THE CONTINUING GREATNESS OF 'PARIS IS BURNING'

By Jerome Cleary

Outfest offered a special screening of the infamous 1990 documentary “Paris Is Burning” by director Jennie Livingston who also screened her new 22-minute lesbian short “Who’s The Top.”Like any good classic “Paris Is Burning?” not only held up for its wear 15 years later, but also has continued to deliver a poignant tale of the struggles of the upper Harlem drag queen, transsexual and lower class New York City African American and Latino gays against the white-white world of privilege, society and money."Paris Is Burning" consistently delivers today like any great documentary peeling back layer upon layer and showing us a world within a world within a world. In the mid 1980s the gay and lesbian world was changing in several ways. Calvin Klein’s humongous billboard ads in Times Square depicted men sexualized in white briefs. AIDS had moved from being a “gay cancer” to a serious disease and Studio 54 had closed. Disco had died, and Madonna was a big pop star. But way uptown during this time, a world was continuing to evolve that only film director Livingston had her finger on — the world of the balls vs. the balls. These low-rent drag balls had voluminous amounts of categories, from “Town and Country” to “Bangee Girl” to “Model” and more. Livingston spent three years from 1986 to 1989 studying and interviewing the subjects of “Paris Is Burning” to gain their trust. So when filming began in the late 1980s, what we now see on the screen today is documentary gold.Livingston has made the subjects: uptown Harlem poverty-stricken gay world more vulnerable, real, tragic and courageous up against the upwardly white gay world. Within the drag queen world, character is built with attitude and flamboyance — and as this documentary continues to reveal, the heart-wrenching desires to be loved, accepted not only by society but by their families and peers. Even today, the transsexuals, transvestites and drag queens are still the last minority that has not gotten the coverage in the media as has the sanitized white “Will & Grace” and “Queer Eye For the Straight Guy” have. This last minority is still considered to be the freaks by society. This is why “Paris Is Burning” is still an extremely important film, as it continueds to say a lot about gay society in America.The documentary starts in NYC where black and Hispanic drag queens hold "balls,” where they dress up in drag, or as men or women or themselves — and walk the cat walk in front of an audience just to be voted on. When this film came out in 1990, it was controversial and won numerous best documentary awards at film festivals. It was never nominated for an Academy Award, but I believe 1990 was still too early for aging Academy voters to embrace Hispanic and African American drag queens’ plight and celebration. As many of the subjects of the documentary have passed on because of AIDS, poor health care, diabetes or have been victims of a tragic crime, they all live on in our hearts and in our minds because they want what we all want in life: love and happiness.Jerome Cleary is a writer, TV talk show host and comic at The World Famous Comedy Store-www.freecomedytickets.com and can be reached at: jeromeclearytalk@aol.com