Other
https://doi.org/10.38003/ccsr.3.5-6.4
Between Subversion and Submission: from Paris is Burning to Pose, New York Ball Culture as Heterotopia
Margaret Gillespie
; Université de Franche-Comté
Abstract
Almost three decades span the release of Paris is Burning (1990), Jennie Livingston’s
arthouse documentary on the late-1980s New York ballroom scene, and its fictional
revisiting in the TV series Pose (2018-21), created by Ryan Murphy and now a global
phenomenon thanks to its presence on streaming services. Paris is Burning and Pose have
both gone on to be highly successful commercially, and stand as landmark moments of
non-white queer visibility. Appearing at critical junctures in the history of racial nonheteronormative
sexualties, they have occasioned, in their wake, a rethinking of the
epistemological foundations of gender identity and the generic codes underpinning
trans representation. As such, these visual texts and the world they represent can be also
be read as queer heterotopias — “other spaces” where dominant values and practices are
at once mirrored and challenged — as they invite both an endorsement and a queering
(or “transing”) of the norms with which they engage.
Keywords
ballroom, drag, heterotopia, queer, transgender
Hrčak ID:
328128
URI
Publication date:
31.12.2021.
Visits: 648 *