Paris is Burning
hooks
Paris is Burning is indeed a controversial film. Every film related to “subaltern” or “non-dominant” culture, it is, in same way. That’s why it’s very interesting the reading of the film made by hooks. Especially, because he felt identifies with this kind of film for being a black and lesbian woman. As she said literally in her text, her first feeling about the film was disappointment. She was much exited about it, but the film didn’t reach her expectative. For me, her text is closer to a film critic text than to a criticism text. Her main concern, in my opinion, was the role of the director, Livingstone. We may say that hooks didn’t like a white/lesbian making a film like this, but, if she was exited about the film maybe this one was not the main reason because she didn’t like the film.
Her claim is about the role played by the director in the film. For hooks, Livingstone is an “outsider” in the world of ballroom, she definitely is. But, How does she approach to this case? That is hook’s problem. She says that Livingstone is trying to “not be” in the film, when of course, she is. The film try to have an effect of the eye watching what’s going on in this particular event without asking the role of the observer. Livingstone, and I agree with hooks about this, is not taking account her presence in the scene. She is interfering in the event that she is presenting to her audience. It is possible that someone “from the outside” doesn’t affect at the time he/she looks. In addition to that, jooks didn’t like, actually, what she saw in the film. She felt that balls were reproducing the paradigm of supremacy of the man/white/straight and “whiteness” in general. I think this is important to make a distinction between the “queer/scholar world” and the rest of the “queer world”. Being a black gay doesn’t mean to hate “whiteness”, doesn’t mean, necessarily, that they are subverting the established order. I think in most of the cases that is the “purpose” that scholars related to queer studies try to give to this kind of groups, but doesn’t mean that it’s like that.
Butler
On the other hand, Judith Butler goes deep about the analysis of this film. She rejects the idea that “just for been a drag you must be subversive”. She is more concerned about the unstable categories of “been a man” and “been a woman”. For her, the situation is much more complicated. When the man is dressed like a woman, he is not trying to “be” a woman. He is in a more complex situation that can not be reduced to the dichotomy man/woman.
She says a few interesting film about the different categories that we can find in the balls. The main concern of hooks was the “idol” figure of white woman. But, that one is just one category among the others. Then, appear some categories like “the army man”, the “Eyve League student”, etc. The main reflection is based on the concept of “the norm” and the “symbol” of this representation.
For Butler, this film is not about the misogyny of black gays. For her, it is, in some way, the coexistence of both spheres. The world of the balls and “the rest of the world”. According to her, the main idea is about appropriation of dominant culture. But, is not an appropriation in order to keep subordinated to it, it is a way of resisting to this exclusion.
It is very interesting for me the idea of legitimacy that is under both texts and the film. Who speak for the one who are in the film? Do they do it by themselves? They are selected, interrogated and edited by the film maker, Livingstone in this case, then, they are shown, in a cinema, and the, their “behaviour” (like if they were animals) is commented and critiqued by “others”. It is interesting, also, that all the “voices” that we hear outside the film are lesbian voices. In same way, we can say that are intellectual lesbians who are discussing about black/gay/poor issues. Why them? What give them the legitimacy to speak, show, and critic the other group?
Rejoicing the Crisis in the Name
Rejoicing the Crisis in the Name
Judith Butler’s notion that language is performative and therefore can be used as a tool to subvert dominant discourse is very appealing. For Butler, gender and race are social constructs that can be deconstructed through the ‘slippage’ or the failure of the performative, which opens a space of resistance for the marginalized. She cites Spivak’s “enabling violation” to explain how agency can be realized from within the conditions of oppression. The repetition of hegemonic terms can “reverse and displace their originating aims.”
The iterability of the terms of subjectivation creates a space of ambivalence that allows the other to rework them (Derrida anyone?). Butler claims that heterosexuality as the normative ideal seeks to both naturalize itself and render itself original so homosexuality becomes a product of repudiated heterosexual love. However, Butler insists that when a drag queen imitates the ideal woman it becomes clear that the ideal does not exist. No performance of sexual norms can reach this ideal, and the resulting gap between the ideal and reality opens up an ambivalent space from which other voices can speak and be heard. The drag performance then can create agency as the “Queen will out-woman women.” (I really like this!) In this way, the fetishization of the feminine ideal can bring about a symbolic crisis which will in turn effect a crisis in the morphological stability of the name ‘woman’, or ‘man’.
In other words, the language of oppression can be used against itself, so to speak, to reveal that terms overtly fixed in meaning are inherently ambiguous. And if this is so, they no longer refer to their original referent. In this way, through the reworked terms imposed identities are exchanged for space to construct new ones.
Butler’s text reminds me of the old films in which Carmen Miranda sings with a pineapple? on her head. She represents the quintessential Latina: loud, colorful, exotically over the top. She is so ridiculous that her parody of the stereotypical Latin American female proves the fallacy of the myth. The Irish Spring soap ads do the same regarding the ideal man.
Any problems?
I think that some may question using the language of oppression to resist its power. There may be the danger that this will only strengthen the performativity of language that has traumatized generations of people living in the interstices of society. They might call for the invention of a new language to remove the shackles of the old. However, Butler claims that the “I” cannot extract itself from the history that created it and gains agency from the power relations it hopes to undermine.
Who Can Speak for Whom?
When bell hooks asks if we can imagine a black woman lesbian making a film about white gay subculture, I find it very difficult to justify my pursuit of an MA in post-colonial studies. I mean, who am I to comment on the experience of the colonial subject? I write about trauma at the hands of European hegemony, but even as an Irish-Canadian woman my experience cannot be called trauma. There is no real ‘post’ in subaltern studies. People continue to suffer the ravages of the European legacy of expansion. I have no answer to bell’s question; just a rather shamefaced and pathetic shrug is all I can come up with. Perhaps my experience as a privileged expat at local public schools in West Africa urges me to make some sense of it all.
One incident in particular that occurred at school when I was about eight or nine haunts me. Hassana, a Fulani girl and I were sent to the principal, Mrs. Jarma, to receive punishment for running around a public swimming pool. Hassana was beaten with a ruler and emerged from the office with a huge gash on her upper arm. When it was my turn to be dealt with, Mrs. Jarma spoke to me harshly and sent me on my way. Writing this makes me very aware that the story is mine in every sense of the word: my world, my words, Hassana’s lack of space, her quiet sobbing . . .
Yes, whiteness informs my perspective, so how can I write about/for the multitudinous Other without taking their space? Maybe our only option is to write/read, film/watch, sing/listen with or alongside one another.
Another point hooks makes is that films such as Paris Is Burning often make spectacle out of ritualized play and commodify blackness. Her point brings to mind the traditional Sunday night documentary (the objective ethnographer’s gaze) in which empowering forms of self-expression, such as theatre depicting slavery in the Ivory Coast, become exotic entertainment for North Americans.
The appropriation of dominant discourse to articulate social and cultural identities is one way of resisting oppression and dismantling cultural essentialism; however, there is a need for global institutions of higher learning to open themselves up to indigenous texts, films, music, etc… Perhaps this way the sexist/racist ideas, for example, that black men are hyper-masculine, that whiteness personifies the idea of femininity, that gay men are feminine will give way to the possibility that there are many ways of being in the world.
Rejoicing the Crisis in the Name
Rejoicing the Crisis in the Name
Judith Butler’s notion that language is performative and therefore can be used as a tool to subvert dominant discourse is very appealing. For Butler, gender and race are social constructs that can be deconstructed through the ‘slippage’ or the failure of the performative, which opens a space of resistance for the marginalized. She cites Spivak’s “enabling violation” to explain how agency can be realized from within the conditions of oppression. The repetition of hegemonic terms can “reverse and displace their originating aims.”
The iterability of the terms of subjectivation creates a space of ambivalence that allows the other to rework them (Derrida anyone?). Butler claims that heterosexuality as the normative ideal seeks to both naturalize itself and render itself original so homosexuality becomes a product of repudiated heterosexual love. However, Butler insists that when a drag queen imitates the ideal woman it becomes clear that the ideal does not exist. No performance of sexual norms can reach this ideal, and the resulting gap between the ideal and reality opens up an ambivalent space from which other voices can speak and be heard. The drag performance then can create agency as the “Queen will out-woman women.” (I really like this!) In this way, the fetishization of the feminine ideal can bring about a symbolic crisis which will in turn effect a crisis in the morphological stability of the name ‘woman’, or ‘man’.
In other words, the language of oppression can be used against itself, so to speak, to reveal that terms overtly fixed in meaning are inherently ambiguous. And if this is so, they no longer refer to their original referent. In this way, through the reworked terms imposed identities are exchanged for space to construct new ones.
Butler’s text reminds me of the old films in which Carmen Miranda sings with a pineapple? on her head. She represents the quintessential Latina: loud, colorful, exotically over the top. She is so ridiculous that her parody of the stereotypical Latin American female proves the fallacy of the myth. The Irish Spring soap ads do the same regarding the ideal man.
Any problems?
I think that some may question using the language of oppression to resist its power. There may be the danger that this will only strengthen the performativity of language that has traumatized generations of people living in the interstices of society. They might call for the invention of a new language to remove the shackles of the old. However, Butler claims that the “I” cannot extract itself from the history that created it and gains agency from the power relations it hopes to undermine.
Who Can Speak for Whom?
When bell hooks asks if we can imagine a black woman lesbian making a film about white gay subculture, I find it very difficult to justify my pursuit of an MA in post-colonial studies. I mean, who am I to comment on the experience of the colonial subject? I write about trauma at the hands of European hegemony, but even as an Irish-Canadian woman my experience cannot be called trauma. There is no real ‘post’ in subaltern studies. People continue to suffer the ravages of the European legacy of expansion. I have no answer to bell’s question; just a rather shamefaced and pathetic shrug is all I can come up with. Perhaps my experience as a privileged expat at local public schools in West Africa urges me to make some sense of it all.
One incident in particular that occurred at school when I was about eight or nine haunts me. Hassana, a Fulani girl and I were sent to the principal, Mrs. Jarma, to receive punishment for running around a public swimming pool. Hassana was beaten with a ruler and emerged from the office with a huge gash on her upper arm. When it was my turn to be dealt with, Mrs. Jarma spoke to me harshly and sent me on my way. Writing this makes me very aware that the story is mine in every sense of the word: my world, my words, Hassana’s lack of space, her quiet sobbing . . .
Yes, whiteness informs my perspective, so how can I write about/for the multitudinous Other without taking their space? Maybe our only option is to write/read, film/watch, sing/listen with or alongside one another.
Another point hooks makes is that films such as Paris Is Burning often make spectacle out of ritualized play and commodify blackness. Her point brings to mind the traditional Sunday night documentary (the objective ethnographer’s gaze) in which empowering forms of self-expression, such as theatre depicting slavery in the Ivory Coast, become exotic entertainment for North Americans.
The appropriation of dominant discourse to articulate social and cultural identities is one way of resisting oppression and dismantling cultural essentialism; however, there is a need for global institutions of higher learning to open themselves up to indigenous texts, films, music, etc… Perhaps this way the sexist/racist ideas, for example, that black men are hyper-masculine, that whiteness personifies the idea of femininity, that gay men are feminine will give way to the possibility that there are many ways of being in the world.
The House of hooks
I felt a little peeved at hooks this time around. I wonder if the problem is that we have both aged.
How vogue and gays are seen has evolved since the early 90s. Not that there are no remnants of former eras. It is a characteristic of the postmodern world that the layers of history overlap and come to life confusingly in the same context. (To give a simplistic but concrete example: in our classrooms chalk boards, white boards, and data projectors will coexist; some students will use pen and paper, others a computer, others a phone — to photograph notes on the chalk board.) The important issues for gays or blacks have changed, as far as I can tell. There is gay marriage, gays in the military. In the schools, there is gay awareness. There is a US black president. Again, that does not signal the end to all the issues that have plagued blacks and gays since the Ark, but haven’t things changed?
So hooks comes across as a bit too preachy for this 21st century. And even in the film, there was the feeling that whatever was unique about that culture would soon disappear. The film was indeed ethnographic: the record of a dying ritual. I would think both viewers and participants appreciate that rather then condemn it as hooks does.
Many of hook’s arguments seem mean-spirited and wrong-headed. She says that the film should have focused on Venus’s death. That “her death was upstaged by spectacle” (155). Had Livingstone insisted any more than she did, she would have transformed that death into a spectacle. I don’t see how it could have been handled better than filming a friend’s memories of Venus.
On the whole, hooks as social critic remains unconvincing. (I see I am taking on the tone of a movie reviewer — that was the tone I got from hooks.) She doesn’t take any theoretical position that is more than “we live in a white patriarchy”.
Wherever she does try to anchor her thoughts in a larger discourse I see nothing but gaps in her presentation. For example, she evokes Patricia Williams’s critique of white tourists in Harlem who are offered a trip to a black church service. Quite rightly, she and Williams see that visit to a church as voyeuristic. (Though I do note that in Richmond religious groups on the “Highway to Heaven” are famous for welcoming tourists to their temple, mosque, church, etc.) But the visit itself to Harlem, is it not just as voyeuristic? And therefore is not all tourism and travel of the same nature? And without tourism of some sort, and without ethnography of some sort, without witnessing and thinking about other cultures and practices, however awkward and biased, are we ever likely to understand those who are not like us?
I suppose that is my main criticism of hooks; she seems to undermine the values she overtly supports.
Impressions of “Gender is Burning” by Butler
Ambivalence in gender definition or identification is an important concept in Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion by Judith Butler.
To Butler, the drag phenomenon, such as portrayed in the movie Paris is Burning, embeds subversion as well as appropriation. By posing as women, drag performers in some way ridicule women and show the superiority of their gender; an argument that is also advanced by Bell Hooks. Hence, this culture contributes to the subversion and undermining of the female gender. Moreover, with such flamboyant costumes and performances, these masquarading males reinvent – lose? – their identity and contribute to the « creation of a culture which appears to arrange always and in every way for the annihilation of queer» (124). By hiding themselves behind masks and creating alter egos, these males annihilate their real identity as gay men. Therefore, not only do they contribute to the subversion of the female gender, they also contribute to the subversion of their own community.
However, one could argue that this transformation in drag is the moment when the real personnality and identity of these men come out, a situation in which their individuality can truly take shape. In such circumstances, drag performers «denaturalize» and «reidealize» gender norms. In this way, they appropriate norms that come from the dominant heterosexual class and make them their own to create and build their own unique identities. Through this phenomenon of reappropriation, gay males can travestite themselves, become what is called shemales (i.e, transgendered males who conserve their male genital parts), and pass as women in everyday life. (It is worth noting here that transgender is not linked to homosexuality and is therefore independent of sexual orientation.) To some people, this reappropriation of the opposite biological gender will lead to the acceptation of their own person as they feel they were born in the wrong body. The surrounding society, however, may see such behavior as a fraud and will find that the social gender conventions are broken and that social stability is in danger. Venus Xtravaganza (appearing in Paris is Burning) paid with her life for this social unacceptability.
Finally, another interesting point brought forward by Butler, is about the origin of homosexual love. To some, homosexuality finds its source from bad experiences, failure at heterosexual love. Therefore, homosexual love finds its source in a «logic of repudiation», «the effect of a love embittered by disappointment or rejection» (127-128). But Butler, with reason, questions the idea that «pleasure, desire and love […] is […] solely determined by what is repudiated» (128). Why is it that heterosexual love has to be the norm from which homosexual love is compared?
Gender Is Burning–Judith Butler
First, from the example of Althusser’s interpellation,we know subjects could be attained a certain order of social existence because of the force of the law, an indifferent being could be transferred to the discursive or social domain. Butler argues there persists a relation of misrecognition between the law and the subject it compels and the distance or slippage between discursive command and appropriated effect. Butler believes every subject is kind of ambivalent, so there exists a possibility of subversion. That’s why Butler believes there are possibilities for the resignification of sex.
Butler analyzed Is Paris Burning of hooks on the basis of the documentary film. Butler thought a sense of defeat and a sense of insurrection coexist in the drag pageantry in. hooks raised the question whether the cultural location of the filmmaker is absent from the film, Butler thinks neither Livingston nor hooks considers the place and force of ethnicity in the articulation of kinship relations. Camera is empowered as phallic instrument to help arise transsexualization and transubstantiation, Livingston is the one who controls the camera, she has the power and ability to help those balck gay men become women. Butler said hooks questioned the validity of this film, because we don’t even know the real life of those queer people in the film, they seem no connection to the world out of drag houses. Anyway, this is a film shaped from a perspective and standpoint specific to Livingston, she decided what scenes to be filmed. Butler agrees with hooks that there is always a unmarked white gaze in the film. Butler found hooks neglected those light-skinned people in the film, not only those black gay people have an aspiration of transubstantiation into an idealized femininity and the status of whiteness.
Butler thought Paris Is Burning expressed a cultural reelaboration of kinship, the ball and the houses are a set of kinship relations, a social and discursive building of community. The resignification of the family by the reiterations of those terms “mother” and ”house” and an appropriation of dominant norms represents and realizes the kinship relations between those people in the “marginalized cultural” background in Paris Is Burning.
Butler deemed there is no necessary relation between drag and subversion, even though drag ball seems like a way of subversive behavior, the drag itself is a site of a certain ambivalence, a site of idealized identification as well. In the film, the denaturalization of gender and race has been realized, the differentiation between different genders and races has disappeared. Heterosexuality still plays a dominant role in their inner center, it’s the “cause” of lesbian desire, their expressions and behaviors of homosexuality come from the abjection and failure—a mask of heterosexuality, which is ambivalent itself. Different from the viewpoint of hooks, Butler places emphasis on the authenticity and possibility of the transsexualization of those people in the film. As to Butler, their identity is not determined by their physiological attributes, there are norms governing the intelligibility of sex, their conscious, the drag all give us the hint their gender is not easy to be defined. The drag has a force of symbolic reiterations, like the example of “name” or the “I”, it seems they change the way we see ourselves. But I have reservations about this opinion, I believe the objective fact–the body is undoubtably the determinant of who we are, our gender won’t be materialized by the dress nor the temperament, and the gender is always stable.
Gender Is Burning–Judith Butler
First, from the example of Althusser’s interpellation,we know subjects could be attained a certain order of social existence because of the force of the law, an indifferent being could be transferred to the discursive or social domain. Butler argues there persists a relation of misrecognition between the law and the subject it compels and the distance or slippage between discursive command and appropriated effect. Butler believes every subject is kind of ambivalent, so there exists a possibility of subversion. That’s why Butler believes there are possibilities for the resignification of sex.
Butler analyzed Is Paris Burning of hooks on the basis of the documentary film. Butler thought a sense of defeat and a sense of insurrection coexist in the drag pageantry in. hooks raised the question whether the cultural location of the filmmaker is absent from the film, Butler thinks neither Livingston nor hooks considers the place and force of ethnicity in the articulation of kinship relations. Camera is empowered as phallic instrument to help arise transsexualization and transubstantiation, Livingston is the one who controls the camera, she has the power and ability to help those balck gay men become women. Butler said hooks questioned the validity of this film, because we don’t even know the real life of those queer people in the film, they seem no connection to the world out of drag houses. Anyway, this is a film shaped from a perspective and standpoint specific to Livingston, she decided what scenes to be filmed. Butler agrees with hooks that there is always a unmarked white gaze in the film. Butler found hooks neglected those light-skinned people in the film, not only those black gay people have an aspiration of transubstantiation into an idealized femininity and the status of whiteness.
Butler thought Paris Is Burning expressed a cultural reelaboration of kinship, the ball and the houses are a set of kinship relations, a social and discursive building of community. The resignification of the family by the reiterations of those terms “mother” and ”house” and an appropriation of dominant norms represents and realizes the kinship relations between those people in the “marginalized cultural” background in Paris Is Burning.
Butler deemed there is no necessary relation between drag and subversion, even though drag ball seems like a way of subversive behavior, the drag itself is a site of a certain ambivalence, a site of idealized identification as well. In the film, the denaturalization of gender and race has been realized, the differentiation between different genders and races has disappeared. Heterosexuality still plays a dominant role in their inner center, it’s the “cause” of lesbian desire, their expressions and behaviors of homosexuality come from the abjection and failure—a mask of heterosexuality, which is ambivalent itself. Different from the viewpoint of hooks, Butler places emphasis on the authenticity and possibility of the transsexualization of those people in the film. As to Butler, their identity is not determined by their physiological attributes, there are norms governing the intelligibility of sex, their conscious, the drag all give us the hint their gender is not easy to be defined. The drag has a force of symbolic reiterations, like the example of “name” or the “I”, it seems they change the way we see ourselves. But I have reservations about this opinion, I believe the objective fact–the body is undoubtably the determinant of who we are, our gender won’t be materialized by the dress nor the temperament, and the gender is always stable.
Is Paris Burning?–bell hooks
As one of the most influential cultural works, Paris Is Burning chronicles the ball culture of New York City at the time – the flamboyant gay and trans-gendered party scene peopled largely by young, poor and dispossessed blacks and Latinos. In the pursuit of fun and escapism, it seems like every race or minority group has its ethnicity and a sense of pride. Indeed, this film also involves serious issues and pressures about race, class, gender and poverty in contemporary America, they are both progressive and reactionary, it is also the topic we should notice today.
Sexism should be the first step to deal with racism. The proposition of feminism has a wide range, it’s comprehensive—not only genders, but also race, religion, ethnics, etc. After thousands years of patriarchy, people are afraid that matriarchy would replace patriarchy, they criticize and hold opposite opinions on feminism, that’s because they do not understand feminism at all. Feminism does not mean a gender dominate the other, the ultimate goal of the feminist is peaceful gender coexistence. The reason why a lot of people consider themselves as “feminists” is nothing more than the anger of gender discrimination, or for reasons of their own gender, their interests are jeopardized, this is quite a natural thing, because anger is an instinctive reaction, but the anger does not mean that you are a feminist. In my opinion, because of certain physiological vulnerability, it is difficult for female to overcome male in many areas, female leaders are always in the minority. What I’ve said is a longstanding phenomenon, on this basis, we’d better make a change. Feminists advocate women should have economic independence, substantial mind, sexual autonomy, etc., gender and right equality is the main purpose. As to bell hooks, that’s not enough. We can find bell hooks is a special feminist because she doesn’t even want any capitals in her name, it’s a way to express her essential connection with female ancestors.
When watching the film 《Paris is burning》 in the cinema, she could always feel the sorrow and pain in dramatic scenes which seemed “entertaining”, while white folks in the audience take pride in their way of life of ruling-class patriarchal white culture. She argues Livingston does not have a universal and profound recognition about black gay subculture in the white supremacist, or she would rather not demonstrate her cultural standpoint or talk about her real opinion on this phenomenon, her comments and interview do not convey any serious thought about either the political or aesthetic implications of her film. hooks deems appearing black gay men in drag or transsexualism is a symbol of powerlessness, black men are not allowed full access to patriarchal power, so they show their misogynist masculinity through the contempt for the black female and black gay men, they even help sustain sexism and racism in the society, the ritual and pageant of the entertaining dramatic display show their willingness to approach white culture, although in the cultural backdrop of sexual equality, she takes it as an experience as retrograde. She also thinks this movie implies black people have a sense of worship at the throne of whiteness, the obsession of black men with an idealized vision of femininity is totally personified by whiteness.
Is the femininity most adored should be the exclusive property of white womanhood? Then what should black female do? Meekly accept and bear humiliations? bell hooks thinks the feminist movement is radical, “consciousness-raising” is the first step towards feminism, we must have a profound reflection on “sexism”, even if some consciousness, the lack of criticism of patriarchy makes it still very difficult to talk about substantial progress. Everyone should break through illusions, confront reality and enhance his capacity to live more fully in a world beyond fantasy.
Is Paris Burning?–bell hooks
As one of the most influential cultural works, Paris Is Burning chronicles the ball culture of New York City at the time – the flamboyant gay and trans-gendered party scene peopled largely by young, poor and dispossessed blacks and Latinos. In the pursuit of fun and escapism, it seems like every race or minority group has its ethnicity and a sense of pride. Indeed, this film also involves serious issues and pressures about race, class, gender and poverty in contemporary America, they are both progressive and reactionary, it is also the topic we should notice today.
Sexism should be the first step to deal with racism. The proposition of feminism has a wide range, it’s comprehensive—not only genders, but also race, religion, ethnics, etc. After thousands years of patriarchy, people are afraid that matriarchy would replace patriarchy, they criticize and hold opposite opinions on feminism, that’s because they do not understand feminism at all. Feminism does not mean a gender dominate the other, the ultimate goal of the feminist is peaceful gender coexistence. The reason why a lot of people consider themselves as “feminists” is nothing more than the anger of gender discrimination, or for reasons of their own gender, their interests are jeopardized, this is quite a natural thing, because anger is an instinctive reaction, but the anger does not mean that you are a feminist. In my opinion, because of certain physiological vulnerability, it is difficult for female to overcome male in many areas, female leaders are always in the minority. What I’ve said is a longstanding phenomenon, on this basis, we’d better make a change. Feminists advocate women should have economic independence, substantial mind, sexual autonomy, etc., gender and right equality is the main purpose. As to bell hooks, that’s not enough. We can find bell hooks is a special feminist because she doesn’t even want any capitals in her name, it’s a way to express her essential connection with female ancestors.
When watching the film 《Paris is burning》 in the cinema, she could always feel the sorrow and pain in dramatic scenes which seemed “entertaining”, while white folks in the audience take pride in their way of life of ruling-class patriarchal white culture. She argues Livingston does not have a universal and profound recognition about black gay subculture in the white supremacist, or she would rather not demonstrate her cultural standpoint or talk about her real opinion on this phenomenon, her comments and interview do not convey any serious thought about either the political or aesthetic implications of her film. hooks deems appearing black gay men in drag or transsexualism is a symbol of powerlessness, black men are not allowed full access to patriarchal power, so they show their misogynist masculinity through the contempt for the black female and black gay men, they even help sustain sexism and racism in the society, the ritual and pageant of the entertaining dramatic display show their willingness to approach white culture, although in the cultural backdrop of sexual equality, she takes it as an experience as retrograde. She also thinks this movie implies black people have a sense of worship at the throne of whiteness, the obsession of black men with an idealized vision of femininity is totally personified by whiteness.
Is the femininity most adored should be the exclusive property of white womanhood? Then what should black female do? Meekly accept and bear humiliations? bell hooks thinks the feminist movement is radical, “consciousness-raising” is the first step towards feminism, we must have a profound reflection on “sexism”, even if some consciousness, the lack of criticism of patriarchy makes it still very difficult to talk about substantial progress. Everyone should break through illusions, confront reality and enhance his capacity to live more fully in a world beyond fantasy.
Paris is Burning- bell hooks and Judith Butler
Is Paris Burning? – bell hooks
In Is Paris Burning? bell hooks harshly criticizes the documentary Paris is Burning as she perceives it creates a sensation of spectacle around a matter she considers as serious and worrisome. First, hooks seems to fixate on this idea of drag as ridiculing women and perpetuating a fetishistic view of white women as a primary object of what-beauty-is. She also has the impression that men in drag cross over from a sphere of power to powerlessness as they assume the roles of women. It seems, at first, that her problem doesn’t lie with men in drag per se, but the idea of black men in drag reaffirming patriarchal/colonialist views of black men as disempowered and feminine trying to portray themselves as white women. However, these ideas are just the stemming point of an essay that as it progressed seemed to divert a lot from the initial theoretical approach into the realm of personal perception and experience. The main thing that bothers hooks throughout the essay is the fact that the ball is the central point of the documentary and not the social struggles of the subjects presented in it (the film is called Paris is Burning because that is the name of one the most important drag balls in New York, so hooks should’ve suspected the principal aim of the documentary) and the fact that the filmmaker is Jennie Livingston a white lesbian woman with a very privileged background; an outsider.
hooks focuses on how the condition of privilege of Jennie Livingston as a white woman shaped the documentary into some sort of a mockery of the lives of these specific groups of drag queens, homosexuals and transgender individuals in New York. She argued that in order for Livingstone to maintain her status of “innocent observer” she purposely avoided deepening into the conditions of oppression and marginalization in which these individuals exist in great extent due to white supremacy and avoided also any other reference outside their marginalized lives like their families or background to concentrate mainly on the balls turning these people into objects of a spectacle instead of victims of a certain kind of society.
I agree with hooks that more personal approach to the individuals in the documentary could’ve enormously enriched the final product however one might have to accept that that was not the goal of the filmmaker. Furthermore, I believe that hooks position is also of an outsider in the sense that even though she feels more in touch with the situation because she is a black person she is also considerably privileged in front of those portrayed in the documentary and very far from understanding the experience of a drag queen or a transgender. So, as right as she may be when she says that the documentary was being shaped by a white, lesbian woman who absents herself but still controls what is shared, that is also true for her a black, straight woman who wishes she could’ve controlled what was shown.
Paris is Burning is indeed a subjective view of this certain group of people in New York. But how can one avoid subjectivity when there are constraints of time and space and a million other personal factors that shape the way we portray things? Wasn’t hooks as influenced by her racial condition when watching the documentary as Livingston while making it? What would’ve been an objective and neutral way of portraying the situation?
Gender is Burning-Judith Butler
While bell hooks focused most of her attention in Is Paris Burning? on race and the position of disadvantage in which the subject of the documentary lived in, Judith Butler did so on gender, sex and sexuality introducing a more complicating reading of the documentary and its implications.
Gender is burning: questions and appropriation and subversion was not an easy text for me to approach. This was however, my first encounter with gender theory so I am not familiar with a lot of the terminology and the ideas this text presented so I’m choosing to believe that reason why I felt little bit lost while reading it. That said I would like to recover some of the aspects that caught my attention:
- The idea of drag being a way subversive behavior that questions the “originality and naturalness” of heterosexual behavior but at the same time as it is portrayed in the film it continues to perpetuate the need for a heterosexual society to marginalize a behavior that it perceives as dangerous to the status quo.
- The drag queens of the film at the same time that they subvert against racist, misogynist, and homophobic forms of oppression they also appropriate them with the risk of turning into an unsubversive type of appropriation. This happens in the extent that the appropriation causes a re-idealization of the oppressive conduct.
- According to Butler most of the expectations of the girls in the film and many of the categories of the balls were more related to class than to race so she finds it fit to present gender as the “phantasmatic” (symbolic?) transformation of the nexus between class and gender.
- In contrast to hooks, for Butler the goal of the subjects in the documentary is not to achieve whiteness but to achieve realness as a woman, a model, a dancer, a student or any of the other categories in the ball that are symbolic to “real life”.
- Heterosexual behavior is based on social symbolic and ever changing practices. Butler is presenting heterosexuality as ambivalent as any other “marginalized” gender or sexual practice.
- Finally, for hooks the role of the filmmaker is leading in terms of how the film is perceived. The filmmaker being a white, lesbian, Ivy League woman is an almost perfect representative of what hooks considers an oppressive figure. How does this relate to the phallic representation that Butler gives to the camera/filmmaker? Could phallic and white be interpreted similarly?
