Paris Is Burning Analysis

In today’s society doing gender has been made a focal point examining the social traits of masculinity and feminity. Society thinks that if you do gender your practicing a performance. I have noticed in my studies that judging people gender practices can reinforce gender equality as well as take for granted the human body. Have you ever watched the film Paris is Burning? Paris is Burning is about the 1980’s and queer culture. Paris is Burning describes how queer communities survived during this time. In Gender is Burning Butler writes “Paris is Burning documents neither an efficacious insurrection nor a painful resubordination, but an unstable coexistence of both.” What does she mean?
Addressing this question, I will argue that drag women are only acceptable when they are to entertain heterosexual bodies on television. I will draw from Butler’s Gender is Burning and the 1980 film Paris is Burning and then define my findings in the summary. In the film the success of drag is being judged by the extent to which ball contestants must pass meaning to be read as normal opposed to being read meaning for the queens in Paris Is Burning, to read by another queen is also to dis her.
In addressing a lived experience of ball culture I will describe the performances of feminizing black
males. Which means that these black gay males are being emasculated by being in this documentary. This film is about how we are all influenced by the media and how we all strive to meet these demands for survival. In the drag performance it’s all about passing as women. So when the contestants get pretty and dolled up its now about who has the best walk. The walk is significant to models, vogueing and glamorous poses.
The film also creates negativity in the queer community because it’s all a fantasy these men are putting on a show for entertainment they don’t desire to be in drag all the time. The problem with this as we discussed in my class is that in the movie Jawanna-man and Ms. Doubtfire you have men dressing as women but only for a purpose not because they are Transgender. The feminization of the black man is most evident in popular culture. I think in the film when Butler mentions an efficacious insurrection she hints on how when black actors dress in drag it normalizes and then we all self-consciously think that black men are funny and are more favored in society than a strong heterosexual black man because they are looked at as criminals. In today’s media discourse the black man is confined to the restrictions the white man has put on him. The contest itself exposes the norms of realness. When you constantly have misguided notions of ones actions you believe these are real.
Now to discuss “Gender is Burning” Butler’s article starts off talking about authority and how it affects someone’s gender. But how you ask? When it comes to policing and law, language is created without a choice. Butler then brings up drag balls of how afro American men and Latino men participated. Butler then examines closely the relationship between drag and gender. Butler explains that drag degrades women because it is women impersonation, and the problem with this is that it still colonizes gender giving you only two options to choose from, and that falls back into normalization. Which bring me back to my thesis statement that drag has been made popular only to entertain a heteronormative society. Butler see’s drag ball as a painful resubordination because it portrays a denaturalization of hetero norm, meaning that the contestants in the ball love this fantasy they seek the realness. But dressing as drag is not what it means to be a woman. Gender is deeply rooted into society and gender privilege is an ongoing debate to universal liberation.
In conclusion Gender is Burning is a great film.
The film showed fascination with feminism, it also showed how society exposes sex, gender, and racism. Butler’s argument that the ball participants fantasy to escape poverty, homophobia, and racism is just that a fantasy. The film also identifies that the ball exposes that the desires of the contestants falsely idealize womanhood. In the quote “Paris is Burning documents neither an efficacious insurrection nor a painful resubordination, but an unstable coexistence of both”(137) Butler is implementing that society has deep rooted constraints on what it means to be male and female, but gender is much more than societies outdated
definition.