The Bechdel Cast - Paris is Burning with DoctorJonPaul

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

House of Bechdel Cast presents an episode on Paris Is Burning with special guest DoctorJonPaul! Here is Jon's piece on the movie: https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/06/paris-is-burning-rerelease-controversy-legacy.html / here is more information about the Dorian Corey story: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-famous-drag-queen-a-mummy-in-the-closet-and-a-baffling-mystery / here's the Hollywood Reporter piece on Junior LaBeija: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/paris-is-burning-emcee-junior-labeija-pose-rupaul-1234964404/ Follow Jon on social media at @doctorjonpaul and check out Jon's website & preorder their book at doctorjonpaul.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, I'm David Borey. And I'm his grandson, Langston Kerman. And we host My Mama Told Me, a podcast about black conspiracy theory. And we're here to tell you that we have our boy, Lamorne Morris, on the podcast this week. You will not want to miss out on hilarious moments like these. I'm the same guy who believes in lizard people. So I don't really care. Oh, we should have started with that.

I look at all this like this. I go, ah! Catch Lamorne Morris on My Mama Told Me with Langston Kerman and David Borey on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey y'all, I'm Maria Fernanda Diaz. When You're Invisible is my love letter to the working class people and immigrants who shaped me. Season two shares stories about community

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Hi, I'm Arturo Castro, and I've been lucky enough to do stuff like Broad City and Narcos and Roadhouse. And now I'm starting a podcast because honestly, guys, I don't feel the space is crowded enough. Get ready for Greatest Escapes, a new comedy podcast about the wildest true escape stories in history. Each week I'll be sitting down with some of the most hilarious actors and writers and comedians people like Ed Helms, Diane Guerrero, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I love storytelling and I love you, so I can't wait. Listen and subscribe to Greatest Escapes on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. On the Bechdel cast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effin vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Hello and welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Caitlin Durante. My name is Jamie Loftus and this is our podcast where we talk about your favorite movies using an intersectional feminist lens starting with the Bechdel test. Caitlin, what's that?

Well it's a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace Test, as it was co-created with Liz Wallace. It is a media metric that has many permutations. Ours is, do two characters of a marginalized gender have names, do they speak to each other, and is there conversation about something other than a man and we particularly like it when it's a narratively relevant conversation or just something significant and not just like hi How's the weather or whatever?

And today's a very special episode. It's one of a handful of documentaries that we've covered on this show before but it just if you if you've seen this documentary it begs to be talked about there is no shortage of story and if you haven't seen it it's streaming in so many places get it together. The documentary of course being Paris is Burning from 1990 directed by Jenny Livingston. It is, yeah, widely accessible, it's iconic. And we have a wonderful guest here with us to talk about it.

They are an award-winning creator, writer, author. They are co-host of BFF, Black Fat Femme podcast. Their book, Black Fat Fam, Revealing the Power of Visibly Queer Voices in Media and Learning to Love Yourself comes out March 25th. It's John. Yay. Welcome.

Welcome. Hey everybody, how you doing? We're great. Happy almost release. Yeah, you know, wait, oh my God, there's like 31, with 32 more days left. Yeah, it's like almost exactly a month. No, it's sooner because it's February. That part, yeah, you know what, there aren't that many,

yeah, so it is a little bit sooner. So it's somewhere around like the 29, 30 days or something like that. But yeah, you know, I'm a little excited, a little nervous, but I will say this, I sent it to my mom and she, she, my mom, she reads very quickly and she called me one day and she was like, I'm on page 107. And I just want to say, I'm very proud of you. And I was like, thanks mom. So yeah. So I'm very much in the mind of like, I'm happy that it landed with her. I was worried for a moment, but it landed so. That's so beautiful. I sent my dad my first draft of my book

and the response was a little muted. He was like, you know, Jamie, I really like what you're going for here. There are some grammar mistakes, would you like me to send them to you in a document? And I was like, yeah, I guess so. And then like six months later, he was like, by the way, I enjoyed it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So cool. Love that. Well, tell us more about your book, John. Yeah, so quickly. You know, one of the things that I had, I've always been very vigilant about is the idea of how black and specifically black queer voices are either not uplifted or celebrated in media.

And that's kind of what I've built my old platform one, right? How do I continue to uplift the voices of those who often don't have the mic? And so I like to tell people that I started this book back, and this is also just a testament to how long it can take to write a book. I started, I went to a Lambda literary retreat back in 2017,

started playing with the idea of writing a book. I started, I went to a Lambda Literary retreat back in 2017, started playing with the idea of writing a book there and it just kind of set in my Google drafts forever. And then the pandemic came and all my friends wrote books and everyone got one, you know, everyone got one in or even got two in. And I was just still kind of like, no, no, no, no, I don't think I could do it. And then I just got to a point, you ended up happening was I was playing with it, going back and forth with different agents. And then in 2023-ish, or 2024 actually, I went to Sundance and I saw the Luther documentary.

And I tell everybody that that was kind of like the catalyst of me wanting to be like, oh God, I know what I'm writing. I saw the documentary, I saw the way that they danced around his queerness, how they didn't talk about his queerness but also how they did. And I said, you know, there's gotta be a way for us

to kind of celebrate, you know, like even just looking at Luther and looking at Luther's story, I went back into my own memories about how I thought about queerness from the lens of how my family talked about Luther and that's kind of how I opened the book. I talk about the idea of how people, what they said and what they didn't say about Luther and what that said to me as a young queer kid in Southern California. And so I basically get to a point where I start talking about this idea of how I literally had to figure out how to find myself through media,

like writing about Luther and his experience and what I got from that, it really helped me understand how I found myself through media. And so that's really what the book is. I talk about Luther and again, it's not about his sexuality per se. It's about all the things I was afraid to delve into because of how my family talked about Luther. And then my first time meeting Andre Leon Talley on the show America's Next Top Model, Miss J, Derek J, Miss Lawrence, all of these black queer figures I'm seeing in television

and what that's telling me about my own identity and how I'm learning through them to find myself. So it's a lot of, there's also moments I talk about what happened to me in college, I talk about fat phobia, I talk about the idea of how much we live, how the 2000s lied to us. I talk very, very, very vocally about how much the 2000s was, it was shit.

It was awful. The 2000s was terrible. I mean, it's just such a period of absurd regression. It's wild to look back on lucky us. Yeah. And so I talk about that, like how 2000 shaped my, you know, body dysmorphia and you know, all the things I was doing to try to lose weight while I was in college to keep up with the other

queer kids I was running in groups with and just really this this overall kind of like, how did I get to this place? You know, I get asked that a lot. How do you how are you so confident how are you so happy and who you are like a lot of therapy and a lot of writing so that's really what it is but yeah that's pretty much my book is in a nutshell it's just kind of an ode and a celebration of those who came before us and those who are still here because I know that no one else is gonna give them their flowers and so

ultimately I thought why not why not me not? I do that. So why not? That's amazing. I can't wait to read it. And it's also a component of the documentary we'll be discussing is kind of an examination of how media influences the participants of the ballroom scene and how they emulate certain people or certain TV shows or stars or you know all that kind of stuff so that'll be fun to dive into. And there's also so much of like the legacy of Paris is Burning that there's which I that was the thing I was not familiar with going in is like the years-long legacy that this movie has had positive negative everything in between. Yeah.

So John, what's your relationship slash history with this documentary? Yeah, so it was one of the documentaries. So I'll say this. I did not know really anything. Again, obviously, I tell people if you go out and get my book, I talk very openly about how I grew up in a cult. And so I do believe that Jehovah Witness, Jehovah's Witnesses are cults.

They are part of the cult sect. And so growing up in the cult, you know, I was very, very, what's the word, not even protected but I was scared to indulge anything that had queer content. And so I didn't really get to Paris is Burning until probably 2004. And so this is a time where, I know about ballroom, NIS, right? I know about it, but I don't know it per se, right? And so in 2004, I'm in college,

I take an art of film class and that was one of, Aaron Race, May He Rest In Peace, he was one of, I wouldn't say he rest may he rest in peace. He was one of I'm gonna say he was my favorite instructor but I really appreciated the way he did his class. He did his class and you so it was an art of film and I was very much into writing at the time and he basically had posited you know this is what a good you know a good drama is this is what a good comedy is and this is what a good documentary is and so Paris is Burning was the documentary that he posited for that class. We watched it in

class. It was a summer class and so the summer classes were hell long. If anybody's ever taken a summer class out of college, you know you're in class for like six hours. And so we watched the film for two hours and then we worked in groups and we had to dissect what made the documentary great. And that was my first, you know, entrance into that film. And I think what I really loved about the film was that it was giving so many people, specifically trans women or non-binary people, it was giving them airtime. Like they had a voice and I had never seen anyone who looked like,

you know, Peppa LaBeija or anyone who looked like, you know, Willy Ninja or anything like that. And so it just felt like I was like, oh my God, these are my people. Even though this film was made almost 15 years ago, you know, I still feel like I found my home, right? And so it was just, it was a very awakening. I feel like the film really awakens something in me

in regards to not only narrative storytelling, but it also awakened kind of this notion of like wow, this is a subculture You know in a subculture that I feel like I have some type of home in if that makes sense. Yeah Yeah Jamie, what's your history with the documentary? I saw this documentary in high school in I think it was from my music teacher. She also like did the dance stuff in our like plays and stuff and so she would just kind of show us whatever she felt like and so she showed

us Paris is Burning. I want to say I was in like 10th or 11th grade and I hadn't revisited since but it was I'm very glad I sawth grade. And I hadn't revisited since, but it was, I'm very glad I saw it as young as I did. So thanks, Miss Bellani. Shout out to her. But I mean, I just remember being in this big class full of teenagers that, you know, it was whatever the late 2000s.

So some kids were total assholes, but most everyone was like really, really, really pulled in. I had never seen a documentary like it before. I think at that point, perhaps tragically, the closest I was familiar with was like the Madonna Vogue music video that I was like obsessed with anytime like my mom would turn it on for me,

which I, you know, is an element of this very complicated conversation around ballroom culture and how white celebrities have sort of co-opted it over the years. But when I saw Paris is burning, I was like, oh, this is what this is. This is what she saw and was like, I wanna present this in my, whatever, Madonna way. But yeah, I was really, you know, I want to present this in my whatever Madonna way. But yeah, I was really taken with it, particularly, obviously, I mean, we'll

talk about everyone in the in the film, but particularly Venus. And yeah, I don't know, I just I was really taken by it and I hadn't revisited it in years. And I had just rewatched it anyways because I've been working on a project about, this feels weirdly tangential, but drag in comedy because I interviewed that, do you remember the YouTube video with Kelly Shoes? Shoes, yes. Oh my God, shoes.

Oh my God, shoes, yes, yes, yes. So I was doing just like some background on drag and the history of drag because I interviewed Liam Kyle Sullivan who plays Kelly. And I just read a book that I would highly recommend called Decolonize Drag by Kareem Kupchan-Dani that I think came out a couple of years ago. So I don't know, I mean, it's Paris is Burning,

I know it's just like a huge touchstone for a lot of people. And it was definitely my first gateway into, you know, seeing this world and also like revisiting it. I was so happy to see again, just how inclusive the world of this documentary is and how, I mean, like you're saying, John, how, you know, on you're saying, John, how on Drag Race, trans people weren't allowed

to compete for years and years in this really restrictive way. And again, like Paris is Burning is the real deal. It is a full community and it's just, it's beautiful. So it was really fun to revisit. Caitlin, what is your history with this film? I saw it during the great Caitlin movie binge of 2004 slash 2005. Okay.

Yes, I was a, it was like during my freshman slash sophomore year in college and I was a film student and I realized how few movies I'd actually seen. I went into film school being like I'm a scholar already I don't even know why I'm here I already know everything about movies. I've seen Indiana Jones one two and three. You're thinking I'm better than anyone in this classroom because I know things. I know film. And it turns out I didn't know shit.

So I started compiling just like a list of all the movies I felt like I needed to watch. And I was getting all the Netflix DVDs back when that was still a thing. What a time. What a time. I got three at a time. Three DVDs at a time. You had the premium. Okay, you had some money. So I was cycling through those

and Paris Is Burning is one of the ones I watched and it was probably my first exposure to actually seeing a trans person on screen who was not a like cis actor playing a trans person. Because for some reason I was like really attached to the movie Boys Don't Cry in high school. I watched it many, many times, but of course that is an example

of a cis actor playing a trans character slash trans real-life person. So I think yeah seeing this documentary was probably if not the first one of the very first times I saw an actual trans person on screen and I learned a lot and I enjoyed the documentary very much but like you Jamie I hadn't revisited it in many many years so I was very excited to dive back in and revisited it and there's so much to talk about it's really interesting to see the ways in which like things discussed in the documentary are still very relevant. And also some of the ways in which things feel quite dated by our standards today. So lots to discuss excited to get into it. Before we do, let's take a quick break and then we'll

come back for the recap. of people are gonna attack me, why are you gonna go visit your dad, your mom wouldn't be okay with it. I'm gonna tell you guys right now, I know my mother. And I know my mom had a very forgiving heart. That is my story on plastic surgery. This is my truth. I think the last time I cried like that was when I lost my mom. Like that, like yelling. I was like, no. I was like, oh, and I thought, what did I do wrong?

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Listen to Krems as part of the Michael Lura Podcast Network, available on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Arturo Castro, and I've been lucky enough to do stuff like Broad City and Narcos and Roadhouse and so many commercials about back pain. And now I'm starting a podcast because honestly, guys, I don't feel the space is crowded enough. Get Ready for Greatest Escapes, a new comedy podcast about the wildest true escape stories in history. Each week I'll be sitting down with some of the most hilarious actors and writers and comedians to tell them a buckwild tale from across history and time. People like Ed Helms, Diane Guerrero, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Zoe Chow.

Titanic. Charles Manson. Alcatraz. Sarah Shacor. The sketchy guy named Steve. It's giving funny true crime. I love storytelling and I love you, so I can't wait. Listen and subscribe to Greatest Escapes on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Okay, so here's the recap of Paris is Burning. It's a little tricky to do a recap for a documentary because it doesn't follow, you know, a standard narrative three act structure. But I think I did a pretty swell job here. But feel free to jump in and fill in any blanks. But this is of course a documentary about the ballroom scene in New York City, specifically Harlem in 1987. Ballroom, of course, referring to a subculture of the LGBTQ plus community Where predominantly black and latinx queer folk put on balls which are shows slash competitions Where participants walk on a runway so to speak they their outfit. There is often a component of drag and or costumes.

There's often dancing, especially voguing. There are different categories. There's music, there's dynasties, there's families, there's families. There's rivalries. Yes, there is. The rivalry is where it's at. Those are some of my favorite parts of the doc where I where it's at. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's great. Those were some of my favorite parts of the doc where I think it's Freddie who says, House of LaBazia, I wouldn't be caught dead there. Yeah. But the ballroom scene is all about self-expression and being in a space where you can be safe and comfortable

and celebrated in your queer identity. Can I also make a note, not to cut you off, but I also think it's it's also imperative to note that there was also as much as it was fun, there was a lot of tension in those spaces like specifically that scene with the jacket, right? And they were saying that the person who was walking men's but they said it was a woman's jacket and they were like going, there was like a whole, it literally stopped the entire event. This jacket that they proclaimed to be a woman's jacket. So it just, I felt it was important to note that

because I think as much as it was fun and celebratory, it was also, there was a lot of drama. There was a lot of drama. For sure. And the response is, the buttons are on the right side. Right. It's a men's joke. Mother was upset.

Mama was upset. But yeah. It was also really, I mean, there is one of the things that I guess I hadn't really remembered about it was the generational tension as well. Like that was really, really interesting to explore. And I know in ways that we'll talk about, but I was like, oh yeah, this is sort of a,

it really is generations of a family trying to all be at the same event, which always ends in a fight of some sort, so it's not shocking. It's like Thanksgiving every day at the ball, right? Like, you know, the older auntie says something to the younger cousin, and the younger cousin is like, you know what, you don't know any, let's talk about your dirt, right?

You wanna talk about my dirt, let's talk about yours. And I was gonna say that, like, you know, as much as, you know, I have the privilege, so recently I went to Creating Change earlier this year and earlier this year, like we literally, January felt like it was 18 months. So January, I went to- It's been 84 years, let me tell you.

Right. And so I went to Creating Change last month, I should say, and they had a ball there, it was an actual ball. And it was the same thing. It was very much like as I'm watching the event play out at Creating Change, I'm watching like, you know, Paris' Burning play out in my head, where you have people

who are like legends coming up to walk and they're being cut off by people who think that they are currently a legend. And so now there's tension between people and who's walking what cat. It's just, it was, it was fun, but I could see like Paris is Burning playing out in my head as I'm watching the ball take place. So it's still present. It's still present. The drama remains. out in my head as I'm watching the ball take place. So it's still present. It's still present.

The drama remains. One of the, I think, most heavily featured queens in the documentary is Dorian Corey, who just like the number of like both extremely shady and funny and also profoundly wise. Like those are Dorian's two settings. But I feel like Dorian really, really, really sets this, like this generational divide between the older generation and the newer generation in a way that is like really fascinating and also super funny

because she's super funny. Yeah, it felt like felt like during Corey and Pepper LaBeija being the two or who like the generational differences on what they say and their attitudes about things are most prominent. But yeah, over the course of the documentary, we meet several people in this scene, starting with Pepper LaBeija, the mother of the House of Labasia and has been for two decades. We also meet some younger members in the scene, like Kim Pandavis and Kim's friend and protege, Freddie Pandavis. Kim is an aspiring legend. The goal of participating in Balls is to become a legend or to be legendary. Pepper Labasia, for example, is considered a legend. We also meet Dory and Cory shortly

after this, another legend in the scene. Dory and Cory talks about the differences between ballroom now, aka in the late 80s when this documentary was filmed, and Ballroom from when Dorian was first starting out, which I believe would have been, I don't know if it was like the 50s or 60s, but first it was like elaborate drag where people were dressing similar to like Vegas showgirls,

then it was people trying to emulate movie stars, then it became about emulating like supermodels walking down the runway. As time went on, more categories were created to be more inclusive. So there's categories like high fashion winter sportswear, luscious body, school boy slash school girl realness, town and country, executive realness, military, high fashion evening wear, and a very specific category, butch queen first time in drags at a ball. To name just a few of the categories.

It is so, the categories are, not all of them, but some of them are so profoundly 80s that you're like, okay, yes, right. While, and it was also interesting hearing Dorian speak to the philosophy in costuming and how that's changed, not just to reflect whatever the Western beauty ideals of the period are, but also the price of costumes. Where when-

I was gonna say that, yeah. Right, there's a class component to it as well where it sounds like when Dorian was coming up, everyone made their own costumes, it was very scrappy, and that was understood, where by the time the documentary is being filmed, it's again, a very 80s thing of designer labels by any means necessary. And in Dorian's opinion, something that required

an equal amount of scrappiness, but less creativity. It was interesting. Yeah, I was gonna say to that point, that was actually one of the things, one of the things that one of the first things that was on my mind was that it really, this film really shows not even just depression, but it shows the gap that so many of, you know, trans specifically trans black women were experiencing in that moment, right?

It shows the pay disparity. It shows, you know, a lot of them being, it shows, you know, a lot of them being houseless and, you know, a lot of them talking about what they have to do to survive. And I think, you know, I don't want to get ahead of myself, but what I will say is that I think that them opening, talking about that, right, about this classism that lives in it, you know, that lives in this ball world really says a lot to what's actually happening to them outside of these ballrooms, right? Like it's really giving you a greater understanding

of what the disparity was. And I thought it was actually very interesting. I forget who it was. I have such a hard time remembering names, but the woman who was talking about wanting to go model and how they did that inner cut to all at the time it's you know very 80s but you know all these high level fashion you know high level stores and all these high level things right even and then you talk about like even just the different categories

i think one of the categories was dynasty right so this whole notion of you know people trying to pretend to be opulent and you know i want say herbaceous, but I don't know if that's the right word, but you just had a lot of people trying to live in a financial category that they could never attain, at least in that moment or in that time. It was very, very far fetched and it was really hard for them to attain it. And so they were playing this out in different categories in the ball. And I always thought that was so interesting. Yeah, lots to discuss there.

And throughout the documentary, there are various discussions about race, class, gender, sexuality, the intersections of all of those things and how systemic biases affect the participants in the ballroom community. So yeah, we'll get more into that in a bit. There's also talk of essentially code switching and efforts to quote unquote pass as straight,

which is characterized as realness in this context. Realness also refers to passing as a different gender than the one you were assigned at birth. There's lots we can discuss there as well. Pepper Labasia talks about her parents discovering that she had breasts and wore women's clothing and how she was ostracized for this. Side note here, from what I understand, Pepper Labasia had breast implants and preferred she her

pronouns but did not identify as a woman. She goes into this a little bit later in the documentary. But she talks about how young teens would come to her looking for a parental figure after they've been kicked out of their house for being queer. And this kind of leads into a discussion of found family, chosen family, which is connected to houses in the ballroom community where people belong

to different houses, such as the House of LaBazia, House of Chanel, House of Dupree, House of Extravaganza, et cetera. And they function as real families. Families, yeah. Yeah, that section with Pepper explaining, I'm a mother, but I'm also a mother. I'm buying birthday presents.

Which is just, I don't know, is a really moving section. Totally. We meet Venus Extravaganza, a young trans woman who was brought into the house of Extravaganza. We'll see more and more of her throughout the documentary. We also meet the mother of this house, Angie Extravaganza, who we see winning an award for being like,

best mother of a house. We also meet Willie Ninja, mother of the house of Ninja. And there's talk of, you know, like you said, Jamie, like mothers providing care and support and buying birthday presents and sometimes giving younger members a place to live. Oh, it is Willie, right, who talks about buying birthday presents, yeah.

Yeah, well, and Angie Extravagantil, I think a lot of them touch on this. But yeah, they're basically providing care for the children, AKA members of their house. There's also talk of like, this house is the best. The most legendary, the most popular. Oh, that house, I wouldn't be caught dead in that house. So there's rivalries as we discussed earlier,

fights break out, people throw shade at each other. And fist, the girls fight, they do fight. They talk about something called reading, which is throwing very specific insults at one another. The idea being like, oh, well, if straight people insult a member of the queer community, that's very different than members of the queer community insulting each other. So that's the idea behind reading and then throwing shade is like similar but more like subtextual where the insults are a little bit more, you know, it's like shady for lack of a better word. Yeah, Dorian said, I don't have to tell you you're ugly. Yes. You just know you're ugly.

Like. It's, yeah, it's reading, but like with telepathy. It's so, I. That's such a cute shirt. I was like, I would not last a day. I'm too sensitive. Same. Yeah. Um, and then from this came voguing, a dance that would happen between two or more people who were like feuding and throwing shade at each other.

There's also talk of class and wealth. None of the people featured in the documentary have much money, but part of ballroom is fashion oriented and fashion costs money. High fashion costs a lot of money. So we learn about something called mopping, which, and I think it's Freddie Pandavis, who is my favorite moment of the movie, where he's like, oh, you know, yeah, mopping. That's when, you know, you go into a store

and you see something and you see something that you want and then you're looking at it and you look at the thing you want, mopping is stealing. So, yeah, it's basically you just take the outfit you want and you don't pay for it. And it's because again, racism and homophobia and transphobia and all of these systemic prejudices make it so that members of this community

are often living in poverty. And we also learn that many of them earn money through sex work. There is discussion of gender and transitioning and gender affirming surgeries where different people who are interviewed have different opinions and experiences where in some cases we see trans women living openly and happily as such. People like Octavia St. Laurent, Brooke and Carmen extravaganza,

Venus extravaganza, and then in other cases, especially when Pepper Labasia is talking about it, there are like just more sort of dated attitudes and hints of transphobia and misogyny. We can talk more about that. of transphobia and misogyny, we can talk more about that. And then we cut to 1989. So a few years have passed, we check back in with a few of the major players of the scene,

such as Willie Ninja, Dorian Corey, and Angie Extravaganza, who Says that Venus extravaganza had been murdered she was the one who had to go and identify the body and pass the news along to Angie extravaganza's biological family and that's the note more or less that the documentary ends on so family, and that's the note more or less that the documentary ends on. So that is Paris is Burning in a nutshell. Let's take another quick break and then we'll come back to discuss further. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Cheeky's and I'm back with a brand new season of your favorite podcast Cheeky's and Chill.

I'll be sharing even more personal stories with you guys. And I know a lot of people are going to attack me. Why are you going to go visit your dad? Your mom wouldn't be okay with it. I'm going to tell you guys right now, I know my mother and I know my mom had a very forgiving heart. That is my story on plastic surgery. This is my truth. I think the last time I cried like that was when I lost my mom. Like that, like yelling. I was like, no. I was like, oh, and I thought, what did I do wrong? And as always, you'll get my exclusive take on topics like love, personal growth, health, family ties, and more. And don't forget, I'll also be dishing out my best advice to you on episodes of Dear Cheekies.

So my fiance and I have been together for 10 years. In the first two years of being together, I find out he is cheating on me, not only with women, but also with men. What should I do? Okay, where do I start? That's not love. He doesn't love you enough,

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There's so many places to start. Yeah, John, does anything stand out to you? Where would you like we start? There's so many places to start. Yeah, John, does anything stand out to you? Where would you like to start? You know, so I think it's, I think the one thing for me that has always really struck me about this film is the idea of like, and again, when I saw it in 2004, it was always like a foreign concept

and a foreign thought to me, but this idea of chosen family, this idea of like, you know, your family turns, you know, cause you, you always, you grow up hearing this, right? Your family is the only people who always love you. And then you come out and then they're like, no, I don't like it. Just kidding.

You know, just kidding, bye, you have to go. And so, you know, finding people that you, you vibe with people who truly are there for you and care for you and want to see you not with, people who truly are there for you and care for you and want to see you not just survive, but really thrive. That's the thing, as much as I always thought Dorian and Pepper were really shady,

I could tell by the way they talked about their chosen, the folks in their different homes, in their houses, you could tell that there was just this very deep love and admiration that they both had for the people in their different homes and their houses, you could tell that there was just this very deep love and admiration that they both had for the people in their houses. And you know, I don't, if you don't have, you know, I'll say this, if you're a listener and you identify as straight and cis, I think there's just this, and maybe I don't know how the two of you identify, but I know for me, the friends that I have and the community I've built, it's the same concept, right?

You can genuinely feel that they just want the best for you. And so this film really kind of opened my mind up to that of like, you don't necessarily have to just rely on your family to be happy in this world. You can find people who truly want the best for you and you can live and thrive and be happy and have a full lived life. And you can also have fun.

As much as these balls were shady and drama was going down, there were moments where people were really happy and there were moments when people were celebrating each other. And so I just thought that was really funny. And the last thing I'll say, I always thought it was really funny

in the scene where Dorian is talking and that cat is walking behind her. Oh my God. I always said that Dorian reminds me of like, not Lady, what movie is that with the cat? It's a Disney movie. Emperor's New Groove. There's another movie where these cats are walking

and they're just really, is it the Siamese ones? We are Siamese. Oh, Lady and the Tramp. Lady and the Tramp, Lady and the Tramp. Okay, I was right. I was gonna say that, but I wasn't sure. She reminds me of like a Siamese cat in the sense of like, she just knows she's regal.

She just knows that she's better than everyone else. And I was like, it just was so funny to me as I was watching that doc, I was like, of course there would be a cat behind her because her personality is so much like a Siamese cat. So I thought that was funny, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Loved the cat. It was really, I mean, going off of what you were just talking about, John, it was really cool. I mean, there's so many benefits to this being a documentary, obviously, but where on this show over the years, we've talked about so many movies that have really appealed to queer audiences because of the elements of found family in fiction, but there's no coding here. You're just seeing the families.

There is no mental hoops that you have to go through to feel seen in a movie like Paris is Burning, and that's so singular and so, you know, not completely unheard of at this time, but certainly on, it seems like, this scale of success, which is really amazing. But brings me, there's something I wanted to just touch on that I wasn't aware really about anything

when it came to the production of this movie. And wow, there's a lot wow there's a lot there's a lot going on that have also echoed conversations we've had before. I did not know that this movie was directed by a white woman for example but the director of this movie Jenny Livingston directed it when she was in I believe her late 20s. It's her first feature, and that and other elements of this production has garnered quite a bit of controversy over the years, I think rightfully so. Jenny Livingston, I can share some quotes,

but has generally stood her ground on this. There's a few different buckets of conversation in how Paris' burning has been criticized. It's been criticized for having a white director and primarily featuring black and Latin people in this community. There's also a compensation that I would really like to talk about

because it reminds me a lot of way back when when we covered Tangerine by Sean Baker where because white filmmakers statistically have a better chance of getting their film made seen and profiting from it, while it can produce really amazing work, it doesn't mean that those who are featured like the entire cast of Paris is Burning, is getting equally compensated for literally making the movie what it is. Not that Jenny Livingston did nothing, obviously a lot of great work went into making this film, but it's their stories and that is the appeal of the film. And so there's been a lot of conversation about that. At the time, mean, this gets into like one of my pet peeves. So we'll,

I'll just shut up about it as quickly as possible. But, um, but compensating interviewees and how taboo that is, uh, across nonfiction filmmaking. I just think it's such a crock of shit, but you know, when this film was being made, that was the general agreement that, you know, everyone signed off and agreed to, but as, But as is unpacked in both a Hollywood Reporter article from twenty twenty one and a Vanity Fair article from twenty nineteen that reflects on this, a lot of why the subjects of this film agreed to do it is because they really wanted their stories out there. And so there is the argument that cast members

have subsequently made that like, yes, I did sign the piece of paper, I wanted our community and I wanted my story out there. I agreed to not be compensated, but then the movie was acquired by Miramax and won stuff at Sundance and eventually made $4 million and is the basis of polls and who's seen most of that money is Jenny Livingston. And so there have been rivalries.

It does, I guess to her credit, it seems like Jenny Livingston has attempted to correct this over time, but it was a longstanding conversation. I won't unpack it beat by beat because it's literally 35 years of back and forth, but I do want to share a quote from Jenny Livingston defending herself as a white woman. Let's see what she has to say. This is her disputing that Paris' burning was made

for white people. She says, the sense that this was a production by white people for white people, that's not historical. That is a projection rather than a truth. You have to see Paris' burning in the context of nonfiction. She said versions of this over the years, what she mainly appears to be alluding to

is the fact that she feels that this erases many of her black collaborators who were working as producers and consultants. But the compensation issue, I think there's just, she doesn't have much of a leg to stand on, I feel. So I wanted to share a quote from Pepper, who is now as is most of the cast of this movie is no longer with us But this is from an interview Pepper did when she was 44

And so 1993 a California magazine said I had sued Miramax and won untold millions It was seen shopping with Diana Ross on Rodeo Drive in a Rolls But I really just live in the Bronx with my mom. And I am so desperate to get out of here. It's hard to be the mother of a house when you're living with your own mother. And so as we've seen for many marginalized performers, there is a lot of publicity. There's this big cultural moment.

But it doesn't translate to sustained financials. And that is always, always, always the case. I know we talked about it with Tangerine as well, but it really stands out here too, where it's a very similar, one's fiction, one's non-fiction, but a very similar setup where the white filmmaker makes a really good film, but does not compensate her collaborators appropriately.

And it seems like I want to wait. There's so many names. Let me see if I can find the three names I'm looking for. As of 2021, there were still three surviving cast members from Paris is Burning. I actually didn't know that Pose was like based based on Paris is Burning. I know there's I knew that they're like they both surround ballroom culture but it's like officially based. Jenny Livingston was a consultant on the first two seasons and that is a Ryan Murphy joint and we don't have enough time to unpack Ryan Murphy today. But the surviving cast members were invited to be consultants, including Junior LaBeija, who is in Paris is Burning.

But he was the one of three that said no, because he felt that there was history repeating itself, with Poe's being another story about predominantly black and brown communities in ballroom, this time by Ryan Murphy. So it's, again, there's a white creative at the top. And he's like, you know, I would love to get a check here, but like, you're doing it again. And it's, you know, 25 years later.

So we can link those pieces in the description, but yeah, I mean, this was just a conversation I was not aware of at all and found very interesting. Definitely. That kind of brings me to Bell Hooks' criticism of this movie. I believe this quote comes from her book entitled Black Looks, Race and Representation.

Bell Hooks said, quote, watching Paris is Burning, I began to think that the many yuppie looking, straight acting, pushy, predominantly white folks in the audience were there because the film in no way interrogates whiteness. These folks left the film saying it was amazing, marvelous, incredibly funny, worthy of statements like, didn't you just love it? And no, I didn't love it. For in many ways, the film was a graphic documentary portrait of the way in which colonized black people, in this case, black gay brothers, some of whom were drag queens, worship at the throne of whiteness, even when such worship demands that we live in perpetual selfate, steal, go hungry, and even die in its pursuit. The we evoked here is all of us, black people slash people of color, who are daily bombarded by a powerful colonizing whiteness that seduces us away from ourselves, that negates that there is beauty to be found in any form of blackness that is not imitation whiteness." And I see where she's coming from with this criticism because different people

being interviewed in the documentary will say things like how they long to be rich and they point out that part of the appeal of balls is that you can be whoever you want to be at a ball. And you can live a fantasy of being able to be an executive or a socialite or other type of wealthy person because society will not afford you those opportunities if you are black, brown, queer. But this mentality of like putting being wealthy on a pedestal and emulating business executives and like doing CEO drag. CEO drag. Like Dorian lays that out like really eloquently. Yeah. Right. But this mentality is very reflective of the times, you know, it's the reagan era economic ideals of the 80s

Yeah And there wasn't a ton of pushback on that at the time even from marginalized communities because those ideals were just so pervasive to the point where it was not super common to interrogate things like capitalism and white supremacy because they had just been so, so, so normalized. And, you know, pre-internet, there weren't as many ways or resources to educate yourself or to spread information widely except by mainstream media, which was perpetuating these white supremacist, capitalist, cis-heteronormative ideologies. And I know Bell Hooks' criticism is like, yeah, but you still can and should interrogate those things.

So why didn't this documentary? Which also fair, but like, I don't know, it's very tricky. And it also just speaks to how influential media is where ballroom contestants through the decades were emulating movie stars and characters from shows like Dynasty, which I was like, oh yeah, that is a show that I've never watched and don't know anything about.

But it was very popular in the 80s. It's really been lost to time. I don't think anyone revisits it really. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, and they did redo it. Oh really? Like recently, they did. It was on ABC. They did. In like 2017?

Yeah, they did. For who? For ABC, I think ABC redid it, and it didn't go anywhere. But I think you speak to, so I think that's the love hate that I have with this film, right? I love what this film stands for because I am a black queer person

who is also recognizing that even in 2025, a lot of the stuff that they said in the 90s was extremely, 25 years, was it 25 years ago, 35 years ago? 35. 35, okay, so we're 35 years out from this film. Even 35 years ago, there, so we're 35 years out from this film. You know, even 35 years ago, there were folks who were still dealing with a lot of the stuff we're dealing in 2025.

And I think that's, like I said, the thing that I love is that you see the resilience of these people saying, you know, regardless, I'm gonna live the life I wanna live, I wanna be happy, I'm gonna find my people, I'm gonna find joy. But also, like, I think that's the real issue I had with the film was that we don't interrogate anything.

Like we leave these people kind of where we found them. Like it's very much, we see you in squalor. We see that you're going through it. We see that you're unhappy to an extent and you're using ballroom to find joy, but we're not offering you any resources to get you to a place where when you're done with this ball, you have somewhere to go to lay your head where you feel safe.

You feel seen. You have your means. And so I think that that's the thing that gets lost in translation is, and I've had to say this on so many different accords, I actually just sent an email about this this week. I don't need a handout, I just need a hand. And I think that's the thing that, I think a lot of people in the early 90s, especially when we're coming out of Reaganomics, we're watching black and brown people say, these systems are set up to watch me fail

and I'm doing my best to survive them and survive through them. And the best way I know how to do that is through sex work. To the degree, like I'm looking around and I'm going, help these people, give them something. But then you also have to interrogate, okay, if Jenny did come in and she was like, here's some money, then people would be interrogating her

and calling her the white savior, right? So I think that there's so many levels to oppression and I think the biggest thing that I want folks in my rambling to hear is that there, you know, we all have to be so intentional about how we're just, I wouldn't even say reporting because I don't think anyone really reports on our stories anymore, but I think the way that we talk about, you know, the injustices that we face, right? There is an element of privilege that's there, and I think that there's so much education you have to do to make sure that when you're going into a community that is oppressed,

or when you're going into a community that needs that kind of help, that you've done your own intentional work to make sure that you're not causing more harm. And I think that's the thing that is most important for me about watching this film. It's like, yes, it's funny. And it's created such a culturally thing. And I mean, RuPaul is mentioning this film like almost every season at this point. He's had 17 seasons of Drag Race and it comes up every single season.

But I think the biggest thing is, is that you have so many people who are still oppressed and are still striving to find peace after the ball. And it's like, what do we do? What do we do to end that? What do we do to help get these people the resources that they need so that way they're not left for, you know, left?

I'm trying to be mindful of my words because I saw your note. Oh yeah, yeah. We don't use like Zoom. We don't use like TikTok rules. OK, yeah. So just just being careful of that, right? Like, why are we not, you know, how are we not leaving?

Because that's really what it is. I mean, the fact that it ends on talking about this trans woman being killed, it's so bothersome to me that that's kind of how the film ends. And it's like no one said or did anything about that. Right. You know, so I don't know. It's just it's like I said, it's it's it's uplifting. But it's like, I guess my and I'm trying not to get into my social justice soapbox. But I'm like, why is it that we're always having to be resilient?

Like, why why why do people enjoy watching us struggle and try to find joy in that? And I get this all the time too, even with me, oh, you have a book coming out, you have a podcast, oh, you've won awards, it's so great. And it's like, I shouldn't have to be celebrated for all that I've been through to get to where I am. I don't do that, we shouldn't have to do that.

So yeah, it's just something I think a lot about after watching this film. And then like there's an extreme end of that spectrum with like the appropriation of voguing via Madonna's. Right, which came out even before this. I didn't realize that had come out before this documentary. I think the documentary was filmed, but they were released around the same time.

So in some ways it was like, you know, Madonna was, you know, starting to sort of steal voguing in the late eighties. And then by the time the movie comes out, the video's already out and it's, didn't affect her career, that's for fucking sure. Right. And obviously the criticism is that, you know, Madonna, an already famous, rich, cis,

white woman is profiting off of something that she appropriated from black and brown, queer communities. And, and most people didn't realize that. I would even also say too, there's a doc, I don't want to get too much away from Paris is Burning, but there is a documentary about how dirty she did her people, the people that she appropriated from her choreographers and her dancers that were also in these communities that she quote unquote hired, and then just let them go. And how they were just kind of like, yo, you came in here

and you know, you stole this from us and then didn't give us anything. And so it's just, there's so much to say about entertainment. Which is like white pop stars 101. It's like it's so evil. I also wanted to mention and this isn't, you know, this isn't necessarily on Jenny Livingston, but where Paris is Burning was sort of spoken about in media at this time of like, there's never been a documentary like this before,

which is patently untrue. It is that most of the documentaries made about underground cultures, about queer cultures, were made by queer black and brown filmmakers, and so they just never got the attention or distribution. The filmmaker I've seen most mentioned in this conversation who was making films around the same time around a lot of the same themes and had a personal connection to these communities was Marlon Riggs, who directed, I think four documentaries.

He passed of complications from AIDS when he was just 37. But this was a filmmaker who was working at the time of Paris is Burning, but his work was never spotlighted. And then you see, you know, Jenny Livingston, who is a complete, you know, admitted, it's not like she's pretending that she has, you know, intense connection to this culture,

but she's a complete outsider, and it's her project that gets the financing, that gets the Sundance accolades and all that, which is, again, just something, a pattern we see repeated in entertainment over and over and over and over. I wanted to touch a little bit more on the differing attitudes that are based to some degree on like different generations in this scene

and how, you know, for example, Pepper Labasia, who again, preferred she her pronouns and had breast implants, but identified as a gay man who emulated women, but was not a woman, and says she would never have any surgery that would like, you know, give her a vagina and quote unquote, make her a woman.

And she says that she would never recommend anyone have that type of surgery because, oh, what if they change their mind? And oh, being a woman in the world is hard. Why would you want to subject yourself to the mistreatment and abuse and misogyny that women have to face? Which, you know, when we watch this in 2025, we realize that's a very like antiquated

and rigid way of thinking about identity and transitioning. And it's like steeped in this idea of your genitals, determine your gender. And it's okay to deny someone something they want, because I assume that they will change their mind about what they want and all these things. And I mean, I appreciate that that is represented in this documentary, just to show that there are differing viewpoints,

because that's also like juxtaposed right next to trans women living happy lives as trans women and who have had gender affirming surgery and it was just interesting to see those opinions being included in the documentary because and you hate to see it but there are and have been prejudices within marginalized communities. You know, it's not constant solidarity all the time, especially in an era like the 80s, but also up to and including now. Yeah. So that the movie itself doesn't at least, I mean, I let me know if you feel differently, but it didn't seem like the movie was taking any particular side.

It was just presenting this is how this person feels on this issue, which is a useful, like historical document. And I, I don't know. I mean, not to go back to, um, drag race too much, but, um, but again, I rarely, like I, it didn't ping for me when I saw this movie in high school, but I kind of forgot that trans drag queens and cis drag queens were so intermixed in the ballroom scene. And that's something that also is touched on quite a bit in decolonized drag in just its criticisms of drag race and how it doesn't always or hasn't always promoted

true inclusion. And yeah, I appreciated seeing, especially, I mean, I don't know, I also did not remember how Venus's life ended, which is still, I mean, to this day, all too common of trans folks being murdered and no one doing anything to seek out, I mean, who had done it because they're just not treated well.

I thought of like Sam Nordquist, who was just found killed, a trans man in Minnesota. And I mean, there's just so many, so many, so many examples from over the years and to know that Venus you know was I believe Italian and Puerto Rican was supporting herself through sex work and was was found killed it's just it's so devastating and I I don't know I mean I guess I I don't know what I wanted the movie to do with that but I just I don't know, I mean, I guess I don't know what I wanted the movie to do with that. But I just, I don't know. I wasn't trying to make a point.

It just was, it was really tragic and horrible and it's still something that we're very much dealing with now. Yeah. And I think the scary part, you know, so I will say this, I love our stories being told in this way, right? But I think that there's also something, like I said, kind of going back to my rant about care, I think there's also something extremely scary about our stories being told this way,

because now, you know, especially with the way that this film ends, it shows how disposable black trans people can be. And so that's something that I think, if there are any documentarians out there who's listening to this and are thinking, oh, I wanna do this documentary, or I wanna do this type of research, I think this film is a great place to kind of come back and to examine and say

like what are all of the things that Jenny did right and what are all of the things that Jenny did wrong. Especially when you're working with marginalized people because even for me right as someone who loves, I'll tell you right now I will tune into, I was watching one last night the Pepito documentary on Netflix and there is a documentary that is on- I watched it too. Yes, if it is a true crime, anything, mama is locked in. Yeah. But I will say to that point,

I think we have to, there's gotta be an element, especially when we're dealing with marginalized people, that we have to be very mindful, demure, and even I would even challenge to be, to be, to be cautious about how we're framing stories and storylines. But yeah, I will say that I do appreciate that there is joy.

We're still left with joy from the film. And even now, like I said, when I watch shows that reference it or I watch movies that reference it or even I revisited polls a couple of months ago, Like I said, when I watch shows that reference and I watch movies that reference that are even, I revisited polls a couple of months ago. It was just really, it was affirming to see the impact that this documentary had once so many people even now, like you said, 35 years later.

Absolutely. Right, because it does certainly something to normalize this subculture and bring awareness to people about it because I'm sure there are lots of people around the country slash world who would have no other way really of knowing about it, especially in previous decades. I mean, all three of us have worked.

Right. And the fact that it's taught in schools and in universities, and I added it to my list because it kept coming up in textbooks I was reading about significant queer cinema. So it being pretty mainstream has, you know, I think done net good, but also like, yeah, the note that it ends on where it is basically just like, yes, Venus extravaganza was found murdered.

The end. That's all that's said. Yeah, that's all that's said. And then we see, I believe it's Willie, who has since seen a lot of success. It feels like they're almost presented in opposition to each other. Right, here's the two possible outcomes

like being a participant in this community. I wish more care had been taken with, I mean, I feel like, I don't know, I'm not gonna redo her movie for her. It's done, it's done. But I would have stayed seated for another half hour, 45 minutes to really get into the two years later, because it felt like very much like an aftermath.

I don't think it was intending to be dismissive, but I think like we've all said at this point, it just felt like, and then this't think it was intending to be dismissive, but I think like, like we've all said at this point, it just felt like, and then this happened and it was happy, and then this happened and it was sad. These are the two outcomes. Thank you, good night. And it's just like, well, no, that's-

It's giving, wait a second. To not come here for this. Is there more to that? Yeah, you're like, girl, I know you have more B-Rail than that. So I know there's gotta be some found footage somewhere. It's really, and getting back to Bell Hook's criticism of this movie, I mean, there's no criticism

of the failure of policing to investigate these murders. Yeah, yeah, let's talk about it. It's just like, there's so many, there are moments where I feel like it really works to this documentary's advantage to let the subjects just speak, not take a clear, like this is what I, Jenny, am trying to say. Like that's not her job here.

But there's so much that's left on the table that I suspect there had to have been some footage about. And if there wasn't, maybe the right questions aren't being asked because there is so much about this specific period in time that's still resonant now that it just feels like is either just referenced in passing or like doesn't really come up.

And I think that like Bell Hooks was right to criticize the audience reactions. If that's the audience's takeaway of like, oh, loved it anyways, brunch time. Like then there, you know, you can't control how people receive your work, but that does feel like a failure of the documentary to some degree.

Yeah. And I was gonna say to your point, one of the things I'm thinking a lot about to hear, you know, there could have been, and, and so I, in my mind, so I actually wrote a story about, you know, the, the, I think it was, was it 2020 or 2021? I wrote something about the whole fiasco and how people are looking at Jenny Livingston and, and, and, and now, right, basically in our world now, what does this film for Slate, I think it was for Slate I wrote it for. And I will say this, I actually was in the mind,

actually while I was writing the article, one of the things that I had picked up on was that folks who were connected to this film back in the 90s, they didn't want this to become, because again, we were living in a political state, right? We had to act up folks, you know, things going on with act up. We were only maybe four or five years into the,

you know, the AIDS crisis. And so there's all of these things. And so I think to an extent, you know, one of the justifications of Jenny leaving this stuff out is I don't want this to become a political film, right? I don't want this to be about, you know, the politics of being black and queer. I just wanted to celebrate ballroom. I wanted to celebrate a culture and that's it.

Okay, fair, but me, especially me from an intersectional lens, we cannot just talk about blackness and queerness and ball community without talking about the politics of being black and queer at this time. So it's almost like, like I said, I understand what she was trying to do. But at the same time, we have the term intersectionality being coined in 89. So I'm thinking to myself, well, why wasn't this film done from an intersectional lens

where we're watching oppression, you know, asking the question, right, and formulating our questions from this place of how is oppression impacting those who participate in ballroom, right? Like that should have been the focus. And then we could have maybe moved into this, what are we gonna do to vindicate Venus in her life, right? But I think, you know, and again, and I don't wanna be heavy,

I don't wanna be one of those people that put their foot on Jenny's neck she's had enough people put their foot on her neck so I get it but what I'm saying is is I think that you know like I said to my point earlier I think we have to be when we're creating art and we're you know we're trying to tell a story we have to sometimes get away from the fear of it quote unquote being too political because we are political. Everything is inherently political. Whoa, I said brilliantly and blew everyone's minds wide open. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, it's, I didn't, I didn't realize that you'd written about it, John. That's, I don't know, yeah.

It just felt like there was a lot that feels mysteriously absent. I don't know, particularly, I mean, looking at, I was just looking into where the folks from this documentary are now. There are still three living cast members, Freddie and Saul Penn Davis and Junior LaBeija is still alive as well but most of the cast is gone and the

majority of them died because of complications related to AIDS. And I don't know I mean it's like it definitely not I'm not I'm not the person to determine how much does that factor into this narrative or not. But I've seen the criticism around like, where is it? Something that I also thought the documentary might touch on but doesn't is the history of Ballroom. And I'm by no means an expert I Pulling this a lot from scholarly journal Wikipedia

But just a just to kind of contextualize ballroom a little bit Its origins trace back to the mid 1800s, where, for example, a person by the name of William Dorsey Swan, a formerly enslaved person, and the first person to describe themselves as a drag queen started hosting secret balls in Washington DC in the I think late 1800s. Many of the attendees of these balls were black men. They would be arrested in police raids frequently but the balls would continue. They caught on. Other cities started them.

By the 1890s, there were similar drag events organized in New York. By 1930, there were similar events in Chicago, New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia, other cities. They were generally racially integrated, although there was a lot of racism within that space. And so by the 1960s, there was, you know, predominantly black balls or, you know, black and brown balls because they were like, we don't want to deal with

the racism in these integrated spaces because the white people are treating us badly. And then that led to a lot of the houses that we see represented in Paris is Burning where for example like Crystal LaBazia founded the House of LaBBeija in Harlem in the early 70s and that was part of the kind of origins of the specific scene that we see represented in the movie. But anyway, there's much more information again, I'm not an expert, but I feel like a documentary today would have been like, where did Ballroom come from? You know, and would have like gone through that history

quite a bit more, but. It feels more like a style choice of like, we're just dropped into this world and there's so much. I mean, that also speaks to like how undereducated, you know, people generally are about drag culture. The other thing that the documentary, to me, doesn't make clear, I want to talk about the title. Paris is Burning, and it refers to a ball of the same name

that was held annually by Paris Dupree, who was the founding member and mother of the House of Dupree. Paris Dupree is credited as one of the pioneers of voguing. Paris is seen briefly and mentioned briefly in the documentary but not heavily featured or interviewed. And then so I was like, oh, interesting that you call the documentary Paris is Burning after Paris Dupree's event, but like, It's not really in it. not feature or interview Paris Dupree?

Yeah. Interesting, but, um, Wow. Yeah, I wanted to look into that because I was like, why is this called Paris is Burning? And that's why. Is there anything else anyone wants to discuss regarding the movie?

I will say it's an annual, it's a film you should watch annually. At least once a year. Yeah, definitely. Get some friends together. Yes. It's great, yeah. So for all of the,

for all of the criticizing we've been doing for the past hour plus, it is a terrific movie. It's very, very, very rewatchable. And I think, I mean, as we've all sort of talked about, it was a gateway for, it's a gateway watch. I think like, you know, it's definitely a good 101 for ballroom culture that it seems like has paved the way

for a lot of other work. And some of that, although Ryan Murphy is not a good example, is not made by cis white creators. So I think it definitely has a strong place in history. And it's also just like, yeah, it's just such a great watch. Definitely. The music choices, the fashion. All of it, yes.

The cat. The cat. Now, the other thing, I don't know if I'm supposed to talk about this on the air. Y'all do know that there was some stuff with Mother later on in the years. They found folks in Dorian's closet. I don't know if we wanna.

Oh, we can. Wait, oh my God. I forgot that that was story and oh, okay. Wait, let's talk about it just really quickly. Yeah, I don't want to go into the mess too much because I don't want it to overshadow the joy of this film. But I'm just letting you know that that was that is a piece of the history. So and history is a many headed complicated thing. Wait, for our listeners and also me, who doesn't know about this,

could you shed some light? Totally, yeah. Wow, I feel like there's like five listeners right now that heard us ending the episode and were screaming at the top of their lungs. Okay, yeah, John, take it away. Look, no, not more. Okay, so there is an article, and it says,

a famous drag queen, a mummy in the closet, and a baffling mystery. And this was written in 2016. And so what I will also posit and say, if you are a Pose Watcher, you will know that I think it was either season two or season three towards the end of the season. There is an actual episode where they're talking about this there's a Louis Vuitton trunk that is in I think it's in who's uh what's her name's house

but anyway all that to be said they're trying to get to this trunk well it's based off of this story surrounding Dorian Corey and I guess one of the clips of this article it says what Corey. And I guess one of the clips of this article, it says, what stands in starkest contrast to the gruesome implications in her closet is Corey's demeanor. The most extensive video of Corey is a 1990s, Janie Livingston's documentary.

It's an examination of aforementioned ball culture and interview she's witty, realistic, and unflappable. In contrast to the grandiosity of aspiring models and housewives, she has a self-possessed cadence and world-weary observations, which endear her to be a comparatively mainstream audience. So there's this notion that she's just very fun and very witty and very endearing per se.

But I guess it's probable that there was something that was happening between 1988 and 1990 and ultimately she tucked it away in her closet. Yeah, how dare I forget about the mummy, truly. I'm still confused. So it's dead body? I was I was saying there's a dead body I've seen different stories as to what this the story I was looking at which is cited on scholarly journal Wikipedia but also is yeah from

a 1995 paper called the Drag Queen and the Mummy, that the body discovered was determined to be dead for approximately 25 years, was said to be the body of a man named Robert Worley, who hadn't been seen since 1968, but it was the theories surrounding the death were either, the theories were that Robert and Dorian were in a relationship of some sort

and that either Robert had been killed and she had hidden in his body for whatever reason or that she had killed him in self-defense because of violence she was experiencing at his hands and then was like, let's just go in here. Fascinating lives all around. John, thank you for bringing that up. Yeah, I just wanted to say,

because I don't want people listening and being like, they totally just over, they just looked over this whole story. But I think it's also tangential to what we're talking about here, right? These people, you know, so like I'm even, I'm looking through the story that I just quickly Googled and it said that there's also a rumor

that this, whoever this body was, they basically claimed that this man broke into her home and tried to rob her and that it was self-defense. And so when people asked why she kept the body, it says a black drag queen who lived in a poor dangerous area in the 60s or 70s had a little chance of garnering sympathy from the police. And so I think it's as much as it's not related to the story of what Jenny was trying to do with this film, I think it really like this story per se says a lot about the times

that these queer people were living in, right? Like the fear of, okay, well, I tell someone that this man broke into my home and I killed him in self-defense, and then I still end up in jail, and then I end up dead in jail, right? Like that's probably, regardless of what the story was, you know, the reality was Dorian was worried

about their livelihood. And so just to be queer at this time, and I mean, still even now, right? You know, to be worried about your livelihood is something that's very real for queer people. And you know, as much as, like I said, it doesn't relate to the story, it very much does. Absolutely.

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

And that's why when you find a body in the closet, like that is why as opposed to queer people and specifically like black queer people are particularly vulnerable. And like you're just saying, John, would not have stood a chance at, you know, standing up against the white supremacist police state. And so it was self-defense and was necessary in order to survive. I've not really seen that anecdote presented that way. It was more like a fun fact. Did you know this famous drag queen from Paris is Burning

did, you know, in the way that I think a lot of AI slop kind of leans towards. Yeah, it doesn't humanize. It doesn't. And I think that's the thing too, with these type of not even these stories, but just like I even get going back to the documentary, it you know, this idea that there's this humanity that's not there. You know, sometimes you know, and I think that's what, you know, when you were talking about, when you were giving the piece about Bill Hooks, I think that's what they were ultimately trying to say, that there's just this lack of humanity.

And I don't even think, that's why I said, there was a part of me that didn't even wanna tell anybody that I was watching that documentary, but it's like, I sometimes have to check myself with that of like, these were humans, these are people that had really, like a really terrible thing happen to them and we sensationalize it and there's so much, oh my God, this really saucy thing happened.

Did you hear about it? But it's like, yo, like where's the humanity behind it? And so I have to catch myself sometimes when I get excited, you know, in conversation about these types of films. But yeah, that's kind of where I'm left. Right, well, Paris Is Burning does touch on these topics of class, of race, of gender, of sexuality, but it does so in a pretty surface way

where it'll be like one person's like sound bite from their interview, monologuing for a couple sentences about something and that happens a few times throughout the documentary. So it's not as though the documentary ignores these topics and the intersections of them, but it doesn't zoom out very much as far as like, well, how do these things affect these people systemically

in larger and more significant ways? It doesn't dive deeply into these things. It's just pretty, I don't wanna call it superficial necessarily, but it's not super deep, the way the movie explores these things. And that connects to something we've talked about a lot where that stands out as particularly when the subjects of these films are people

who are largely ignored by the rest of culture. And so then it ostensibly becomes the job of one movie to do everything. When the reality is like one movie can't do everything, there is plenty to criticize about Jenny's approach here, which we have done and many have done and will continue to do and rightfully so. But I think it also draws attention to the fact that

on a lot of, I mean, think about how many documentaries are there about World War II, and how every documentary about World War II doesn't address every aspect and perspective and figure of World War II, but that's okay. There's 40 trillion documentaries about World War II that grandfathers all over the world are watching as we speak.

And like there is, whatever, there is more. Not that there wasn't more, like we're saying, there were filmmakers that were creating work around these communities, but in terms of work that was easily accessible, in terms of work that was getting the financing and marketing to support it, there wasn't very much. And so then it becomes, I mean,

it's like a tricky conversation because one movie can't do everything, but one movie can do more than it's doing. Right, it can do. It can do something, child. It can do something. That's what I hear. Yeah.

Yeah. Maybe we just need Paris is Burning 2. Yeah. Or something, or a different movie. Let's start a GoFundMe, and we can start. We can be the ones that do that. Yeah. Anything else anyone wants to talk about?

That's all I got. The movie, whether or not it passes the Bechtel test, is not the most applicable, since it's a documentary format, and it's not a lot of people having dialogue. But I'm pretty sure it still passes. Right, because many of the people featured are people of a marginalized gender and we do see them speak to each other about balls and houses and clothes and things like that so the film does

pass the Bechtel test but what about the Bechtel cast nipple scale a scale where we write the movie zero to five nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. John, I see shock and awe on your face. I never knew anything about some nipples. I'm gonna journey. Yeah, okay. I really don't know what we were thinking,

but we committed to it and that's the scale. So one nipple is terrible and five nipples are great? Yes. This is correct. I would give it, oh, because you can't do half nipples. You can. Oh, yes you can. Oh, we do quarter nipples.

Slice them and dice them, however you like. Slice the nipples. Ooh, that's terrifying. Let's go, I would do four nipples. I'm around that area as well. Yeah. Yeah. I think I was going to give it like 3.75. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think 3.75 is perfect. Yeah. Oh, I agree. We've decided it's 3.75 and that's that.

And that's that we've discussed the movie shortcomings, but we've also discussed the many ways in which this is a very important piece of cinema, an important documentary, paved the way for similar projects. And yeah, I would give my nipples to... Oh yes, you can give your nipples away to John. We award them.

Oh, okay. To people. I sort of just want to give my nipples to everyone featured in the documentary. That's, but specifically setting aside one nipple for the cat. Yes. Of course. I'm going to just leave my nipples on the table and I wish I could give every participant of this documentary $500,000 at the time it came out. Oh my God. I just wish that the subjects of this documentary, that the filmmaking is good,

but it is the people at the center of this movie that make it what it is. That is the reason that we are still watching it today and they should have been compensated better. So yeah, just distributing money in 1990. That's how I'm gonna use my nipples. Wow. Well, John, thank you so much for joining us.

This was great. This was such a good conversation. Thank you for thinking of me, and thank you for including me. This was, like I said, I had a really great time. And it also gave me a new, again, I've watched this film a million times. I've written about it. I've done so many things around it.

But this also gives me a great perspective to think about as I re-watch it. So I will be watching it a little bit more closer next time though. I will say that if you want Yeah, yeah Sometimes I'm just like I'm shutting off my brain and watching a thing that I like. Yeah, that's me reality TV We were so delighted to have you thank you so much much for joining us. Come back anytime for any movie you'd like to discuss. Yes. Where can we find you and where can our listeners follow your work? Well, you can often find me during a pirouette inside of a Krispy Kreme or any donut

location. But when I am not eating sugar, I'm not supposed to have. You can find me on social media. I am not eating sugar I'm not supposed to have. You can find me on social media. My handle is Dr. John Paul everywhere except for Twitter. I am no longer on Twitter. Good for you. Yeah, but you can find me on Blue Sky. I don't know how much longer I'll be on Instagram or Facebook, but you can also find me there

and also on threads. But yeah, and then visit my website, www.DrJohnPaulul.com and you can probably catch me in a bookstore near you yeah if you're in the LA area and you'd like to come to my book launch all the information for that is on my website so yay we'll be there we're in the LA area yes come down come down yes please pre-order John's book. Thank you again for joining us. You can follow us mostly on Instagram these days

at Bechtelcast. You can subscribe to our Patreon, AKA Matrion, where we cover two movies a month. Plus you get access to the entire back catalog. There's fun, amazing, brilliant, genius themes such as Rodent Timber coming up this March. There's a stunning number of movies about rodents. Would you like to hear an intersectional feminist

discussion of them? If not, too bad. Too bad, you have to subscribe. You have to subscribe anyway. Intersectional feminist discussion of Ratatouille incoming. Link in description. You can also get our merch at teapublic.com slash the Bechtel cast and with that another wonderful episode of the Bechtel cast concludes. Wow see you next time. Bye bye.

The Bechtel cast is a production of IHeart Media, hosted by Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Mo Laborde. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Catherine Voskrasensky. Our logo and merch is designed by Jamie Loftus. And a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree slash bechtelcast. What it do, little mamas and Gentiles alike.

It is the devil worshipper himself, Langston Kerman. And son of the Lord, David Borden. And we're here to tell you that we have our boy, Lamorne Morris on the podcast this week. From the New Girl, Bargo, Saturday Night, and the Mess Around podcast. You're going to want to hear it. We are the number one podcast for all things black, conspiracy theories, and more. You will not want to miss out on hilarious moments like these.

I'm the same guy who believes in lizard people. So I don't really... Oh, wow. We should have started with that. I look at all this like this. I go, oh, and these. When people say the world is flat, I go, I'm not going to knock you with that. I look at all this like this. I go, and these. When people say the world is flat, I go, I'm not going to knock you for it. I don't know. Hey, believe what you want to believe, man.

You know what I'm saying? There's people out there that believe Michael Jordan's better than LeBron James. People are crazy. Oh, wow. OK. Catch Lamar Morris on My Mama Told Me with Langston Kerman and David Borey on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all, I'm Maria Fernanda Diaz. When You're Invisible is my love letter to the working class people and immigrants who shaped me. Season two shares stories about community and being underestimated. All the greatest changes have happened when a couple of people said,

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