Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast. The questions asked if movies have women
Speaker 1: and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephyn bast
Speaker 1: start changing with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the Bechdel Cast. My name is
Speaker 2: Caitlin Drante, my.
Speaker 1: Name is Jamie Loftus, and this is our podcast where
Speaker 1: we talk about your favorite movies using an intersectional feminist lens.
Speaker 1: Starting beta test Kitlan, what's that.
Speaker 2: Well? It's a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel,
Speaker 2: sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace Test as it was co
Speaker 2: created with Liz Wallace. It is a media metric that
Speaker 2: has many permutations. Ours is do two characters of a
Speaker 2: marginalized gender have names? Do they speak to each other?
Speaker 2: And is their conversation about something other than a man?
Speaker 2: And we particularly like it when it's a narratively relevant
Speaker 2: conversation or just something significant and not just like Hi,
Speaker 2: how's the weather or whatever?
Speaker 1: And today's a very special episode. It's one of a
Speaker 1: handful of documentaries that we've covered on this show before.
Speaker 1: But it just if you've seen this documentary. It begs
Speaker 1: to be talked about. There's no shortage of story and
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen it, it's streaming in so many places.
Speaker 1: Get it together.
Speaker 2: The documentary of course, Being Paris is Burning from nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety directed by Jenny Livingston. It is yeah, widely accessible,
Speaker 2: it's iconic, and we have a wonderful guest here with
Speaker 2: us to talk about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They are an award winning creator, writer, author. They are
Speaker 2: a co host of BFF Black Fat theem podcast. Their
Speaker 2: book Fat Femme, Revealing the Power of visibly queer voices
Speaker 2: in Media and Learning to Love Yourself comes out March
Speaker 2: twenty fifth.
Speaker 3: It's John Yay, welcome, dum hey everybody. How you doing.
Speaker 1: We're great, happy almost release.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know we're wait, oh god, oh my god.
Speaker 3: There's like thirty one with thirty two more days last.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like exactly, no, it's sooner because it's.
Speaker 3: February that part. Yeah, you know what, there aren't that many. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so it is a little bit sooner. So it's somewhere
Speaker 3: around like the like twenty nine thirty days or something
Speaker 3: like that. But yeah, you know, I'm a little excited,
Speaker 3: a little nervous, but I will say this. I sent
Speaker 3: it to my mom and sheat my mom she reads
Speaker 3: very quickly, and she called me one day and she
Speaker 3: was like, I'm on page one oh seven and I
Speaker 3: just want to say I'm very proud of you. And
Speaker 3: I was like, thanks, Mom, So yeah, So I'm very
Speaker 3: much in the mind of like, I'm happy that it
Speaker 3: landed with her. I was worried for a moment, but
Speaker 3: it landed, so.
Speaker 1: That's so beautiful. I sent my dad my first draft
Speaker 1: of my book, and if the response was a little muted,
Speaker 1: he was like, you know, Jamie, I really like what
Speaker 1: you're going for here. There are some grammar mistakes. Would
Speaker 1: you like me to send them to you in a document?
Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, I guess yeah. And then
Speaker 1: like six months later he was like, by the way,
Speaker 1: I enjoyed it, yeah, yeah, yeah, so cool.
Speaker 2: I love that. Well, tell us more about your book, John.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so quickly. You know, one of the things that
Speaker 3: I had I've always been very vigilant about is the
Speaker 3: idea of how black and specifically black queer voices are
Speaker 3: either not uplifted or celebrated in media. And that's kind
Speaker 3: of what I built my whole platform one, right, how
Speaker 3: do I continue to uplift the voices of those who
Speaker 3: often don't have the mic? And so I like to
Speaker 3: tell people that I started this book back, and this
Speaker 3: is also just a testament to how long it can
Speaker 3: take to write a book. I started. I went to
Speaker 3: a Lambda literary retreat back in twenty seventeen, started playing
Speaker 3: with the idea of writing a book there, and it
Speaker 3: just kind of set in my Google drafts forever. And
Speaker 3: then the pandemic came and all my friends wrote books,
Speaker 3: and everyone got one, you know, everyone got one in
Speaker 3: or even got two in, and I was just still
Speaker 3: kind of like, no, no, no, no, I don't think
Speaker 3: I could do it. And then I just got to
Speaker 3: a point. You know what ended up happening was I was,
Speaker 3: you know, playing with it, going back and forth with
Speaker 3: different agents. And then in twenty twenty three ish, you know,
Speaker 3: or twenty twenty four, actually, I went to sun Dance
Speaker 3: and I saw the Luther documentary. And I tell everybody
Speaker 3: that that was kind of like the catalyst of me
Speaker 3: wanting to be like, oh god, I know what I'm writing.
Speaker 3: I saw the documentary, I saw the way that they
Speaker 3: danced around his queerness, how they didn't talk about his queerness,
Speaker 3: but also how they did, And I said, you know,
Speaker 3: there's got to be a way for us to kind
Speaker 3: of celebrate, you know, like even just looking at Luther
Speaker 3: and looking at Luther's story, I went back into my
Speaker 3: own memories about how I thought about queerness from the
Speaker 3: lens of how my family talked about Luther. And that's
Speaker 3: kind of how I opened the book. I talk about
Speaker 3: the idea of how people what they said and what
Speaker 3: they didn't say about Luther and what that said to
Speaker 3: me as a young queer kid in southern California. And
Speaker 3: so I basically get to a point where I start
Speaker 3: talking about this idea of how I literally had to
Speaker 3: figure out how to find myself through media, like writing
Speaker 3: about Luther and his experience and what I got from that.
Speaker 3: It really helped me understand how I found myself through media.
Speaker 3: And so that's really what the book is. I talk
Speaker 3: about Luther, and again it's not about his sexuality per se.
Speaker 3: It's about all the things I was afraid to delve
Speaker 3: into because of how my family talked about Luther. And
Speaker 3: then my first time meeting Andre Leon Talley on the
Speaker 3: show America's next top model, Miss Jay, you know, Derek j.
Speaker 3: Miss Lawrence, Like all of these black queer figures I'm
Speaker 3: seeing in television and what that's telling me about my
Speaker 3: own identity and how I'm learning through them to find myself.
Speaker 3: So it's a lot of you know, there's also like
Speaker 3: moments I talk about what happened to me in college.
Speaker 3: I talk about fat phobia. I talk about the idea
Speaker 3: of how much we live, Like how the two thousands
Speaker 3: lie to us. I talk very, very very vocally about
Speaker 3: how much the two thousands was. It was just it
Speaker 3: was shit. It was awful, Like the two thousands was terrible.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like just such a period of like
Speaker 1: absurd regression. It's wild to look back on lucky us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so I talk about that, like how two
Speaker 3: thousands shaped my you know, body dysmorphia, and you know,
Speaker 3: all the things I was doing to try to lose
Speaker 3: weight while I was in college, to keep up with
Speaker 3: the other queer kids I was running in groups with,
Speaker 3: and just really this this overall kind of like how
Speaker 3: did I get to this place? You know, I get
Speaker 3: asked out a lot, how do you how are you
Speaker 3: so confident? How are you so happy in who you are?
Speaker 3: Like a lot of therapy and a lot of writing.
Speaker 3: So that's really what it is. But yeah, that's pretty
Speaker 3: much what my book is. In a nutshell, it's just
Speaker 3: kind of an ode and a celebration of those who
Speaker 3: came before us and those who are still here because
Speaker 3: I know that no one else is going to give
Speaker 3: them their flowers, and so ultimately I thought, why not?
Speaker 3: Why not me? Why not I do that?
Speaker 2: So why not? Yeah? That's amazing. I can't wait to
Speaker 2: read It's sing And it's also a component of the
Speaker 2: documentary we'll be discussing is kind of an examination of
Speaker 2: how media influences the participants of the ballroom scene and
Speaker 2: how they emulate certain people or certain TV shows or
Speaker 2: stars or you know, all that kind of stuff. So
Speaker 2: that'll be fun to dive into.
Speaker 1: And there's also so much of like the legacy of
Speaker 1: Paris is burning that there's which I that was the
Speaker 1: thing I was not familiar with going in, is like
Speaker 1: the year's long legacy that the Spavia's had, positive, negative,
Speaker 1: everything in between.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So John, what's your relationship slash history with this documentary? Yeah?
Speaker 3: You know, so it was one of the documentaries. So
Speaker 3: I'll say this, I did not know really anything. Again,
Speaker 3: obviously I tell people, you know, if you go out
Speaker 3: and get my book, you know, I talk very openly
Speaker 3: about how I grew up in a cult, and so
Speaker 3: I do believe that, you know, Jehovah Witnesses are cults,
Speaker 3: they are part of the cult sect. And so growing
Speaker 3: up in the cult, you know, I was very very
Speaker 3: what's the word, not even protected, but I was scared
Speaker 3: to indulge anything that had queer content. And so I
Speaker 3: didn't really get to Paris's Burning until probably two thousand
Speaker 3: and four. And so this is a time where you know,
Speaker 3: I know about ball room, you know, miss right. I
Speaker 3: know I know about it, but I don't know it
Speaker 3: per se right. And so in two thousand and four,
Speaker 3: I'm in college, you know, I take an Art of
Speaker 3: film class and that was one of you know, Aaron
Speaker 3: Race may may he rest in peace. He was one
Speaker 3: of I'm gonna say he was my favorite instructor. But
Speaker 3: I really appreciate it the way he did his class.
Speaker 3: He did his class, and so it was an art
Speaker 3: of film and I was very much into writing at
Speaker 3: the time, and he basically had positive you know, this
Speaker 3: is what a good you know, a good drama is,
Speaker 3: this is what a good comedy is, and this is
Speaker 3: what a good documentary is. And so Paris Is Burning
Speaker 3: was the documentary that he posited for that class. We
Speaker 3: watched it in class. It was a four hour It
Speaker 3: was a summer class, and so the summer classes were
Speaker 3: hell along. If anybody's ever taken the summer class out
Speaker 3: of college, you know, you're in class for like six hours.
Speaker 3: And so, you know, we watched the class. We watched
Speaker 3: the film for two hours, and then we worked in
Speaker 3: groups and we had to dissect what made the documentary great.
Speaker 3: And that was my first, you know, entrance into that film.
Speaker 3: And I think what I really loved about the film
Speaker 3: was that it was giving so many people, specifically trans
Speaker 3: women or non binary people. It was giving them airtime,
Speaker 3: like they had a voice. And I had never seen
Speaker 3: anyone who looked like you know, Peppala Basia or anyone
Speaker 3: who looked like, you know, Willie Ninja or anything like that,
Speaker 3: and so it just felt like I was like, oh
Speaker 3: my god, these are my people. Even though this film
Speaker 3: was made almost fifteen years ago, you know, I still
Speaker 3: feel like I found my home right, and so it
Speaker 3: was just it was a very awakening. I feel like
Speaker 3: the film really awakened something in me in regards to
Speaker 3: not only narrative storytelling, but it also awakened kind of
Speaker 3: this notion of like, wow, this is a subculture, you know,
Speaker 3: in a subculture that I feel like I have some
Speaker 3: type of home in if that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, yeah, Jamie. What's your history with the documentary?
Speaker 1: I saw this documentary in high school in uh. I
Speaker 1: think it was from my music teacher. She also like
Speaker 1: did the dance stuff in our like plays and stuff,
Speaker 1: and so she would just kind of show us whatever
Speaker 1: she felt like, and so she showed us Paris's Burning.
Speaker 1: I want to say I was in like tenth or
Speaker 1: eleventh grade and I hadn't revisited since, but it was
Speaker 1: I'm very glad I saw it as young as I did,
Speaker 1: so thanks miss Bolani shout out to her. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I just remember, you know, being this like big class
Speaker 1: full of teenagers that you know, it was whatever, the
Speaker 1: late two thousands, So some kids were total assholes, but
Speaker 1: most of most everyone was like really really really pulled in.
Speaker 1: I had never seen a documentary like it before. I
Speaker 1: think at that point, perhaps tragically, the closest I was
Speaker 1: familiar with was like the Madonna Vogue music video that
Speaker 1: I was like obsessed with anytime, like my mom would
Speaker 1: turn it on for me, which I you know, that
Speaker 1: is an element of this very complicated conversation around ballroom
Speaker 1: culture and how white celebrities have sort of co opted
Speaker 1: it over the years. But when I saw Paris Is Burning,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, this is what this is, this
Speaker 1: is what she saw, and was like, you know, I
Speaker 1: want to present this in my whatever Madonna way, But yeah,
Speaker 1: I was really taken with it, particularly obviously, I mean
Speaker 1: we'll talk about everyone in the in the film, particularly Venus,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I don't know, I just I was really
Speaker 1: taken by it, and I hadn't revisited it in years,
Speaker 1: and I had just rewatched it anyways, because I've been
Speaker 1: working on a project about this feels weirdly tangential but
Speaker 1: drag in comedy, because I interviewed that do you remember
Speaker 1: the YouTube video with Kelly.
Speaker 3: Shoes Shoes Yeah, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 1: So I was doing just like some background on on
Speaker 1: on drag and the history of drag because I interviewed
Speaker 1: Liam Kyle's all and who plays Kelly. And I just
Speaker 1: read a book that I would highly recommend called Decolonized
Speaker 1: Drag by Kareem Kupchandani that I think came out a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago. So I don't know, I mean
Speaker 1: it's Paris's Burning. I know it is just like a
Speaker 1: huge touchstone for a lot of people, and it was
Speaker 1: definitely my first gateway into, you know, seeing this world
Speaker 1: and also like revisiting it. I was so happy to
Speaker 1: see again just how inclusive the world of this documentary
Speaker 1: is and how I mean, like you're saying, John, how
Speaker 1: you know on drag race trans people weren't allowed to
Speaker 1: compete for years and years in this really restrictive way.
Speaker 1: And again, like Paris is Burning is the real deal.
Speaker 1: It is a full community, and it's just it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: So it's really fun to revisit. Caitlyn, what is your
Speaker 1: history with this field?
Speaker 2: I saw it during the great Caitlin movie binge of
Speaker 2: two thousand and four slash two thousand and five. Yes,
Speaker 2: I was a It was like during my freshman slash
Speaker 2: sophomore year in college and I was a film student,
Speaker 2: and I realized how few movies I'd actually seen I
Speaker 2: went into film school being like, I'm a scholar already.
Speaker 2: I don't even know why I'm here. I already know
Speaker 2: everything about movies.
Speaker 1: I've seen Indiana Jones, one, two, and three.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you thinkom because I know the I know film
Speaker 4: And it turns out I didn't know shit.
Speaker 2: So I started compiling just like a list of all
Speaker 2: the movies I felt like I needed to watch. And
Speaker 2: I was getting all the Netflix DVDs back when that
Speaker 2: was still a bad What a time? What a time?
Speaker 2: I got three at a time at a time you.
Speaker 3: Had the premium.
Speaker 2: Oh, you have the money. So I was cycling through
Speaker 2: those and Paris Is Burning is one of the ones
Speaker 2: I watched, and it was probably my first exposure to
Speaker 2: actually seeing a trans person on screen who was not
Speaker 2: a like CIS actor playing a trans person because for
Speaker 2: some reason, I was like really attached to the movie
Speaker 2: Boys Don't Cry in high school. I watched it many
Speaker 2: many times, but of course that is an example of
Speaker 2: a SIS actor playing a trans character slash trans real
Speaker 2: life person, So I think, yeah, seeing this documentary was probably,
Speaker 2: if not the first, one of the very first times
Speaker 2: I saw an actual transperson on screen, and I learned
Speaker 2: a lot, and I enjoyed the documentary very much. But
Speaker 2: like you, Jamie, I hadn't revisited it in many, many years,
Speaker 2: so I was very excited to dive back in and
Speaker 2: revisited it. And there's so much to talk about. It's
Speaker 2: really interesting to see the ways in which, like things
Speaker 2: discussed in the documentary are still very relevant and also
Speaker 2: some of the ways in which things feel quite dated
Speaker 2: by our standards today. So lots to discuss. Excited to
Speaker 2: get into it. Before we do. Let's take a quick
Speaker 2: break and then we'll come back for the recap and
Speaker 2: we're back, okay. So here's the recap of Paris is Burning.
Speaker 2: It's a little tricky to do a recap for a
Speaker 2: documentary because it doesn't follow, you know, a standard narrative
Speaker 2: three x structure. But I think I did a pretty
Speaker 2: swell job here. But feel free to jump in and
Speaker 2: fill in any blanks. But this is, of course, a
Speaker 2: documentary about the ballroom scene in New York City, specifically
Speaker 2: Harlem in nineteen eighty seven. Ballroom, of course, referring to
Speaker 2: a subculture of the LGBTQ plus community, where predominantly black
Speaker 2: and LATINX queer folk put on balls, which are shows
Speaker 2: slash competitions where participants walk on a runway, so to speak,
Speaker 2: they model their outfit. There is often a component of
Speaker 2: drag and or costumes. There's often dancing, especially voguing. There
Speaker 2: are different categories.
Speaker 1: There's music, there's dynasties, there's families. There's family rivalries.
Speaker 3: Yes, there is. The rivalry is where it's at.
Speaker 2: Those were some of my favorite parts of the doc
Speaker 2: where I think it's Freddie who says House of Lebasia,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be caught dead there. Yeah, but the ballroom
Speaker 2: scene is all about self expression and being in a
Speaker 2: space where you can be safe and comfortable and celebrated
Speaker 2: in your queer identity.
Speaker 3: Can I also make a no, I'm not to cut
Speaker 3: you off, but I also think it's it's also imperative
Speaker 3: to note that there was also as much as it
Speaker 3: was fun, there was a lot of tension in those spaces,
Speaker 3: Like specifically that's seen with the jack it right, and
Speaker 3: they were saying that the person who was walking men's
Speaker 3: but they said it was a woman's jacket and they
Speaker 3: were like going, there was like a hole. It literally
Speaker 3: stopped the entire event, this jacket that they proclaimed to
Speaker 3: be a woman's jacket. So it just I felt it
Speaker 3: was important to note that because I think as much
Speaker 3: as it was fun and celebratory, it was also there
Speaker 3: was a lot of drama. There was a lot of.
Speaker 2: Drama for sure, and the response, it's the buttons are
Speaker 2: on the right side was set, Mama was up set.
Speaker 1: It was also really I mean, there's one of the
Speaker 1: things that I guess I hadn't really remembered about. It
Speaker 1: was the generational tension as well, like that is really
Speaker 1: really interesting to explore, and all I know in ways
Speaker 1: that we'll talk about, but I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is like sort of a It really is like
Speaker 1: generations of a family trying to all be at the
Speaker 1: same event, which always ends in a fight of some sort.
Speaker 1: So it's not shocking.
Speaker 3: It's like Thanksgiving every day at the ball, like, you know,
Speaker 3: the older auntie says something to the younger cousin, and
Speaker 3: the younger cousin is like, you know what, you don't
Speaker 3: know anything like let's talk about your your dirt, right,
Speaker 3: you want to talk about my dirt, Let's talk about yours.
Speaker 3: And I was going to say that, like you know,
Speaker 3: as much as you know, I have the privilege. So
Speaker 3: recently I went to Creating Change earlier this year, and
Speaker 3: earlier this year, like we literally January felt like it
Speaker 3: was eighteen months. So January I've spent, let me tell you, right,
Speaker 3: And so I went to Creating Change back last month,
Speaker 3: I should say, and they had a ball there. It
Speaker 3: was an actual ball, and it was the same thing.
Speaker 3: It was very much like as I'm watching the event
Speaker 3: play out at Creating Change, I'm watching, like, you know,
Speaker 3: Paris's burning play out in my head, where you have
Speaker 3: people who are like legends coming up to walk and
Speaker 3: they're being cut off by people who think that they
Speaker 3: are currently a legend, and so now there's tension between
Speaker 3: people and who's walking. What It's just, it was. It
Speaker 3: was fun, but I could see like Paris is burning
Speaker 3: playing out in my head as I'm watching the ball
Speaker 3: take place, So it's still present, It's still present.
Speaker 2: The drama remains.
Speaker 1: One of the I think most heavily featured queens in
Speaker 1: the in the documentary is Dorian Corey, who just like
Speaker 1: the number of like both extremely shady and funny and
Speaker 1: also profoundly wise, like those are Dorian's two settings. But
Speaker 1: I think Dorian really really really sets this like this
Speaker 1: generational divide between the older generation and the newer generation
Speaker 1: in a way that is like really fascinating and also
Speaker 1: super funny because she's super funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it felt like Dorian Corey and Pepper Labasia
Speaker 2: being the ta who like the generational differences on what
Speaker 2: they say in their attitudes about things are most prominent.
Speaker 1: But yeah.
Speaker 2: Over the course of the doc documentary, we meet several
Speaker 2: people in this scene, starting with Pepper Labasia, the mother
Speaker 2: of the House of Lebasia and has been for two decades.
Speaker 2: We also meet some younger members in the scene, like
Speaker 2: Kim Pendavis and Kim's friend in protege, Freddie Pendavis. Kim
Speaker 2: is an aspiring legend. The goal of participating in Balls
Speaker 2: is to become a legend or to be legendary. Pepper Labasia,
Speaker 2: for example, is considered a legend. We also meet Dorian
Speaker 2: Corey shortly after this, another legend. In the scene, Dorian
Speaker 2: Corey talks about the differences between Ballroom now aka in
Speaker 2: the late eighties when this documentary was filmed, and Ballroom
Speaker 2: from when Dorian was first starting out, which I believe
Speaker 2: would have been I don't know if it was like
Speaker 2: the fifties or sixties. But first it was like elaborate
Speaker 2: drag where people were dressing similar to like Vegas showgirls.
Speaker 2: Then it was people trying to emulate movie stars. Then
Speaker 2: it became about emulating model like supermodels walking down the runway.
Speaker 2: As time went on, more categories were created to be
Speaker 2: more inclusive. So there's categories like high fashion, winter sportswear,
Speaker 2: luscious body, schoolboy slash schoolgirl, realness, town and Country, executive realness, military,
Speaker 2: high fashion, eveningwear, and a very specific category butch Queen
Speaker 2: first time in drags at a ball, to name just
Speaker 2: a few of the categories.
Speaker 1: It is so this dock. The categories are not all
Speaker 1: of them, but some of them are so profoundly eighties
Speaker 1: that you're like, okay, yes, right, it's wild. And it
Speaker 1: was also interesting here Dorian speak to the philosophy in
Speaker 1: costuming and how that's changed, not just like to reflect
Speaker 1: the whatever the western beauty ideals of the period are,
Speaker 1: but also like the price of costumes.
Speaker 3: Where we're gonna say that yeah, right, like.
Speaker 1: There's this there's a class component to it as well,
Speaker 1: where it sounds like when Dorian was coming up, you know,
Speaker 1: everyone made their own costumes. It was very scrappy, and
Speaker 1: that was understood where by the time the documentary is
Speaker 1: being filmed, it's again very eighty thing of like designer
Speaker 1: labels by any means necessary, and in Dorian's opinion, something
Speaker 1: that required an equal amount of scrappiness but less creativity.
Speaker 1: Like it was interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was going to say to that point, that
Speaker 3: was actually one of the things that one of the
Speaker 3: first things that was on my mind was that it
Speaker 3: really this film really shows not even just depression, but
Speaker 3: it shows the the gap that so many of you know,
Speaker 3: trans specifically trans black women were experiencing in that moment,
Speaker 3: right It shows the pay disparity, It shows you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of them being houseless, and you know a
Speaker 3: lot of them talking about what they have to do
Speaker 3: to survive. And I think, you know, I don't want
Speaker 3: to get ahead of myself, but what I will say
Speaker 3: is that I think that them opening talking about that,
Speaker 3: right about this classism that lives in it, you know,
Speaker 3: that lives in this ball world, really says a lot
Speaker 3: to what's actually happening to them outside of these ballrooms, right, Like,
Speaker 3: it's really giving you a greater understanding of what the
Speaker 3: disparity was, and I thought it was actually very interesting.
Speaker 3: I forget who it was, I have such a hard
Speaker 3: time remembering names, but the woman who was talking about
Speaker 3: wanting to go model, and you know, and how they
Speaker 3: did that inner cut to all at the time, it's
Speaker 3: you know, very eighties, but you know all these high
Speaker 3: level fashion you know, high level stores and all of
Speaker 3: these high level things, right even and then you you
Speaker 3: talk about like even just the different categories. I think
Speaker 3: one of the category was dynasty, right, so the whole
Speaker 3: notion of you know, people trying to pretend to be
Speaker 3: opulent and you know, I want to say herbaceous, but
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's the right word. But like,
Speaker 3: you just had a lot of people trying to live
Speaker 3: in a financial category that they could never attain, at
Speaker 3: least in that moment or in that time. It was
Speaker 3: very very far fetched and it was really hard for
Speaker 3: them to attain it, and so they were playing this
Speaker 3: out in different categories in the ball and I always
Speaker 3: thought that was so interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, lots to discuss there, and throughout the documentary there
Speaker 2: are various discussions about race, class, gender, sexuality, the intersections
Speaker 2: of all of those things and how systemic biases affect
Speaker 2: the participants in the ballroom community. So yeah, we'll get
Speaker 2: more into that in a bit. There's also talk of
Speaker 2: essentially code switching and efforts to quote unquote pass as straight,
Speaker 2: which is characterized as realness. In this context. Realness also
Speaker 2: refers to passing as a different gender than the one
Speaker 2: you were assigned at birth. There's lots we can discuss
Speaker 2: there as well. Pepper Labasia talks about her parents discovering
Speaker 2: that she had breasts and wore women's clothing, and how
Speaker 2: she was ostracized for this. Side note here, From what
Speaker 2: I understand, Pepper Lebasia had breast implants and preferred she
Speaker 2: her pronouns, but did not identify as a woman. She
Speaker 2: goes into this a little bit later in the documentary,
Speaker 2: but she talks about how young teens would come to
Speaker 2: her looking for a parental figure after they've been kicked
Speaker 2: out of their house for being queer, and this kind
Speaker 2: of leads into a discussion of found family chosen family,
Speaker 2: which is connected to houses in the ballroom community where
Speaker 2: people belong to different houses such as the house of Labasia,
Speaker 2: House of Chanel, House of Dupre, house of Extravaganza, etc.
Speaker 1: And they like function as real families family.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that section with Pepper explaining like I'm a mother,
Speaker 1: but I'm also like a mother, like I'm buying birthday
Speaker 1: presents and which is just I don't know, as a
Speaker 1: really moving section totally.
Speaker 2: We meet Venus Extravaganza, a young trans woman who was
Speaker 2: brought into the House of Extravaganza. We'll see more and
Speaker 2: more of her throughout the documentary. We also meet the
Speaker 2: mother of this house, Angie Extravaganza, who we see winning
Speaker 2: an award for being like best mother of a house.
Speaker 2: We also meet Willie Ninja, mother of the House Ninja,
Speaker 2: and there's talk of you know, like you said, Jimmy,
Speaker 2: like mothers providing care and support and buying birthday presents
Speaker 2: and sometimes like giving younger members.
Speaker 1: Really right, who talks about buying birthday presents? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well also and Angie Extravaganta, Like, I think a
Speaker 2: lot of them touch on this, but yeah, they're basically
Speaker 2: like providing care for the like children aka members of
Speaker 2: their house. There's also talk of like this house is
Speaker 2: the best, yeah, the most legendary, the most popular. Oh
Speaker 2: that house, I wouldn't be caught dead in that house.
Speaker 2: So there's rivalries. As we discussed earlier, fights breakout, people
Speaker 2: throw shade at each other and fist.
Speaker 3: The girls fight, they do fight.
Speaker 2: They talk about something called reading, which is throwing very
Speaker 2: specific insults at one another, the idea being like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: if straight people insult a member of the queer community,
Speaker 2: that's very different than members of the queer community in
Speaker 2: insulting each other. So that's the idea behind reading, and
Speaker 2: then throwing shade is like similar but more like subtextual,
Speaker 2: where the insults are a little bit more you know,
Speaker 2: it's shady for lack of a better word.
Speaker 3: Yes, Dorian said, I don't have to tell you you're ugly. Yes,
Speaker 3: you just know you're ugly.
Speaker 1: Like it's it's yeah, it's reading, but like with telepathy.
Speaker 2: It's.
Speaker 3: That's such a cute shirt.
Speaker 1: I was like, I would not last a day. I'm
Speaker 1: too sensitive.
Speaker 2: Same yeah. And then from this came voguing, a dance
Speaker 2: that would happen between two or more people who were
Speaker 2: like feuding and throwing shade at each other other. There's
Speaker 2: also talk of class and wealth. None of the people
Speaker 2: featured in the documentary have much money, but part of
Speaker 2: Ballroom is fashion oriented and fashion costs money. High fashion
Speaker 2: costs a lot of money. So we learn about something
Speaker 2: called mopping, which and I think it's Freddy Pandavis, who
Speaker 2: is my favorite moment of the movie, was like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, mopping. That's when you know, you go
Speaker 2: into a store and you see something and you see
Speaker 2: something that you want, and then you're looking at it
Speaker 2: and you look at the thing you want. Mopping is stealing.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's basically you just take the outfit you
Speaker 2: want and you don't pay for it. And it's because
Speaker 2: again racism and homophobia and transphobia and all of these
Speaker 2: systemic prejudices make it so that members of this community
Speaker 2: are often living in poverty, and we also learn that
Speaker 2: many of them earn money through sex work. There is
Speaker 2: discussion of gender and transitioning and gender affirming surgeries, where
Speaker 2: different people who are interviewed have different opinions and experiences,
Speaker 2: where in some cases we see trans women living openly
Speaker 2: and happily as such, people like Octavia's Stan Laurent Brooke
Speaker 2: and Carmen Extravaganza Venus Extravaganza, and then in other cases,
Speaker 2: especially when Pepper Labasia is talking about it. There are
Speaker 2: like just more sort of dated attitudes and hints of
Speaker 2: transphobian misogyny. We can talk more about that, and then
Speaker 2: we cut to nineteen eighty nine, so a few years
Speaker 2: have passed. We check back in with a few of
Speaker 2: the major plays of the scene, such as Willie, Ninja,
Speaker 2: Dori and Corey and Angie Extravaganza, who says that Venus
Speaker 2: Extravaganza had been murdered. She was the one who had
Speaker 2: to go and identify the body and pass the news
Speaker 2: along to Angie Extravaganza's biological family. And that's the note
Speaker 2: more or less that the documentary ends on. So that
Speaker 2: is Paris is burning in a nutshell. Let's take another
Speaker 2: quick break and then we'll come back to discuss further.
Speaker 1: And we're back.
Speaker 2: We're back.
Speaker 1: Where shall we start? There's so many places start? Yeah, John,
Speaker 1: does anything stand out to you? Where would you like
Speaker 1: to start?
Speaker 3: You know? So, I think it's I think the one
Speaker 3: thing for me that has always really struck me about
Speaker 3: this film is the idea of like and again. When
Speaker 3: I saw it in two thousand and four, it was
Speaker 3: it was always like a foreign concept and foreign thought
Speaker 3: to me. But this idea of chosen family, this idea
Speaker 3: of like, you know, your family turns you know, because
Speaker 3: you you as you grow up hearing this, right, your
Speaker 3: family is the only people who always love you. And
Speaker 3: then you come out and then they're like, no, I
Speaker 3: don't just kidding, you know, just kidding by you have
Speaker 3: to go and so, you know, finding people that you
Speaker 3: you vibe with, people who truly are there for you
Speaker 3: and care for you and want to see you not
Speaker 3: just you know, survive, but like really thrive. That's the thing.
Speaker 3: You know. As much as I always thought Dorian and
Speaker 3: Pepper were really shady, I could tell by the way
Speaker 3: they talked about their chosen you know, the folks in
Speaker 3: their different homes and their houses. You could tell that
Speaker 3: there was just this very deep love and admiration that
Speaker 3: they both had for the people in their houses. And
Speaker 3: you know, I don't if you don't have you know,
Speaker 3: I'll say this. If you're a listener and you identify
Speaker 3: as straight and sists, I think there's just this And
Speaker 3: maybe I don't know how the two of you identify,
Speaker 3: but I know for me, the friends that I have
Speaker 3: and the community I've built, it's the same concept, right,
Speaker 3: you can genuinely feel that they just want the best
Speaker 3: for you. And so this film really kind of opened
Speaker 3: my mind up to that of, like, you don't necessarily
Speaker 3: have to just rely on your family to be happy.
Speaker 3: In this world. You can find people who truly want
Speaker 3: the best for you, and you can live and thrive
Speaker 3: and be happy and have a full live life, and
Speaker 3: you can also have fun. As much as these balls
Speaker 3: were shady and you know, drama was going down, there
Speaker 3: were moments where people were really happy, and there were
Speaker 3: moments when people were celebrating, you know, each other, And
Speaker 3: so I just thought that was really funny. And the
Speaker 3: last thing I'll say, I always thought it was really
Speaker 3: funny in the scene where Dorian is talking and that
Speaker 3: cat is walking behind her, Oh my god. I always
Speaker 3: said that Dorian reminds me of like, not, lady, what
Speaker 3: movie is that with the cat? It's a Disney movie.
Speaker 3: And for his New Groove, there's another movie where these
Speaker 3: cats are walking and they're just really is it the
Speaker 3: Siamese Ones? We are Siamese. It's always in the Lady
Speaker 3: in the Tramp. Okay, I was right. I was gonna
Speaker 3: say that, but I wasn't wasn't sure she reminds me
Speaker 3: of like a Siamese cat in the sense of like
Speaker 3: she just knows she's regal, she just knows she's better
Speaker 3: than everyone else. And I was like, it just was
Speaker 3: so funny to me as I was watching that doc
Speaker 3: I was like, of course there would be a cat
Speaker 3: behind her because her personality is so much like a
Speaker 3: Siamese cat. So it's just I thought that was funny.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, I loved the cat.
Speaker 1: It was really I mean, I I going off of
Speaker 1: what you were just talking about, John, it was really cool.
Speaker 1: I mean the I mean, there's so many benefits to
Speaker 1: this being a documentary obviously, but where on this show.
Speaker 1: Over the years, we've talked about so many movies that
Speaker 1: have really appealed to queer audiences because of the element
Speaker 1: it's a found family in fiction. But there's no coding here.
Speaker 1: You're just seeing the families. There is no like, you know,
Speaker 1: mental hoops that you have to go through to feel
Speaker 1: seen in a movie like Paris is Burning and that's
Speaker 1: so singular and so, you know, not completely unheard of
Speaker 1: at this time, but certainly on it seems like this
Speaker 1: scale of success, which is really amazing but brings me
Speaker 1: there's something I wanted to just touch on that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I wasn't aware really about anything when it came to
Speaker 1: the production of this movie, and wow, there's a lot.
Speaker 1: There's a lot going on that have also echoed conversations
Speaker 1: we've had before. I did not know that this movie
Speaker 1: was directed by a white woman, for example. But the
Speaker 1: director of this movie, Jenny Livingston, directed it when she
Speaker 1: was in I believe her late twenties. It's her first feature,
Speaker 1: and that and other elements of this production has garnered
Speaker 1: quite a bit of controversy over the years. I think
Speaker 1: rightfully so Jenny Livingston, I can share some quotes, but
Speaker 1: has generally stood her ground on this that there's a
Speaker 1: few different buckets of conversation and how Paris's Burning has
Speaker 1: been criticized. It's been criticized for having a white director
Speaker 1: and primarily featuring Black and Latin people in this community.
Speaker 1: There's also a compensation that I would really like to
Speaker 1: talk about because it reminds me a lot of way
Speaker 1: back when when we covered Tangerine by Sean Baker, where
Speaker 1: because white filmmakers statistically have a better chance of getting
Speaker 1: their film made scene and profiting from it, while it
Speaker 1: can produce really amazing work. It doesn't mean that those
Speaker 1: who are featured, like the entire cast of Paris Is Burning,
Speaker 1: is getting equally compensated for literally making the movie. What
Speaker 1: it is not that Jenny Livings and did nothing. Obviously
Speaker 1: a lot of great work went into making this film,
Speaker 1: but it's their stories and that is the appeal of
Speaker 1: the film. And so there's been a lot of conversation
Speaker 1: about that. At the time. I mean, this gets into
Speaker 1: like one of my pet peeves, so we'll I'll just
Speaker 1: shut up about it as quickly as possible. But compensating
Speaker 1: interviewees and how taboo that is across nonfiction filmmaking. I
Speaker 1: just think it's such a crack of shit. But you know,
Speaker 1: when this film was being made, that was the general
Speaker 1: agreement that you know, everyone signed off and agreed to.
Speaker 1: But as is unpacked in both Hollywood Reporter article from
Speaker 1: a twenty twenty one and a Vanity Fair article from
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen that reflects on this, a lot of why
Speaker 1: the subjects of this film agreed to do it is
Speaker 1: because they really wanted their stories out there. And so
Speaker 1: there is the argument that cast members have subsequently made
Speaker 1: that like, yes, I did sign the piece of paper.
Speaker 1: I wanted our community and I wanted my story out there.
Speaker 1: I agreed to not be compensated. But then the movie
Speaker 1: was acquired by Miramax and one stuff at sun Dance,
Speaker 1: and you know, eventually made four million dollars and is
Speaker 1: the basis of polls. And who's seen most of that
Speaker 1: money is Jenny Livingston, and so there have been rivalries.
Speaker 1: It does, I guess to her credit. It seems like
Speaker 1: Jenny Livingston has you know, attempted to correct this overtime.
Speaker 1: But it was it was a long, a long standing conversation.
Speaker 1: I won't unpack it beat by beat because it's literally
Speaker 1: thirty five years of back and forth. But I do
Speaker 1: want to share a quote from Jenny Livingston defending herself
Speaker 1: as a white woman. Let's see what she has to say.
Speaker 1: This is her, you know, disputing that Paris's Burning was
Speaker 1: made for white people. She says, the sense that this
Speaker 1: was a production by white pa before white people, that's
Speaker 1: not historical. That is a projection rather than a truth.
Speaker 1: You have to see paris Is Burning in the context
Speaker 1: of nonfiction. She said versions of this over the years.
Speaker 1: What she mainly appears to be alluding to is the
Speaker 1: fact that she feels that this erases many of her
Speaker 1: black collaborators who were working as producers and consultants. But
Speaker 1: the compensation issue, I think there's just she doesn't have
Speaker 1: much of a leg to stand on, I feel. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to share a quote from Pepper, who is now,
Speaker 1: as is most of the cast of this movie is
Speaker 1: no longer with us. But this is from an interview
Speaker 1: Pepper did when she was forty four, So nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: a California magazine said I had sued Miramax in one
Speaker 1: untold millions and was seen shopping with Diana Ross on
Speaker 1: Rodeo Drive in a roles But I really just live
Speaker 1: in the Bronx with my mom, and I am so
Speaker 1: desperate to get out of here. It's hard to be
Speaker 1: the mother of a house when you're living with your
Speaker 1: own mother. And so, as we've seen for many marginalized performers,
Speaker 1: there is a lot of publicity, there's this big cultural moment,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't translate to sustained financials, and that is always, always,
Speaker 1: always the case. I know we talked about it with
Speaker 1: Tangerine as well, but it really stands out here too
Speaker 1: where it's you know, a very similar you know, one's fiction,
Speaker 1: one's nonfiction, but a very similar setup where the white
Speaker 1: filmmaker makes a really good film but does not compensate
Speaker 1: her collaborators appropriately. And it seems like I want to wait,
Speaker 1: there's so many names. Let me see if I can
Speaker 1: find the three names I'm looking for. As of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, there were still three surviving cast members from
Speaker 1: Paris Is Burning. I actually didn't know that Poe's was
Speaker 1: like based based on Paris's Burning. I know there's I
Speaker 1: knew that they were like they both surround ballroom culture,
Speaker 1: but it's like officially based. Jenny Livingston was a consultant
Speaker 1: on the first two seasons, and that is a Ryan
Speaker 1: Murphy joint. And we don't have enough time to unpack
Speaker 1: Ryan Murphy today. But the surviving cast members were invited
Speaker 1: to be consultants, including Junior le Beajia, who is in
Speaker 1: Paris Is Burning, but he was the one of three
Speaker 1: that said no because he felt that there it was
Speaker 1: history repeating itself with Poe's being another story about predominantly
Speaker 1: black and brown communities in ballroom, this time by Ryan Murphy.
Speaker 1: So it's again there's a white creative at the top,
Speaker 1: and he's like, you know, I would love to get
Speaker 1: a check here, but like you're doing it again, and
Speaker 1: it's you know, twenty five years later, so we can
Speaker 1: link those pieces in the description. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: this was just a conversation I was not aware of
Speaker 1: at all and found very interesting.
Speaker 2: Definitely that kind of brings me to Belle Hooks his
Speaker 2: critics of this movie. I believe this quote comes from
Speaker 2: her book entitled Black Looks, Race and Representation. Bell Hooks
Speaker 2: said quote, watching Paris's Burning, I began to think that
Speaker 2: the many yuppy looking, straight acting, pushy, predominantly white folks
Speaker 2: in the audience were there because the film in no
Speaker 2: way interrogates whiteness. These folks left the film saying it
Speaker 2: was amazing, marvelous, incredibly funny, worthy of statements like didn't
Speaker 2: you just love it? And no, I didn't love it,
Speaker 2: for in many ways, the film was a graphic documentary
Speaker 2: portrait of the way in which colonized black people, in
Speaker 2: this case black gay brothers, some of whom were drag
Speaker 2: Queen's worship at the throne of whiteness, even when such
Speaker 2: worship demands that we live in perpetual self hate, steal,
Speaker 2: go hungry, and even die in its pursuit. We evoked
Speaker 2: here is all of us black people, slash people of color,
Speaker 2: who are daily bombarded by a powerful colonizing whiteness that
Speaker 2: seduces us away from ourselves, that negates that there is
Speaker 2: beauty to be found in any form of blackness that
Speaker 2: is not imitation whiteness. And I see where she's coming
Speaker 2: from with this criticism because different people being interviewed in
Speaker 2: the documentary will say things like how they long to
Speaker 2: be rich, and they point out that part of the
Speaker 2: appeal of balls is that you can be whoever you
Speaker 2: want to be at a ball and you can live
Speaker 2: a fantasy of being able to be an executive or
Speaker 2: a socialite or other type of wealthy person because society
Speaker 2: will not afford you those opportunities if you are black, brown, queer.
Speaker 2: But this mentality of putting being wealthy on a pedestal
Speaker 2: and emulating business ex executives and like doing ceo drag.
Speaker 1: Like Dorian lays that out like really eloquently.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah right, But this mentality is very reflective of
Speaker 2: the times. You know, it's the Reagan era economic ideals
Speaker 2: of the eighties, and there wasn't a ton of pushback
Speaker 2: on that at the time, even from marginalized communities, because
Speaker 2: those ideals were just so pervasive, to the point where
Speaker 2: it was not super common to interrogate things like capitalism
Speaker 2: and white supremacy because they had just been so so
Speaker 2: so normalized. And you know, pre Internet, there weren't as
Speaker 2: many ways or resources to educate yourself or to spread
Speaker 2: information widely except by mainstream media, which was perpetuating these
Speaker 2: white supremacist, capitalist, cis, heteronormative ideologies. And I know Bell
Speaker 2: Hooks's criticism is like, yeah, but you still can and
Speaker 2: should interrogate those things. So why didn't this documentary which
Speaker 2: also fair, but like, I don't know, it's very tricky,
Speaker 2: and it also just speaks to how influential media is,
Speaker 2: where ballroom contestants through the decades were you know, emulating
Speaker 2: movie stars and characters from shows like Dynasty, which I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, yeah, that is a show that I've
Speaker 2: never watched and don't know anything about, but it was
Speaker 2: very popular in the eighties.
Speaker 1: It really been lost to time. I don't think anyone
Speaker 1: like revisits it really, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and they did redo it recently they
Speaker 3: did it.
Speaker 2: Was in like twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they did for ABC. I think ABC redid it
Speaker 3: and it didn't go anywhere. But I think you speak
Speaker 3: to so that I think that's the love hate that
Speaker 3: I have with this film, right. I love what this
Speaker 3: film stands for because I am a blackquar person who
Speaker 3: is also you know, recognizing that even in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 3: a lot of the stuff that they said in the
Speaker 3: nineties was extreme. I mean twenty five years was it
Speaker 3: twenty five years ago, thirty five years ago or thirty
Speaker 3: five thirty five? Okay, so we're thirty five years out
Speaker 3: from this film. You know, even thirty five years ago,
Speaker 3: there were folks who were still dealing with a lot
Speaker 3: of the stuff we're dealing in twenty twenty five. And
Speaker 3: I think that's, like I said, the thing that I
Speaker 3: love is that you see the resilience of these people saying,
Speaker 3: you know, regardless, I'm going to live the life I
Speaker 3: want to live, i want to be happy, I'm going
Speaker 3: to find my people, I'm going to find joy. But also,
Speaker 3: like I think that's the real issue I had with
Speaker 3: the film is that we don't interrogate anything like we
Speaker 3: leave these people kind of where we found them, Like
Speaker 3: it's very much. We see you in squalor. We see
Speaker 3: that you're going through it. We see that you're unhappy
Speaker 3: to an extent, and you're using ballroom to find joy,
Speaker 3: but we're not offering you any resources to get you
Speaker 3: to a place where when you're done with this ball
Speaker 3: you have somewhere to go to your head where you
Speaker 3: feel safe, you feel seen, you have you know, you
Speaker 3: have your means. And so I think that that's the
Speaker 3: thing that gets lost in translation, is you know, and
Speaker 3: I've had to say this on so many different accords.
Speaker 3: I actually just sent an email about this this week.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't need a handout. I just need
Speaker 3: a hand And I think that's the thing that you know,
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people in the early nineties,
Speaker 3: especially when we're coming out of Reaganomics, we're watching black
Speaker 3: and brown people say these systems are set up to
Speaker 3: watch me fail, and I'm doing my best to survive
Speaker 3: them and survive through them. And the best way I
Speaker 3: know how to do that is through sex work, you know,
Speaker 3: to the degree like I'm looking around and I'm going
Speaker 3: help these people, like give them something like but then
Speaker 3: you also have to interrogate. Okay, if Jenny did come
Speaker 3: in and she was like, here's some money, then people
Speaker 3: would be interrogating her and calling her the white savior, right. So,
Speaker 3: but I think that there's just there's so many levels
Speaker 3: to oppression, and I think the biggest thing that I
Speaker 3: want folks in my rambling to hear is that there,
Speaker 3: you know, we all have to be so intentional about
Speaker 3: how we're just I won't even say reporting, because I
Speaker 3: don't think anyone really reports on our stories anymore. But
Speaker 3: I think the way that we talk about, you know,
Speaker 3: the injustices that we face, right, there is an element
Speaker 3: of privilege that's there. And I think that there's so
Speaker 3: much education you have to do to make sure that
Speaker 3: when you're going into a community that is oppressed, or
Speaker 3: when you're going into a community that needs that kind
Speaker 3: of help, that you've done your own intentional work to
Speaker 3: make sure that you're not causing more harm. And I
Speaker 3: think that's the thing that is most important for me
Speaker 3: about watching this film. It's like, yes, it's funny, and
Speaker 3: it's created such a you know, a culturally thing, and
Speaker 3: I mean ru Paul is mentioning this film like almost
Speaker 3: every season. At this point, he's had seventeen seasons of
Speaker 3: Drag Race and he comes up every single season. But
Speaker 3: I think the biggest thing is is that you have
Speaker 3: so many people who are still oppressed and are still
Speaker 3: striving to find peace after the ball, and it's like,
Speaker 3: what do we do? What do we do to end that?
Speaker 3: What do we do to help get these people the
Speaker 3: resources that they need so that way they're not left for,
Speaker 3: you know, left And I'm trying to be mindful of
Speaker 3: my words because I saw your your note.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, we don't use like zoomer, we don't
Speaker 1: use like TikTok girls.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, So just just being careful of that, right,
Speaker 3: like why are we not you know, how are we
Speaker 3: not leaving? Because that's really what it is. I mean,
Speaker 3: the fact that it ends on talking about this trans
Speaker 3: woman being killed. It so bothersome to me that that's
Speaker 3: kind of how the film ends. And it's like no
Speaker 3: one said or did anything about that, right, you know,
Speaker 3: So I don't know, it's just it's it's like I said,
Speaker 3: it's it's it's uplifting, but it's like I guess my
Speaker 3: and I'm trying not to get into my social justice soapbox.
Speaker 3: But I'm like, why is it that we're always having
Speaker 3: to be resilient? Like why why why do people enjoy
Speaker 3: watching us struggle and and try to find joy in that?
Speaker 3: And you know, and I get this all the time too,
Speaker 3: even with me. You know, oh, you have a book
Speaker 3: coming out, you have a podcasting, you want to warns
Speaker 3: it's so great, and it's like I shouldn't have to
Speaker 3: be celebrated for all that I've been through to get
Speaker 3: to where I am, like, I don't don't do that.
Speaker 3: We shouldn't have to do that. So yeah, it's just
Speaker 3: something I think a lot about after watching this film.
Speaker 2: And then like there's an extreme end of that spectrum
Speaker 2: with like the appropriation of voguing.
Speaker 1: Donna's right, which came out even before this. That was
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that had come out before this documentary.
Speaker 1: I think the documentary was filmed, but they were released
Speaker 1: around the same time, so in some ways it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, Madonna was you know, starting to sort of
Speaker 1: steal voguing in the late eighties, and then by the
Speaker 1: time the movie comes out, the video is already out
Speaker 1: and it's didn't affect her career that's for fucking sure, right.
Speaker 2: And obviously the criticism is that, you know, Madonna and
Speaker 2: already famous rich cis well, woman is profiting off of
Speaker 2: something that she appropriated from ye black and brown queer communities,
Speaker 2: and and most people didn't realize that.
Speaker 3: I would even also say too, there's a document I
Speaker 3: don't want to get too much away from Paris's Burning,
Speaker 3: but there is a documentary about how dirty she did
Speaker 3: her people, the people that she appropriated from, her choreographers
Speaker 3: and her dancers that were also in these communities that
Speaker 3: she quote unquote hired and then just let them go,
Speaker 3: and how they were just kind of like, yo, you
Speaker 3: came in here, and you know, you stole this from
Speaker 3: us and and and then didn't give us anything. And
Speaker 3: so it's just there's so much to say about entertainment,
Speaker 3: which is like white.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like white pop stars one oh one. It's
Speaker 1: like it's so much evil. It's I also wanted to
Speaker 1: mention and this isn't you know, this isn't a necessarily
Speaker 1: on Jenny Livingston, but where Paris's Burning was sort of
Speaker 1: spoke about in media at this time of like there's
Speaker 1: never been a documentary like this before which is patently untrue.
Speaker 1: It is that most of the documentaries made about underground cultures,
Speaker 1: about queer cultures were made by queer black and brown filmmakers,
Speaker 1: and so they just never got the attention or distribution.
Speaker 1: The filmmaker I've seen most mentioned in this conversation who
Speaker 1: was making films around the same time, around a lot
Speaker 1: of the same themes, and had a personal connection to
Speaker 1: these communities was Marlon Riggs, who directed I think four documentaries.
Speaker 1: He passed of complications from AIDS when he was just
Speaker 1: thirty seven. But this was a filmmaker who was working
Speaker 1: at the time of Paris is burning, but his work
Speaker 1: was never spotlighted. And then you see, you know, Jenny Livingston,
Speaker 1: who is a complete you know, admitted it's not like
Speaker 1: she's pretending that she has, you know, intense connection to
Speaker 1: this culture, but she's a complete outsider and it's her
Speaker 1: project that gets the financing, that gets the sun dance,
Speaker 1: accolades and all that, which is again just something a
Speaker 1: pattern we say repeated in entertainment over and over and
Speaker 1: over and over.
Speaker 2: I wanted to touch a little bit more on the
Speaker 2: differing attitudes that are based to some degree on like
Speaker 2: different generations in this scene and how you know, for example,
Speaker 2: Pepper Labasia, who again preferred she her pronouns and had
Speaker 2: breast implants, but I identified as a gay man who
Speaker 2: emulated women but was not a woman, and says she
Speaker 2: would never have any surgery that would like, you know,
Speaker 2: give her a vagina and quote unquote make her a woman.
Speaker 2: And she says that she would never recommend anyone have
Speaker 2: that type of surgery because, oh what if they change
Speaker 2: their mind? And oh, being a woman in the world
Speaker 2: is hard. Why would you want to subject yourself to
Speaker 2: the mistreatment and abuse and misogyny that women have to face,
Speaker 2: which you know, when we watch this in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 2: we realize that's a very like antiquated, enrigid way of
Speaker 2: thinking about identity and transitioning. And it's like steeped in
Speaker 2: this idea of your genitals determine your gender and it's
Speaker 2: okay to deny someone something they want because I assume
Speaker 2: that they will change their mind about what they want
Speaker 2: and all these things. And I mean, I appreciate that
Speaker 2: that is represented in this documentary just to show that
Speaker 2: there are differing viewpoints, because that's also like juxtaposed, right,
Speaker 2: next to trans women living happy lives as trans women
Speaker 2: who have had gender affirming surgery. And it was just
Speaker 2: interesting to see those opinions being included in the documentary
Speaker 2: because and you hate to see it, but there are
Speaker 2: and have been prejudices within marginalized communities. You know, it's
Speaker 2: not constant solidarity all the time, especially in an era
Speaker 2: like the eighties but also up to and including now.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, and that the movie itself doesn't at least
Speaker 1: I mean, I let me know if you feel differently,
Speaker 1: But it didn't see like the movie was taking any
Speaker 1: particular side. It was just presenting this is how this
Speaker 1: person feels on this issue, which is a useful like
Speaker 1: historical document And I don't know, I mean, not to
Speaker 1: go back to drag race too much, but but again,
Speaker 1: I really like it didn't ping for me when I
Speaker 1: saw this movie in high school. But I kind of
Speaker 1: forgot that trans drag queens and CIS drag queens were
Speaker 1: so intermixed in the ballroom scene. And that's something that
Speaker 1: also is touched on quite a bit and decolonized drag
Speaker 1: and just its criticisms of drag race and how it
Speaker 1: doesn't always or hasn't always promoted true inclusion, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I appreciated like seeing especially, I mean like it. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I also did not remember how Venus's life ended,
Speaker 1: which is still, I mean, to this day all too
Speaker 1: common of trans folks being murdered and no one doing
Speaker 1: anything to seek out I mean, who had done it,
Speaker 1: because they're just not treated. While I thought of like
Speaker 1: Sam Nordquist who was just found killed a transman in Minnesota,
Speaker 1: and I mean, there's just so many, so many, so
Speaker 1: many examples from over the years. And to note that Venus,
Speaker 1: you know, was I Belave Italian and Puerto Rican, was
Speaker 1: supporting herself through sex work and was found killed is
Speaker 1: just it's so devastating. And I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know what I wanted the movie
Speaker 1: to do with that, but I just I don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess I wasn't trying to make a point, it
Speaker 1: just was. It was really tragic and horrible and it's
Speaker 1: still something that we're very much dealing with now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think the scary part, you know, so
Speaker 3: I will say this, I love our stories being told
Speaker 3: in this way, right, but I think that there's also something,
Speaker 3: like I said, kind of going back to my brant
Speaker 3: about care, I think there's also something extremely scary about
Speaker 3: our stories being told this way because now, you know,
Speaker 3: especially with the way that this film ends, it shows
Speaker 3: how disposable black trans people, trans people can be. Right.
Speaker 3: So that's something that I think, you know, I if
Speaker 3: there are any documentarians out there who's who's listening to
Speaker 3: this and are thinking, oh, I want to do this
Speaker 3: documentary or I want to I want to do this
Speaker 3: type of research, I think this film is a great
Speaker 3: place to kind of come back and to like examine
Speaker 3: and say, like, what are all of the things that
Speaker 3: Genny did right? And what are all the things that
Speaker 3: Genny did wrong, especially when you're working with marginalized people.
Speaker 3: Because even for me, right as someone who loves I'll
Speaker 3: tell you right now, I will tune into I'm I
Speaker 3: was watching one last night, the Parpito documentary on Netflix,
Speaker 3: and there is a documentary. But yes, if it's a
Speaker 3: true crime anything, mama is locked in. But I will
Speaker 3: say to to that point, I think, you know, we
Speaker 3: we have to There's got to be an element, especially
Speaker 3: when we're dealing with marginalized people, that we have to
Speaker 3: be very mindful demure and even I would even challenge
Speaker 3: to be you know, to be cautious about how we're
Speaker 3: how we're framing you know, stories and stories lines. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I will say that I do appreciate that there is
Speaker 3: you know, joy, We're still left with joy from the film.
Speaker 3: And even now, you know, like I said, when I
Speaker 3: watch shows that reference and I watch movies that reference that,
Speaker 3: or even you know, I revisited Polls a couple of
Speaker 3: months ago. It was just really it was affirming to
Speaker 3: see the impact that this documentary had on so many people,
Speaker 3: even now, like you said, thirty five years later.
Speaker 2: Absolutely right, because it does certainly something to normalize this
Speaker 2: subculture and bring awareness to people about it, because I'm
Speaker 2: sure there are lots of people around the country slash
Speaker 2: world who would have no other way really of knowing
Speaker 2: about it, especially in previous decades.
Speaker 1: I mean all three of us were right, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the fact that it's like taught in schools
Speaker 2: and universities, and like I put it, I added it
Speaker 2: to my list because it kept coming up in textbooks
Speaker 2: I was reading about like significant queer cinema, so it
Speaker 2: being pretty mainstream has you know, I think done net good.
Speaker 2: But also like, yeah, the note that it ends on
Speaker 2: where it is basically just like, yes, Venus Extravaganza was
Speaker 2: found murdered the end.
Speaker 1: That's all that's said. Yeah, that's all that said. And
Speaker 1: then we see I believe it's Willie, who has since
Speaker 1: seen a lot of success. It feels like they're almost
Speaker 1: presented in opposition to each other, and.
Speaker 2: Right, here are the two possible outcomes, right like being
Speaker 2: a participant in this community.
Speaker 1: I wish more care had been taken with. I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like, I don't know, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: redo her movie for her. It's done, it's done. But
Speaker 1: but I would have stayed seated for another half hour
Speaker 1: forty five minutes to really get into the two years later,
Speaker 1: because it felt like very much like an after method.
Speaker 1: I don't think it was intending to be dismissive, but
Speaker 1: I think, like, like we've all said at this point,
Speaker 1: it just felt like and then this happened and it
Speaker 1: was happy, and then this happened and it was sad.
Speaker 1: These are the two outcomes, thank you, good night, And
Speaker 1: it's just like, well.
Speaker 4: No, that's giving way a second.
Speaker 3: It did not come here for this, is there more? Yeah,
Speaker 3: you're like girl, I know you have more be rail
Speaker 3: than that, you know, so I know there's gotta be
Speaker 3: some found footage somewhere.
Speaker 1: It's really and getting back to Bell Hook's criticism of
Speaker 1: this movie, I mean, there's no criticism of the failure
Speaker 1: of policing to investigate these murders.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, let's talk about it.
Speaker 1: It's just like there's so many there are moments where
Speaker 1: I feel like it really works to this documentary's advantage
Speaker 1: to let the subjects just speak, not take a clear
Speaker 1: like this is what I Jenny am trying to say,
Speaker 1: Like that's not her job here, But there's so much
Speaker 1: that's left on the table that I suspect there had
Speaker 1: to have been some footage about and if there wasn't,
Speaker 1: maybe the right questions aren't being asked because there is
Speaker 1: so much about this specific period in time that's still
Speaker 1: resonant now that it just feels like is either just
Speaker 1: referenced in passing or like doesn't really come up. And
Speaker 1: I think that like Bill Hooks was right to criticize
Speaker 1: the audience reactions. That's if that's the audience's takeaway of likeugh,
Speaker 1: loved it anyways, brunch time, Like then there you know
Speaker 1: you can't control how people receive your work, but that
Speaker 1: does feel like a failure of the documentary to some degree.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I was going to say, to your point,
Speaker 3: one of the things I'm thinking a lot about to here,
Speaker 3: you know, there could have been and so in my mind,
Speaker 3: so I actually wrote a story about you know, the
Speaker 3: I think it was, was it twenty or twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: I wrote something about the whole fiasco and how people
Speaker 3: are looking at Jenny Livingstone and now right basically in
Speaker 3: our world, Now, what does this film for Slay? I
Speaker 3: think it was for Slade. I wrote it for And
Speaker 3: I will say this, I actually was in the mind
Speaker 3: you know, actually while I was writing the article, one
Speaker 3: of the things that I had picked up on was
Speaker 3: that folks who were connected to this film back in
Speaker 3: the nineties, they didn't want this to become because again,
Speaker 3: we were living in a political state, right, we had
Speaker 3: to act up, folks, you know, things going on and
Speaker 3: act up. We were five, we were only maybe four
Speaker 3: or five years into the you know, the AIDS crisis,
Speaker 3: and so there's all of these things. And so I think,
Speaker 3: to an extent, you know, one of the justifications of
Speaker 3: Jenny leaving this stuff out is. I don't want this
Speaker 3: to become a political film, right, I don't want this
Speaker 3: to be about, you know, the politics of being black
Speaker 3: and queer. I just wanted to celebrate ballroom. I wanted
Speaker 3: to celebrate a culture and that's it, right, Okay, fair,
Speaker 3: but me, especially me from an intersectional lens, right, we
Speaker 3: cannot just talk about blackness and queerness and ball community
Speaker 3: without talking about the politics of being black and queer
Speaker 3: at this time. So it's almost like, you know, like,
Speaker 3: like I said, I understand what she was trying to do,
Speaker 3: But at the same time, we have the term intersectionality
Speaker 3: being coined in eighty nine. So I'm thinking to myself, well,
Speaker 3: why wasn't this film done from an intersectional lens where
Speaker 3: we're watching oppression, you know, asking the question right and
Speaker 3: formulating our questions from this place of how is oppression
Speaker 3: impacting those who participate in ballroom?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Like that that should have been the focus and then
Speaker 3: we could have maybe moved into this what are we
Speaker 3: going to do to vindicate Venus in her life? Right?
Speaker 3: But I think, you know, and again, and I don't
Speaker 3: want to be heavy. I don't want to be one
Speaker 3: of those people that put their foot on Jenny's neck.
Speaker 3: She's had enough people put their foot on her, so
Speaker 3: I get it. But what I'm saying is is I
Speaker 3: think that, you know, like I said to my point earlier,
Speaker 3: I think we have to be when we're creating art
Speaker 3: and where, you know, we're trying to tell a story,
Speaker 3: we have to sometimes get away from the fear of
Speaker 3: it quote unquote being too political because we are political.
Speaker 2: Everything is just political. Whoa, I said brilliantly and blew
Speaker 2: everyone's minds wide open.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I I it's I didn't I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that you'd written about it, John, That's I.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, it just felt like there there
Speaker 1: was a lot that feels mysteriously absent. I don't know, particularly,
Speaker 1: I mean looking at I was, you know, just looking
Speaker 1: into like where the folks from this documentary documentary are now?
Speaker 1: There are still three living cast members, Freddy and Saul
Speaker 1: pen Davis and Junior li Bejia is still alive as well,
Speaker 1: but most of the cast is gone and the majority
Speaker 1: of them died because of complications related to AIDS. And
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, it's like definitely not I'm
Speaker 1: not the person to determine how much does that factor
Speaker 1: into this narrative or not. But I've seen the criticism
Speaker 1: around like where is you know?
Speaker 2: Something that I also thought the documentary might touch on
Speaker 2: but doesn't is the history of ballroom. And I'm by
Speaker 2: no means an expert. I am pulling this a lot
Speaker 2: from scholarly journal Wikipedia, but just to kind of contextualize
Speaker 2: ballroom a little bit. Its origins trace back to the
Speaker 2: mid eighteen hundreds, where, for example, a person by the
Speaker 2: name of William Dorsey Swan, a formerly enslaved person and
Speaker 2: the first person to describe themselves as a drag queen,
Speaker 2: started hosting secret balls in Washington, DC in the I
Speaker 2: think late eighteen hundreds. Many of the attendees of these
Speaker 2: balls were black men. They would be arrested in police
Speaker 2: raids frequently, but the balls would continue. They caught on.
Speaker 2: Other cities started them. By the eighteen nineties, there were
Speaker 2: similar drag events organized in New York. By nineteen thirty,
Speaker 2: there were similar events in Chicago, New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia,
Speaker 2: other cities. They were generally racially integrated, although there was
Speaker 2: a lot of race within that space, and so by
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties, there was you know, predominantly black balls,
Speaker 2: you know, black and brown balls, because they were like,
Speaker 2: we don't want to deal with the racism in these
Speaker 2: integrated spaces because the white people are treating us badly.
Speaker 2: And then that led to a lot of the houses
Speaker 2: that we see represented in Paris's Burning, where for example,
Speaker 2: like Crystal Liabasia founded the House of Liabysia in Harlem
Speaker 2: in the early seventies and that was, you know, part
Speaker 2: of the kind of origins of the specific scene that
Speaker 2: we see represented in the movie. But anyway, there's much
Speaker 2: more information. Again I'm not an expert, but I feel
Speaker 2: like a documentary today would have been like where did
Speaker 2: ballroom come from? You know, and it would have like
Speaker 2: gone through that history quite a bit more.
Speaker 1: But it feels more like a style choice of like
Speaker 1: we're just dropped into this world and there's so much
Speaker 1: I mean, that also speaks to like how under educated
Speaker 1: you know, people generally are about drag culture.
Speaker 2: The other thing that the documentary to me doesn't make clear.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about the title Paris Is Burning,
Speaker 2: and it refers to a ball of the same name
Speaker 2: that was held annually by Paris Dupree who was the
Speaker 2: founding member and mother of the House of Dupre. Paris
Speaker 2: Dupree is credited as one of the pioneers of voguing.
Speaker 2: Paris is seen briefly and mentioned briefly in the documentary,
Speaker 2: but not heavily featured or interviewed. And so I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: interesting that you call the documentary Paris is Burning after
Speaker 2: Paris Dupree's event, but like it's not really a feature
Speaker 2: or interview Paris de Brea.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Interesting, but wow. Yeah, I wanted to look into that
Speaker 2: because I was like, why is this called Paris is Burning?
Speaker 2: And that's why is there anything else anyone wants to discuss?
Speaker 2: Regarding the movie.
Speaker 3: I will say it's an annual It's a film you
Speaker 3: should watch annually at least once a year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely get some friends together.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's great. Yeah. So for for all of the
Speaker 1: for all of the criticizing we've been doing for the
Speaker 1: past hour plus, it is a terrific movie. It's very, very,
Speaker 1: very rewatchable. And I think, I mean, as we've all
Speaker 1: sort of talked about, it was a gateway for it's
Speaker 1: a it's a gateway watch. I think, like you know,
Speaker 1: it's definitely a good one on one for ballroom culture
Speaker 1: that it seems like has paved the way for a
Speaker 1: lot of other work, and some of that, although Ryan
Speaker 1: Murphy is not a good example, is not made by
Speaker 1: Cis white creators. So I think it definitely has a
Speaker 1: strong place in history. And it's also just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just such a great watch.
Speaker 2: Definitely, the music, choices, the fashion, it's.
Speaker 3: All of it.
Speaker 1: Yes, the cat, the cat.
Speaker 3: Now the other thing. I don't know if I'm supposed
Speaker 3: to talk about this on the air, y'all. Do know
Speaker 3: that there was some stuff with mother Later on in
Speaker 3: the years, they found folks in Dorian's closet. I don't
Speaker 3: know if we want.
Speaker 2: To Oh, we can't wait.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I forgot that that was Dorian. Oh okay, wait,
Speaker 1: let's talk about it just really quickly. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't want to go into the mess too much
Speaker 3: because I don't want it to overshadow the joy of
Speaker 3: this film. But I'm just letting you know that that
Speaker 3: was That is a piece.
Speaker 1: Of the history, and history is a many headed, complicated thing.
Speaker 2: Wait for our listeners and also me who doesn't know
Speaker 2: about this, could you say, yeah.
Speaker 1: Wow, I feel like there's like five listeners right now
Speaker 1: that heard us ending the episode and we're screaming at
Speaker 1: the top of their lungs. Okay, yeah, yeah, John, take
Speaker 1: it away, like.
Speaker 3: No, not more, but okay. So there is an article
Speaker 3: and it says a famous drac Queen, a mummy in
Speaker 3: the closet, and a baffling mystery, and this was written
Speaker 3: in twenty sixteen and so so so what I will
Speaker 3: also posit and say if you are a pose watcher,
Speaker 3: you will know that. I think it was either season
Speaker 3: two or season three. Towards the end of the season.
Speaker 3: There is an actual episode where they're talking about this,
Speaker 3: Uh there's a Louis Vauton trunk that is in I
Speaker 3: think it's in Who's uh, what's her name's house? But anyway,
Speaker 3: all that to be said, they're trying to get to
Speaker 3: this trunk. Well, it's based off of this story surrounding
Speaker 3: Dorian Corey, and I guess one of the clips of
Speaker 3: this article, it says what stands in starkes contrast to
Speaker 3: the gruesome implications in her closet, it is Corey's demeanor.
Speaker 3: The most extensive video of Corey is in nineteen nineties
Speaker 3: Jennie Livingston's documentary. It's an examination of aforementioned ball culture
Speaker 3: and interviews. She's witty, realistic, and unflappable. In contrast to
Speaker 3: the grandiosity of aspiring models and housewives. She has a
Speaker 3: self possessed cadence and world weary observations, which endear her
Speaker 3: to be a comparatively mainstream audience. So, you know, there's
Speaker 3: this notion that she's just very fun and very you know,
Speaker 3: witty and very you know, very endearing per se. But
Speaker 3: I guess it's probable that there was something that was
Speaker 3: happening between nineteen eighty eight and nineteen ninety and ultimately
Speaker 3: she tucked it away in her closet.
Speaker 1: So okay, yeah, I forgot. How dare I forget about
Speaker 1: the mummy? Truly?
Speaker 2: The I'm so confused.
Speaker 1: So it's so dead, Bob I was. I would say,
Speaker 1: there's a dead body. I've seen different story as to
Speaker 1: what the story I was looking at, which is cited
Speaker 1: on scholarly journal Wikipedia, but also is Yeah from a
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five paper called The Drag Queen and the
Speaker 1: Mummy that the body discovered was determined to be dead
Speaker 1: for approximately twenty five years was said to be the
Speaker 1: body of a man named Robert Worley, who hadn't been
Speaker 1: seen since nineteen sixty eight. But it was the theories
Speaker 1: surrounding that death were either the theories were that Robert
Speaker 1: and Dorian were in a relationship of some sort and
Speaker 1: that either Robert had been killed and she had hidden
Speaker 1: in his body for whatever reason, or that she had
Speaker 1: killed him in self defense because of violence she was
Speaker 1: experiencing at his hands. And then was like, let's just
Speaker 1: go in here. I fascinating lives all around, John, thank
Speaker 1: you for bringing that up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just wanted to say, like, because I don't
Speaker 3: want people listening and being like they totally just over
Speaker 3: they just looked over this whole you know, story. But
Speaker 3: I think it's also tangential to what we're talking about here, right,
Speaker 3: these people, you know, So like I'm even I'm looking
Speaker 3: through the story that I just quickly googled, and it
Speaker 3: said that there's also a rumor that this whoever this
Speaker 3: body was, They basically claim that this man broke into
Speaker 3: her home and tried to rob her, and that it
Speaker 3: was self defense. And so when people ask why she
Speaker 3: kept the body, it says a black drag queen who
Speaker 3: lived in a poor, dangerous area in the sixties or
Speaker 3: seventies had a little chance of garnering sympathy from the police.
Speaker 3: And so I think it's it's it's as much as
Speaker 3: it's not related to the story of what Genny was
Speaker 3: trying to do with this film, I think it really
Speaker 3: like this story per se says a lot about the
Speaker 3: times that these queer people were living in, right like
Speaker 3: the fear of Okay, well, I I tell someone that
Speaker 3: this man broke into my home and I killed him
Speaker 3: in self defense, and then I still end up in jail,
Speaker 3: and then I end up dead in jail, right right,
Speaker 3: Like that's probably regardless of what the story was. You know,
Speaker 3: the reality was Dorian was worried about their livelihood and
Speaker 3: so just to be queer at this time, and I
Speaker 3: mean still even now, right, you know, to be worried
Speaker 3: about your livelihood is something that's very real for queer people.
Speaker 3: And you know, as much as like I said, it
Speaker 3: doesn't relate to the story, it very much does absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean, and the ways that I've seen this story,
Speaker 1: I can't believe I didn't connect that it's story and
Speaker 1: from this movie. The ways I've seen the story presented
Speaker 1: over the years has been more framed as clickbait sensationalism
Speaker 1: in a way that I feel like really leans into biased,
Speaker 1: horrible perspectives of like, well, queer people are inherently violent,
Speaker 1: and that's why when you find a body in the closet,
Speaker 1: like that is why as opposed to queer people and
Speaker 1: specifically like black queer people are particularly vulnerable. And like
Speaker 1: you're just saying, John would not have stood a chance
Speaker 1: at you know, standing up against the white supremacist police state,
Speaker 1: and so it was self defense and was necessary in
Speaker 1: order to survive. I've not really seen that anecdote presented
Speaker 1: that way. It was more like a fun fact. Did
Speaker 1: you know this famous drag queen from Paris is burning?
Speaker 1: Did you know in the way that I think a
Speaker 1: lot of AI slop kind of leans towards.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't humanize, it doesn't. And I think that's
Speaker 3: the thing too with these type of not even these stories,
Speaker 3: but just like I even thine, going back to the documentary,
Speaker 3: it you know, this idea that there's this humanity that's
Speaker 3: not there, you know sometimes you know, and I think
Speaker 3: that's what you know when you were talking about when
Speaker 3: you were giving the piece about Bill Hooks. I think
Speaker 3: that's what they were ultimately trying to say, that there's
Speaker 3: just this lack of humanity. And I don't even think,
Speaker 3: you know, that's why I said I there was a
Speaker 3: part of me that didn't even want to tell anybody
Speaker 3: that I was watching the documentary. But it's like, you know,
Speaker 3: I sometimes have to check myself with that of like,
Speaker 3: these were humans. These are people that had really like
Speaker 3: a really terrible thing happened to them, and we sensationalize
Speaker 3: it and there's so much oh my god, this really
Speaker 3: saucy thing happened. You did you hear about it? But
Speaker 3: it's like, yo, like where's the humanity behind it? And
Speaker 3: so I have to catch myself sometimes when I get excited,
Speaker 3: you know, in conversation about these type of films. But yeah,
Speaker 3: that's kind of where I'm left right.
Speaker 2: Well, Paris Is Burning does touch on these topics of class,
Speaker 2: of race, of gender, of sexuality, but it does so
Speaker 2: in a pretty surface way where it'll be like one
Speaker 2: person's like SoundBite from there, you know, in interview, monologuing
Speaker 2: for a couple sentences about something, and that happens a
Speaker 2: few times throughout the documentary. So It's not as though
Speaker 2: the documentary ignores these topics and the intersections of them,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't zoom out very much as far as like, well,
Speaker 2: how do these things affect these people systemically in larger
Speaker 2: and more significant ways. It doesn't dive deeply into these things.
Speaker 2: It's just pretty I don't want to call it superficial necessarily,
Speaker 2: but it's you know, it's not super deep the way
Speaker 2: the movie explores these things.
Speaker 1: Which and that connects to something we've talked about a
Speaker 1: lot where that stands out as particularly when the subjects
Speaker 1: that these films are people who are largely ignored by
Speaker 1: the rest of culture, and so then it, you know,
Speaker 1: ostensibly becomes the job of one movie to do every everything,
Speaker 1: when the reality is like one movie can't do everything.
Speaker 1: There is plenty to criticize about Jenny's approach here, which
Speaker 1: we have done and many have done and will continue
Speaker 1: to do it, and rightfully so. But I think it
Speaker 1: also draws attention to the fact that on a lot
Speaker 1: of I mean think about like how many documentaries are
Speaker 1: there about World War Two, and how every documentary about
Speaker 1: World War two doesn't address every aspect and perspective and
Speaker 1: figure of World War two. But that's okay. There's forty
Speaker 1: trillion documentaries about World War Two that grandfathers all over
Speaker 1: the world are watching as we speak, and like, there whatever,
Speaker 1: there is more, not that there wasn't more. Like we're saying,
Speaker 1: there were filmmakers that were creating work around these communities,
Speaker 1: but in terms of work that was easily accessible, In
Speaker 1: terms of work that was getting the financing and marketing
Speaker 1: to support it, there wasn't very much. And so then
Speaker 1: it becomes I mean, it's like a tricky conversation because
Speaker 1: one movie can't do everything, but one movie can do
Speaker 1: more than it's doing.
Speaker 3: It can do something. Chat, that's what I hear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, maybe we just need Paris Is Burning to
Speaker 2: yeah or something, or a different movie.
Speaker 3: Let's start a GoFundMe and we can we can start
Speaker 3: we can be the ones that do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anything else anyone wants to talk about.
Speaker 1: It's all.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The movie, whether or not it passes the Bechdel test,
Speaker 2: is like not the most applicable since it's a documentary
Speaker 2: format and it's not a lot of people having dialogue.
Speaker 2: But I'm pretty serious anyway, right because many of the
Speaker 2: people featured are people of a marginalized gender, and we
Speaker 2: do see them speak to each other about balls and
Speaker 2: houses and clothes and things like that. So the film
Speaker 2: does past the Bechtyl test. But what about the Bechtel
Speaker 2: Cast nipple scale, a scale where we rate the movie
Speaker 2: zero to five nipples based on examining it through an
Speaker 2: intersectional feminist lens. John, I see shock and awe on
Speaker 2: your face.
Speaker 1: Anything about Journey nipple? Yes, okay, I really don't know
Speaker 1: what we were thinking, but we committed to it. And
Speaker 1: and that's the scale.
Speaker 3: So one nipple is terrible and five nipples are great.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, this is correct.
Speaker 3: I would give it. Oh, because you can't do half.
Speaker 2: Nipples, Yes, you can do we do quarter nipples.
Speaker 1: Slice them and dice them. However you like.
Speaker 3: Slice the nipples? Ooh, that's terrifying. Let's go. I would
Speaker 3: do four nipples.
Speaker 2: I'm around that area as well. Yeah, yeah, I think
Speaker 2: I was going to give it like three point seven five.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think three point seven five is perfect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, I I agree. We've decided it's three point
Speaker 1: seven five and that's.
Speaker 2: That, and that's that. We've discussed the movie's shortcomings, but
Speaker 2: we've also discussed the many ways in which this is
Speaker 2: a very important piece of cinema and important documentary paved
Speaker 2: the way for similar projects. And uh yeah, I would
Speaker 2: give my nipples too.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, you can give your nipples away to John.
Speaker 2: We award them. Oh, okay to people. Uh I, I
Speaker 2: sort of just want to give my nipples to everyone
Speaker 2: featured in the documentary. That's and then but specifically setting
Speaker 2: aside one nipple for the cat.
Speaker 1: Yes, of course, I'm gonna just leave my nipples on
Speaker 1: the table. And I wish I could give every participant
Speaker 1: of this documentary, uh five hundred thousand dollars at the
Speaker 1: time it came up. Oh my god, Like that's just
Speaker 1: I just wish that the subjects of this documentary that
Speaker 1: it's you know, the filmmaking is good, but it is
Speaker 1: the people at the center of this movie that make
Speaker 1: it what it is. That is the reason that we
Speaker 1: are still watching it today, and they should have been
Speaker 1: compensated better. So yeah, yeah, just distributing money in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety that's how I'm going to use my nfles.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Well, John, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 3: This was great and this was such a good conversation.
Speaker 3: Thank you for and thank you for thinking of me
Speaker 3: and thank you for including me. This was, like I said,
Speaker 3: I had a really great time, and it also gave
Speaker 3: me a new again. I've watched this film a million times,
Speaker 3: I've written about it, I've done so many things around it.
Speaker 3: But this also gives me a great perspective to think
Speaker 3: about as I rewatch it. So I will be watching
Speaker 3: it a little bit more closer next time, though.
Speaker 2: I will say that if you want yeah, yeah or not.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I'm just like I'm shutting off my brain and
Speaker 2: watching a thing that I like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's me a reality TV.
Speaker 2: We were so delighted to have you. Thank you so
Speaker 2: much for joining us. Come back anytime for any movie
Speaker 2: you'd like to discuss.
Speaker 1: Yes, where can we find you? And where can our
Speaker 1: listeners follow your work?
Speaker 3: Well? You can often find me doing a pirouet inside
Speaker 3: of a Krispy Kreme or any donut location. But when
Speaker 3: I am not eating sugar I'm not supposed to have.
Speaker 3: You can find me on social media. My handout is
Speaker 3: doctor John Paul everywhere except for Twitter. I am no
Speaker 3: longer on Twitter, good for you, but you can find
Speaker 3: me in Blue Sky. I don't know how much longer
Speaker 3: I'll be on Instagram or Facebook, but you can also
Speaker 3: find me there and also on threads. But yeah, and
Speaker 3: then visit my website ww dot doctor Johnpaul dot com
Speaker 3: and you can probably catch me in a bookstore near you. Yeah,
Speaker 3: if you're in the LA area, you'd like to come
Speaker 3: to my book launch. All the information for that is
Speaker 3: on my website.
Speaker 2: So yay, we'll be there. We're in the LA area.
Speaker 3: Yes, come down, come down.
Speaker 2: Yes, please pre order John's book. Thank you again for
Speaker 2: joining us. You can follow us mostly on Instagram these days.
Speaker 2: At Bechdel Cast, you can subscribe to our Patreon aka Matreon,
Speaker 2: where we cover two movies a month. Plus you get
Speaker 2: access to the entire back catalog. There's fun, amazing, brilliant
Speaker 2: genius themes such as Rodent Timber coming up this March.
Speaker 1: There's a stunning number of movies about rodents. Would you
Speaker 1: like to hear an intersectional feminist discussion of them? If not,
Speaker 1: too bad, you have to drive.
Speaker 2: You have to subscribe anyway.
Speaker 1: Intersectional feminist discussion of ratitude incoming. Link in description's get
Speaker 1: our merch at teapublic dot com. Slash the Bechdel Cast
Speaker 1: and with that another wonderful episode of The Bechtel Cast concludes.
Speaker 2: Wow, see you next time.
Speaker 3: Bye Bye, bye bye.
Speaker 2: The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by
Speaker 2: Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftis, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited
Speaker 2: by Mola Board. Our theme song was composed by Mike
Speaker 2: Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Volskrosenski. Our logo in merch
Speaker 2: is designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to
Speaker 2: Aristotle Assevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit
Speaker 2: linktree slash Bechdel Cast