found them, Like
it's very much. We see you in squalor. We see
that you're going through it. We see that you're unhappy

(47:48):
to an extent, and you're using ballroom to find joy,
but we're not offering you any resources to get you
to a place where when you're done with this ball
you have somewhere to go to your head where you
feel safe, you feel seen, you have you know, you
have your means. And so I think that that's the
thing that gets lost in translation, is you know, and
I've had to say this on so many different accords.

(48:09):
I actually just sent an email about this this week.
You know, I don't need a handout. I just need
a hand And I think that's the thing that you know,
I think a lot of people in the early nineties,
especially when we're coming out of Reaganomics, we're watching black
and brown people say these systems are set up to
watch me fail, and I'm doing my best to survive

(48:29):
them and survive through them. And the best way I
know how to do that is through sex work, you know,
to the degree like I'm looking around and I'm going
help these people, like give them something like but then
you also have to interrogate. Okay, if Jenny did come
in and she was like, here's some money, then people
would be interrogating her and calling her the white savior, right. So,

(48:52):
but I think that there's just there's so many levels
to oppression, and I think the biggest thing that I
want folks in my rambling to hear is that there,
you know, we all have to be so intentional about
how we're just I won't even say reporting, because I
don't think anyone really reports on our stories anymore. But
I think the way that we talk about, you know,
the injustices that we face, right, there is an element

(49:16):
of privilege that's there. And I think that there's so
much education you have to do to make sure that
when you're going into a community that is oppressed, or
when you're going into a community that needs that kind
of help, that you've done your own intentional work to
make sure that you're not causing more harm. And I
think that's the thing that is most important for me
about watching this film. It's like, yes, it's funny, and
it's created such a you know, a culturally thing, and

(49:38):
I mean ru Paul is mentioning this film like almost
every season. At this point, he's had seventeen seasons of
Drag Race and he comes up every single season. But
I think the biggest thing is is that you have
so many people who are still oppressed and are still
striving to find peace after the ball, and it's like,

(49:59):
what do we do? What do we do to end that?
What do we do to help get these people the
resources that they need so that way they're not left for,
you know, left And I'm trying to be mindful of
my words because I saw your your note.

Speaker 1 (50:12):
Oh yeah, yeah, we don't use like zoomer, we don't
use like TikTok girls.

Speaker 3 (50:16):
Okay, yeah, So just just being careful of that, right,
like why are we not you know, how are we
not leaving? Because that's really what it is. I mean,
the fact that it ends on talking about this trans
woman being killed. It so bothersome to me that that's
kind of how the film ends. And it's like no
one said or did anything about that, right, you know,

(50:37):
So I don't know, it's just it's it's like I said,
it's it's it's uplifting, but it's like I guess my
and I'm trying not to get into my social justice soapbox.
But I'm like, why is it that we're always having
to be resilient? Like why why why do people enjoy
watching us struggle and and try to find joy in that?
And you know, and I get this all the time too,
even with me. You know, oh, you have a book

(50:59):
coming out, you have a podcasting, you want to warns
it's so great, and it's like I shouldn't have to
be celebrated for all that I've been through to get
to where I am, like, I don't don't do that.
We shouldn't have to do that. So yeah, it's just
something I think a lot about after watching this film.

Speaker 2 (51:16):
And then like there's an extreme end of that spectrum
with like the appropriation of voguing.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
Donna's right, which came out even before this. That was
I didn't realize that had come out before this documentary.
I think the documentary was filmed, but they were released
around the same time, so in some ways it was like,
you know, Madonna was you know, starting to sort of
steal voguing in the late eighties, and then by the
time the movie comes out, the video is already out

(51:46):
and it's didn't affect her career that's for fucking sure, right.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
And obviously the criticism is that, you know, Madonna and
already famous rich cis well, woman is profiting off of
something that she appropriated from ye black and brown queer communities,
and and most people didn't realize that.

Speaker 3 (52:12):
I would even also say too, there's a document I
don't want to get too much away from Paris's Burning,
but there is a documentary about how dirty she did
her people, the people that she appropriated from, her choreographers
and her dancers that were also in these communities that
she quote unquote hired and then just let them go,
and how they were just kind of like, yo, you

(52:34):
came in here, and you know, you stole this from
us and and and then didn't give us anything. And
so it's just there's so much to say about entertainment,
which is like white.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
Yeah, it's like white pop stars one oh one. It's
like it's so much evil. It's I also wanted to
mention and this isn't you know, this isn't a necessarily
on Jenny Livingston, but where Paris's Burning was sort of
spoke about in media at this time of like there's
never been a documentary like this before which is patently untrue.

(53:06):
It is that most of the documentaries made about underground cultures,
about queer cultures were made by queer black and brown filmmakers,
and so they just never got the attention or distribution.
The filmmaker I've seen most mentioned in this conversation who
was making films around the same time, around a lot

(53:27):
of the same themes, and had a personal connection to
these communities was Marlon Riggs, who directed I think four documentaries.
He passed of complications from AIDS when he was just
thirty seven. But this was a filmmaker who was working
at the time of Paris is burning, but his work

(53:49):
was never spotlighted. And then you see, you know, Jenny Livingston,
who is a complete you know, admitted it's not like
she's pretending that she has, you know, intense connection to
this culture, but she's a complete outsider and it's her
project that gets the financing, that gets the sun dance,
accolades and all that, which is again just something a

(54:11):
pattern we say repeated in entertainment over and over and
over and over.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
I wanted to touch a little bit more on the
differing attitudes that are based to some degree on like
different generations in this scene and how you know, for example,
Pepper Labasia, who again preferred she her pronouns and had

(54:38):
breast implants, but I identified as a gay man who
emulated women but was not a woman, and says she
would never have any surgery that would like, you know,
give her a vagina and quote unquote make her a woman.
And she says that she would never recommend anyone have

(55:01):
that type of surgery because, oh what if they change
their mind? And oh, being a woman in the world
is hard. Why would you want to subject yourself to
the mistreatment and abuse and misogyny that women have to face,
which you know, when we watch this in twenty twenty five,
we realize that's a very like antiquated, enrigid way of

(55:24):
thinking about identity and transitioning. And it's like steeped in
this idea of your genitals determine your gender and it's
okay to deny someone something they want because I assume
that they will change their mind about what they want
and all these things. And I mean, I appreciate that

(55:46):
that is represented in this documentary just to show that
there are differing viewpoints, because that's also like juxtaposed, right,
next to trans women living happy lives as trans women
who have had gender affirming surgery. And it was just
interesting to see those opinions being included in the documentary

(56:07):
because and you hate to see it, but there are
and have been prejudices within marginalized communities. You know, it's
not constant solidarity all the time, especially in an era
like the eighties but also up to and including now.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
Yeah. So, and that the movie itself doesn't at least
I mean, I let me know if you feel differently,
But it didn't see like the movie was taking any
particular side. It was just presenting this is how this
person feels on this issue, which is a useful like
historical document And I don't know, I mean, not to

(56:47):
go back to drag race too much, but but again,
I really like it didn't ping for me when I
saw this movie in high school. But I kind of
forgot that trans drag queens and CIS drag queens were
so intermixed in the ballroom scene. And that's something that
also is touched on quite a bit and decolonized drag

(57:10):
and just its criticisms of drag race and how it
doesn't always or hasn't always promoted true inclusion, and yeah,
I appreciated like seeing especially, I mean like it. I
don't know. I also did not remember how Venus's life ended,

(57:32):
which is still, I mean, to this day all too
common of trans folks being murdered and no one doing
anything to seek out I mean, who had done it,
because they're just not treated. While I thought of like
Sam Nordquist who was just found killed a transman in Minnesota,

(57:52):
and I mean, there's just so many, so many, so
many examples from over the years. And to note that Venus,
you know, was I Belave Italian and Puerto Rican, was
supporting herself through sex work and was found killed is
just it's so devastating. And I don't know. I mean,
I guess I don't know what I wanted the movie

(58:14):
to do with that, but I just I don't know.
I guess I wasn't trying to make a point, it
just was. It was really tragic and horrible and it's
still something that we're very much dealing with now.

Speaker 3 (58:27):
Yeah, and I think the scary part, you know, so
I will say this, I love our stories being told
in this way, right, but I think that there's also something,
like I said, kind of going back to my brant
about care, I think there's also something extremely scary about
our stories being told this way because now, you know,

(58:51):
especially with the way that this film ends, it shows
how disposable black trans people, trans people can be. Right.
So that's something that I think, you know, I if
there are any documentarians out there who's who's listening to
this and are thinking, oh, I want to do this
documentary or I want to I want to do this
type of research, I think this film is a great

(59:13):
place to kind of come back and to like examine
and say, like, what are all of the things that
Genny did right? And what are all the things that
Genny did wrong, especially when you're working with marginalized people.
Because even for me, right as someone who loves I'll
tell you right now, I will tune into I'm I
was watching one last night, the Parpito documentary on Netflix,
and there is a documentary. But yes, if it's a

(59:36):
true crime anything, mama is locked in. But I will
say to to that point, I think, you know, we
we have to There's got to be an element, especially
when we're dealing with marginalized people, that we have to
be very mindful demure and even I would even challenge
to be you know, to be cautious about how we're

(59:57):
how we're framing you know, stories and stories lines. But yeah,
I will say that I do appreciate that there is
you know, joy, We're still left with joy from the film.
And even now, you know, like I said, when I
watch shows that reference and I watch movies that reference that,
or even you know, I revisited Polls a couple of
months ago. It was just really it was affirming to

(01:00:19):
see the impact that this documentary had on so many people,
even now, like you said, thirty five years later.

Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
Absolutely right, because it does certainly something to normalize this
subculture and bring awareness to people about it, because I'm
sure there are lots of people around the country slash
world who would have no other way really of knowing

(01:00:48):
about it, especially in previous decades.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
I mean all three of us were right, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
Yeah, And the fact that it's like taught in schools
and universities, and like I put it, I added it
to my list because it kept coming up in textbooks
I was reading about like significant queer cinema, so it
being pretty mainstream has you know, I think done net good.

(01:01:17):
But also like, yeah, the note that it ends on
where it is basically just like, yes, Venus Extravaganza was
found murdered the end.

Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
That's all that's said. Yeah, that's all that said. And
then we see I believe it's Willie, who has since
seen a lot of success. It feels like they're almost
presented in opposition to each other, and.

Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
Right, here are the two possible outcomes, right like being
a participant in this community.

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
I wish more care had been taken with. I mean,
I feel like, I don't know, I'm not going to
redo her movie for her. It's done, it's done. But
but I would have stayed seated for another half hour
forty five minutes to really get into the two years later,

(01:02:07):
because it felt like very much like an after method.
I don't think it was intending to be dismissive, but
I think, like, like we've all said at this point,
it just felt like and then this happened and it
was happy, and then this happened and it was sad.
These are the two outcomes, thank you, good night, And
it's just like, well.

Speaker 4 (01:02:26):
No, that's giving way a second.

Speaker 3 (01:02:31):
It did not come here for this, is there more? Yeah,
you're like girl, I know you have more be rail
than that, you know, so I know there's gotta be
some found footage somewhere.

Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
It's really and getting back to Bell Hook's criticism of
this movie, I mean, there's no criticism of the failure
of policing to investigate these murders.

Speaker 3 (01:02:52):
Yeah, yeah, let's talk about it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
It's just like there's so many there are moments where
I feel like it really works to this documentary's advantage
to let the subjects just speak, not take a clear
like this is what I Jenny am trying to say,
Like that's not her job here, But there's so much
that's left on the table that I suspect there had

(01:03:15):
to have been some footage about and if there wasn't,
maybe the right questions aren't being asked because there is
so much about this specific period in time that's still
resonant now that it just feels like is either just
referenced in passing or like doesn't really come up. And
I think that like Bill Hooks was right to criticize

(01:03:37):
the audience reactions. That's if that's the audience's takeaway of likeugh,
loved it anyways, brunch time, Like then there you know
you can't control how people receive your work, but that
does feel like a failure of the documentary to some degree.

Speaker 3 (01:03:53):
Yeah, And I was going to say, to your point,
one of the things I'm thinking a lot about to here,
you know, there could have been and so in my mind,
so I actually wrote a story about you know, the
I think it was, was it twenty or twenty twenty one.
I wrote something about the whole fiasco and how people
are looking at Jenny Livingstone and now right basically in

(01:04:14):
our world, Now, what does this film for Slay? I
think it was for Slade. I wrote it for And
I will say this, I actually was in the mind
you know, actually while I was writing the article, one
of the things that I had picked up on was
that folks who were connected to this film back in
the nineties, they didn't want this to become because again,
we were living in a political state, right, we had
to act up, folks, you know, things going on and

(01:04:36):
act up. We were five, we were only maybe four
or five years into the you know, the AIDS crisis,
and so there's all of these things. And so I think,
to an extent, you know, one of the justifications of
Jenny leaving this stuff out is. I don't want this
to become a political film, right, I don't want this
to be about, you know, the politics of being black
and queer. I just wanted to celebrate ballroom. I wanted

(01:04:58):
to celebrate a culture and that's it, right, Okay, fair,
but me, especially me from an intersectional lens, right, we
cannot just talk about blackness and queerness and ball community
without talking about the politics of being black and queer
at this time. So it's almost like, you know, like,
like I said, I understand what she was trying to do,

(01:05:20):
But at the same time, we have the term intersectionality
being coined in eighty nine. So I'm thinking to myself, well,
why wasn't this film done from an intersectional lens where
we're watching oppression, you know, asking the question right and
formulating our questions from this place of how is oppression
impacting those who participate in ballroom?

Speaker 1 (01:05:41):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:05:42):
Like that that should have been the focus and then
we could have maybe moved into this what are we
going to do to vindicate Venus in her life? Right?
But I think, you know, and again, and I don't
want to be heavy. I don't want to be one
of those people that put their foot on Jenny's neck.
She's had enough people put their foot on her, so
I get it. But what I'm saying is is I

(01:06:02):
think that, you know, like I said to my point earlier,
I think we have to be when we're creating art
and where, you know, we're trying to tell a story,
we have to sometimes get away from the fear of
it quote unquote being too political because we are political.

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):
Everything is just political. Whoa, I said brilliantly and blew
everyone's minds wide open.

Speaker 1 (01:06:28):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I I it's I didn't I
didn't realize that you'd written about it, John, That's I.
I don't know. Yeah, it just felt like there there
was a lot that feels mysteriously absent. I don't know, particularly,
I mean looking at I was, you know, just looking
into like where the folks from this documentary documentary are now?

(01:06:50):
There are still three living cast members, Freddy and Saul
pen Davis and Junior li Bejia is still alive as well,
but most of the cast is gone and the majority
of them died because of complications related to AIDS. And
I don't know, I mean, it's like definitely not I'm

(01:07:12):
not the person to determine how much does that factor
into this narrative or not. But I've seen the criticism
around like where is you know?

Speaker 2 (01:07:24):
Something that I also thought the documentary might touch on
but doesn't is the history of ballroom. And I'm by
no means an expert. I am pulling this a lot
from scholarly journal Wikipedia, but just to kind of contextualize

(01:07:49):
ballroom a little bit. Its origins trace back to the
mid eighteen hundreds, where, for example, a person by the
name of William Dorsey Swan, a formerly enslaved person and
the first person to describe themselves as a drag queen,

(01:08:12):
started hosting secret balls in Washington, DC in the I
think late eighteen hundreds. Many of the attendees of these
balls were black men. They would be arrested in police
raids frequently, but the balls would continue. They caught on.

(01:08:36):
Other cities started them. By the eighteen nineties, there were
similar drag events organized in New York. By nineteen thirty,
there were similar events in Chicago, New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia,
other cities. They were generally racially integrated, although there was

(01:08:59):
a lot of race within that space, and so by
the nineteen sixties, there was you know, predominantly black balls,
you know, black and brown balls, because they were like,
we don't want to deal with the racism in these
integrated spaces because the white people are treating us badly.

(01:09:21):
And then that led to a lot of the houses
that we see represented in Paris's Burning, where for example,
like Crystal Liabasia founded the House of Liabysia in Harlem
in the early seventies and that was, you know, part
of the kind of origins of the specific scene that

(01:09:44):
we see represented in the movie. But anyway, there's much
more information. Again I'm not an expert, but I feel
like a documentary today would have been like where did
ballroom come from? You know, and it would have like
gone through that history quite a bit more.

Speaker 1 (01:09:59):
But it feels more like a style choice of like
we're just dropped into this world and there's so much
I mean, that also speaks to like how under educated
you know, people generally are about drag culture.

Speaker 2 (01:10:15):
The other thing that the documentary to me doesn't make clear.
I want to talk about the title Paris Is Burning,
and it refers to a ball of the same name
that was held annually by Paris Dupree who was the
founding member and mother of the House of Dupre. Paris

(01:10:35):
Dupree is credited as one of the pioneers of voguing.
Paris is seen briefly and mentioned briefly in the documentary,
but not heavily featured or interviewed. And so I was like, oh,
interesting that you call the documentary Paris is Burning after
Paris Dupree's event, but like it's not really a feature

(01:10:59):
or interview Paris de Brea.

Speaker 1 (01:11:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:02):
Interesting, but wow. Yeah, I wanted to look into that
because I was like, why is this called Paris is Burning?
And that's why is there anything else anyone wants to discuss?
Regarding the movie.

Speaker 3 (01:11:15):
I will say it's an annual It's a film you
should watch annually at least once a year.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
Yeah, definitely get some friends together.

Speaker 1 (01:11:23):
Yes, it's great. Yeah. So for for all of the
for all of the criticizing we've been doing for the
past hour plus, it is a terrific movie. It's very, very,
very rewatchable. And I think, I mean, as we've all
sort of talked about, it was a gateway for it's
a it's a gateway watch. I think, like you know,

(01:11:44):
it's definitely a good one on one for ballroom culture
that it seems like has paved the way for a
lot of other work, and some of that, although Ryan
Murphy is not a good example, is not made by
Cis white creators. So I think it definitely has a

(01:12:05):
strong place in history. And it's also just like, yeah,
it's just such a great watch.

Speaker 2 (01:12:12):
Definitely, the music, choices, the fashion, it's.

Speaker 3 (01:12:16):
All of it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
Yes, the cat, the cat.

Speaker 3 (01:12:19):
Now the other thing. I don't know if I'm supposed
to talk about this on the air, y'all. Do know
that there was some stuff with mother Later on in
the years, they found folks in Dorian's closet. I don't
know if we want.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
To Oh, we can't wait.

Speaker 1 (01:12:33):
Oh my god, I forgot that that was Dorian. Oh okay, wait,
let's talk about it just really quickly. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:12:42):
I don't want to go into the mess too much
because I don't want it to overshadow the joy of
this film. But I'm just letting you know that that
was That is a piece.

Speaker 1 (01:12:49):
Of the history, and history is a many headed, complicated thing.

Speaker 2 (01:12:54):
Wait for our listeners and also me who doesn't know
about this, could you say, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13:02):
Wow, I feel like there's like five listeners right now
that heard us ending the episode and we're screaming at
the top of their lungs. Okay, yeah, yeah, John, take
it away, like.

Speaker 3 (01:13:12):
No, not more, but okay. So there is an article
and it says a famous drac Queen, a mummy in
the closet, and a baffling mystery, and this was written
in twenty sixteen and so so so what I will
also posit and say if you are a pose watcher,
you will know that. I think it was either season

(01:13:32):
two or season three. Towards the end of the season.
There is an actual episode where they're talking about this,
Uh there's a Louis Vauton trunk that is in I
think it's in Who's uh, what's her name's house? But anyway,
all that to be said, they're trying to get to
this trunk. Well, it's based off of this story surrounding
Dorian Corey, and I guess one of the clips of

(01:13:55):
this article, it says what stands in starkes contrast to
the gruesome implications in her closet, it is Corey's demeanor.
The most extensive video of Corey is in nineteen nineties
Jennie Livingston's documentary. It's an examination of aforementioned ball culture
and interviews. She's witty, realistic, and unflappable. In contrast to
the grandiosity of aspiring models and housewives. She has a

(01:14:17):
self possessed cadence and world weary observations, which endear her
to be a comparatively mainstream audience. So, you know, there's
this notion that she's just very fun and very you know,
witty and very you know, very endearing per se. But
I guess it's probable that there was something that was

(01:14:38):
happening between nineteen eighty eight and nineteen ninety and ultimately
she tucked it away in her closet.

Speaker 1 (01:14:45):
So okay, yeah, I forgot. How dare I forget about
the mummy? Truly?

Speaker 2 (01:14:52):
The I'm so confused.

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):
So it's so dead, Bob I was. I would say,
there's a dead body. I've seen different story as to
what the story I was looking at, which is cited
on scholarly journal Wikipedia, but also is Yeah from a
nineteen ninety five paper called The Drag Queen and the
Mummy that the body discovered was determined to be dead

(01:15:18):
for approximately twenty five years was said to be the
body of a man named Robert Worley, who hadn't been
seen since nineteen sixty eight. But it was the theories
surrounding that death were either the theories were that Robert
and Dorian were in a relationship of some sort and

(01:15:40):
that either Robert had been killed and she had hidden
in his body for whatever reason, or that she had
killed him in self defense because of violence she was
experiencing at his hands. And then was like, let's just
go in here. I fascinating lives all around, John, thank

(01:16:03):
you for bringing that up.

Speaker 3 (01:16:04):
Yeah, I just wanted to say, like, because I don't
want people listening and being like they totally just over
they just looked over this whole you know, story. But
I think it's also tangential to what we're talking about here, right,
these people, you know, So like I'm even I'm looking
through the story that I just quickly googled, and it
said that there's also a rumor that this whoever this
body was, They basically claim that this man broke into

(01:16:27):
her home and tried to rob her, and that it
was self defense. And so when people ask why she
kept the body, it says a black drag queen who
lived in a poor, dangerous area in the sixties or
seventies had a little chance of garnering sympathy from the police.
And so I think it's it's it's as much as
it's not related to the story of what Genny was

(01:16:48):
trying to do with this film, I think it really
like this story per se says a lot about the
times that these queer people were living in, right like
the fear of Okay, well, I I tell someone that
this man broke into my home and I killed him
in self defense, and then I still end up in jail,
and then I end up dead in jail, right right,

(01:17:08):
Like that's probably regardless of what the story was. You know,
the reality was Dorian was worried about their livelihood and
so just to be queer at this time, and I
mean still even now, right, you know, to be worried
about your livelihood is something that's very real for queer people.
And you know, as much as like I said, it
doesn't relate to the story, it very much does absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:17:31):
I mean, and the ways that I've seen this story,
I can't believe I didn't connect that it's story and
from this movie. The ways I've seen the story presented
over the years has been more framed as clickbait sensationalism
in a way that I feel like really leans into biased,
horrible perspectives of like, well, queer people are inherently violent,

(01:17:54):
and that's why when you find a body in the closet,
like that is why as opposed to queer people and
specifically like black queer people are particularly vulnerable. And like
you're just saying, John would not have stood a chance
at you know, standing up against the white supremacist police state,

(01:18:14):
and so it was self defense and was necessary in
order to survive. I've not really seen that anecdote presented
that way. It was more like a fun fact. Did
you know this famous drag queen from Paris is burning?
Did you know in the way that I think a
lot of AI slop kind of leans towards.

Speaker 3 (01:18:39):
Yeah, it doesn't humanize, it doesn't. And I think that's
the thing too with these type of not even these stories,
but just like I even thine, going back to the documentary,
it you know, this idea that there's this humanity that's
not there, you know sometimes you know, and I think
that's what you know when you were talking about when
you were giving the piece about Bill Hooks. I think

(01:18:59):
that's what they were ultimately trying to say, that there's
just this lack of humanity. And I don't even think,
you know, that's why I said I there was a
part of me that didn't even want to tell anybody
that I was watching the documentary. But it's like, you know,
I sometimes have to check myself with that of like,
these were humans. These are people that had really like

(01:19:19):
a really terrible thing happened to them, and we sensationalize
it and there's so much oh my god, this really
saucy thing happened. You did you hear about it? But
it's like, yo, like where's the humanity behind it? And
so I have to catch myself sometimes when I get excited,
you know, in conversation about these type of films. But yeah,
that's kind of where I'm left right.

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
Well, Paris Is Burning does touch on these topics of class,
of race, of gender, of sexuality, but it does so
in a pretty surface way where it'll be like one
person's like SoundBite from there, you know, in interview, monologuing

(01:20:01):
for a couple sentences about something, and that happens a
few times throughout the documentary. So It's not as though
the documentary ignores these topics and the intersections of them,
but it doesn't zoom out very much as far as like, well,
how do these things affect these people systemically in larger

(01:20:24):
and more significant ways. It doesn't dive deeply into these things.
It's just pretty I don't want to call it superficial necessarily,
but it's you know, it's not super deep the way
the movie explores these things.

Speaker 1 (01:20:42):
Which and that connects to something we've talked about a
lot where that stands out as particularly when the subjects
that these films are people who are largely ignored by
the rest of culture, and so then it, you know,
ostensibly becomes the job of one movie to do every everything,
when the reality is like one movie can't do everything.

(01:21:04):
There is plenty to criticize about Jenny's approach here, which
we have done and many have done and will continue
to do it, and rightfully so. But I think it
also draws attention to the fact that on a lot
of I mean think about like how many documentaries are
there about World War Two, and how every documentary about

(01:21:25):
World War two doesn't address every aspect and perspective and
figure of World War two. But that's okay. There's forty
trillion documentaries about World War Two that grandfathers all over
the world are watching as we speak, and like, there whatever,
there is more, not that there wasn't more. Like we're saying,
there were filmmakers that were creating work around these communities,

(01:21:49):
but in terms of work that was easily accessible, In
terms of work that was getting the financing and marketing
to support it, there wasn't very much. And so then
it becomes I mean, it's like a tricky conversation because
one movie can't do everything, but one movie can do
more than it's doing.

Speaker 3 (01:22:10):
It can do something. Chat, that's what I hear.

Speaker 2 (01:22:15):
Yeah, yeah, maybe we just need Paris Is Burning to
yeah or something, or a different movie.

Speaker 3 (01:22:26):
Let's start a GoFundMe and we can we can start
we can be the ones that do that.

Speaker 2 (01:22:31):
Yeah, anything else anyone wants to talk about.

Speaker 1 (01:22:36):
It's all.

Speaker 4 (01:22:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:22:37):
The movie, whether or not it passes the Bechdel test,
is like not the most applicable since it's a documentary
format and it's not a lot of people having dialogue.
But I'm pretty serious anyway, right because many of the
people featured are people of a marginalized gender, and we
do see them speak to each other about balls and

(01:22:59):
houses and clothes and things like that. So the film
does past the Bechtyl test. But what about the Bechtel
Cast nipple scale, a scale where we rate the movie
zero to five nipples based on examining it through an
intersectional feminist lens. John, I see shock and awe on

(01:23:22):
your face.

Speaker 1 (01:23:23):
Anything about Journey nipple? Yes, okay, I really don't know
what we were thinking, but we committed to it. And
and that's the scale.

Speaker 3 (01:23:34):
So one nipple is terrible and five nipples are great.

Speaker 2 (01:23:38):
Yes, yeah, this is correct.

Speaker 3 (01:23:40):
I would give it. Oh, because you can't do half.

Speaker 2 (01:23:43):
Nipples, Yes, you can do we do quarter nipples.

Speaker 1 (01:23:46):
Slice them and dice them. However you like.

Speaker 3 (01:23:48):
Slice the nipples? Ooh, that's terrifying. Let's go. I would
do four nipples.

Speaker 2 (01:23:54):
I'm around that area as well. Yeah, yeah, I think
I was going to give it like three point seven five.

Speaker 3 (01:24:02):
Yeah, yeah, I think three point seven five is perfect.

Speaker 1 (01:24:04):
Yeah, oh, I I agree. We've decided it's three point
seven five and that's.

Speaker 2 (01:24:10):
That, and that's that. We've discussed the movie's shortcomings, but
we've also discussed the many ways in which this is
a very important piece of cinema and important documentary paved
the way for similar projects. And uh yeah, I would
give my nipples too.

Speaker 1 (01:24:29):
Oh yes, you can give your nipples away to John.

Speaker 2 (01:24:31):
We award them. Oh, okay to people. Uh I, I
sort of just want to give my nipples to everyone
featured in the documentary. That's and then but specifically setting
aside one nipple for the cat.

Speaker 1 (01:24:48):
Yes, of course, I'm gonna just leave my nipples on
the table. And I wish I could give every participant
of this documentary, uh five hundred thousand dollars at the
time it came up. Oh my god, Like that's just
I just wish that the subjects of this documentary that

(01:25:08):
it's you know, the filmmaking is good, but it is
the people at the center of this movie that make
it what it is. That is the reason that we
are still watching it today, and they should have been
compensated better. So yeah, yeah, just distributing money in nineteen
ninety that's how I'm going to use my nfles.

Speaker 3 (01:25:31):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:25:32):
Well, John, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 3 (01:25:34):
This was great and this was such a good conversation.
Thank you for and thank you for thinking of me
and thank you for including me. This was, like I said,
I had a really great time, and it also gave
me a new again. I've watched this film a million times,
I've written about it, I've done so many things around it.
But this also gives me a great perspective to think
about as I rewatch it. So I will be watching

(01:25:55):
it a little bit more closer next time, though.

Speaker 2 (01:25:57):
I will say that if you want yeah, yeah or not.
Sometimes I'm just like I'm shutting off my brain and
watching a thing that I like.

Speaker 3 (01:26:07):
Yeah, that's me a reality TV.

Speaker 2 (01:26:11):
We were so delighted to have you. Thank you so
much for joining us. Come back anytime for any movie
you'd like to discuss.

Speaker 1 (01:26:17):
Yes, where can we find you? And where can our
listeners follow your work?

Speaker 3 (01:26:21):
Well? You can often find me doing a pirouet inside
of a Krispy Kreme or any donut location. But when
I am not eating sugar I'm not supposed to have.
You can find me on social media. My handout is
doctor John Paul everywhere except for Twitter. I am no
longer on Twitter, good for you, but you can find

(01:26:43):
me in Blue Sky. I don't know how much longer
I'll be on Instagram or Facebook, but you can also
find me there and also on threads. But yeah, and
then visit my website ww dot doctor Johnpaul dot com
and you can probably catch me in a bookstore near you. Yeah,
if you're in the LA area, you'd like to come
to my book launch. All the information for that is
on my website.

Speaker 2 (01:27:04):
So yay, we'll be there. We're in the LA area.

Speaker 3 (01:27:08):
Yes, come down, come down.

Speaker 2 (01:27:09):
Yes, please pre order John's book. Thank you again for
joining us. You can follow us mostly on Instagram these days.
At Bechdel Cast, you can subscribe to our Patreon aka Matreon,
where we cover two movies a month. Plus you get
access to the entire back catalog. There's fun, amazing, brilliant

(01:27:33):
genius themes such as Rodent Timber coming up this March.

Speaker 1 (01:27:40):
There's a stunning number of movies about rodents. Would you
like to hear an intersectional feminist discussion of them? If not,
too bad, you have to drive.

Speaker 2 (01:27:49):
You have to subscribe anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:27:51):
Intersectional feminist discussion of ratitude incoming. Link in description's get
our merch at teapublic dot com. Slash the Bechdel Cast
and with that another wonderful episode of The Bechtel Cast concludes.

Speaker 2 (01:28:07):
Wow, see you next time.

Speaker 3 (01:28:09):
Bye Bye, bye bye.

Speaker 2 (01:28:14):
The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by
Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftis, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited
by Mola Board. Our theme song was composed by Mike
Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Volskrosenski. Our logo in merch
is designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to
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(01:28:37):
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