巴黎在燃烧

In just little bit over 1 hour,Paris Is Burning(Jennie Livingston, 1990), a seminal and eye-opening documentary, invites us back to the 1980s to survey Harlem’s drag ball subculture, and by extension, queer existence, proffering a snapshot of the late 1980s via the eyes of New York City’s African American LGBTQ community. Interviewing prominent figures of the voguers, both legendary “mothers” of different “houses,” and their “children,” the film introduces us to the underground drag-ball scene as a place for the LGBTQ community to fully realize themselves and escape from this unwelcoming world.

“You have three strikes against you in this world, every black man has two - that they are just black and they are male - but you are black and you are male and you are gay.” As one of the voguers suggests at the very beginning, the film reveals the anguish and hardship for black queers to sustain themselves in a world filled with homophobia, transphobia, racism, and poverty. If football and basketball are competitions that make straight people crazy, then the ball is African American queers' Carnival. It constitutes the narrative of the documentary and epitomizes the New York City’s queer community’s way of living. The ball refers to a sumptuous but competitive celebration of identity and spirit in the 1980s. The competition is divided into several categories, including mimics of fashion house walk shows, vogue (a style of dancing) competitions, and role playing. People from every corner of the city gather in the ballroom in the most splendid manner to compete, aspiring to bring the “house” down. Every ball is about being real to each other’s identity and at the same time achieve fantasies that would not ever come true in real life. People who are never going to get a job as a corporate executive are wearing formal suits, with cigars in their mouths, walking across the room like they are hurrying to work in Wall Street. Girls who work in the corner stores in your neighborhood can appear fabulously, walking down the ballroom like they are on the runway of the Paris fashion house. Although ephemeral, these vivid performances actualize the fantasy that voguers have been longed for. In the ball, candor and genuineness are two things that matter the most. People can express emotions and desires without withholding their true identities. While the ball emphasizes individualism, “house” begins to emerge as the ball and the vogue evolve into a prevalent subculture in the city. Founded by some of the drag-ball veterans, the “house” signifies family and as a shelter, offering sustenance for “children” who share close aesthetic tastes and deep emotional connections, regardless of their races, identities, or social standing. “LaBeija,” “Ninja,” “Xtravaganza,” kids are willing to forfeit their original family name, and join the “house” as one part of the family. Rivals battle against each other not only for the final grand prize, but the glory of the “house” they represent.

Just like the flip side of a coin, behind the intimate and splendor drag-ball scene, however, underlies the anguish and struggles of the queer community, suffering from social prejudice and discrimination from the society. Behind the growth of each “house” is the rising number of children ousted and abandoned by their original families. Displaced kids would come to the ball starving with nothing in their pockets, searching for pleasure, excitement, and most importantly escape from the reality filled with hatred. Kids would steal things to get them to dress up, and come to a ball and live their fantasies for one night. “Girls” are willing to prostitute themselves to fund their transgender surgeries in order to become the most salient star in the ball and make their “family” proud. For many of the participants, the ball is no longer a dreamland, passing over love and positive energy, but highly addictive. It creates a vicious circle in which participants would virtually do anything just for a transient moment of indulgence. Venus Xtravaganza, one of the most tragic figures in the film, is a transgender who aspires to become a star/model, and pines for the social approval of the mass. Like typical teenage girls, she envies spoiled, rich, white girls living lavish lives without worrying to sustain themselves. She dreams to be loved by someone, and lives somewhere far away, where no one can identify her. However, as Venus about to work herself out of the mud, her dream shattered just two years before the premiere ofParis Is Burningas her body was uncovered under a bed in a sleazy hotel four days after being brutally strangled.

Venus’s death is just a snippet of the predicament that the African American queer community encountered.Paris Is Burningdid a great job in portraying the positive and idealistic side of the drag-ball, but still cannot cover up the cruelty and the indifference that the queer community faced in the reality. At the end of the documentary, voguers finally have an opportunity to display their performances on televisions, music videos, and even fly to Paris to walk on the fashion runway. However, the crowds surrounded them are no longer the congenial “family member” like it used to be, but groups of secular spectators searching for entertainment and senses of novelty. Vogue dance, together with underground drag culture, has been cited as the epitome of the decadent and depressing youth culture in the 80s, and those aspiring youths who dedicate themselves to participating in this spectacle have become just another appealing conversation over the dinner table.

ps. 之前在看climax的时候一直不知道他们里面跳的舞属于哪一种genre。感谢巴黎在燃烧让我又多了解一点voguing

高潮 (2018)

6.5

2018 / 法国 / 剧情 惊悚 情色 歌舞 / 加斯帕·诺 / 索菲亚·波多拉 Romain Guillermic

上学期hiphop culture课上看的，印象非常深刻。昨天吃饭的时候听podcast讲到最近很火的街舞节目，包括这街和美国新做的lengendary。近几年街舞的风靡和大众化确实让人吃惊，节目里吐槽lengendary将 underground ballroom culture通过娱乐的形式展现出来，实在与原本的houses相差太远。于是随即想起这部纪录片，记录了90年代纽约地下ballroom community的诞生和发展。当时的非裔、拉丁裔等少数族裔性少数群体为了在生存举步维艰的社会寻找慰藉和归宿创办了houses和变装舞会，也就久而久之诞生了ballroom community、包括vouging舞种。这些queer们会穿上海军军装、或者打扮成时尚杂志封面的摩登女郎在拥挤嘈杂的地下舞厅走秀。好像上一秒还在思考下一顿的温饱，下一秒老娘换上崭新的衣服就是舞台上最亮眼的模特、可以尽情地享受关注的鲜花、掌声和尖叫。ballroom is a shelter for those marginal figures to live in their fantasies.

里面最让我难受的是一个变性女生叫venus xtranvaganza（不知道拼的对不对😂）。她在片子里说自己的梦想就是能做一个spoiled white girl，然后可以穿上婚纱在教堂里结婚，和自己的丈夫住在一个suburb的大house里。但是fantasy毕竟是fantasy，她最后是死于谋杀，尸体四天后才发现。甚至到现在，每年都有很多的trans gender ballroom dancer被杀，所以说每次看到一些选秀节目把voguing、houses和ballroom搬上大屏幕时候的光鲜亮丽我都会比较迷惑。当然也不是不喜欢，毕竟作为一个街舞爱好者，我可是连着追了两季的这街。但是我就不知道这些九十年代最早期的voguing舞者们，也就是这些创造voguing的前辈，看了这种节目，会是什么想法。

都说他们经历的苦难诞生了艺术，但这种艺术成为一种可以live in the fantasy的寄托的渠道在我看来真的蛮可悲的。在节目里还说到人们常说没走过ballroom就不配教voguing，因为voguing有些经典动作，比如手抚摸过没有喉结的颈部，都是代表了那个性少数群体的自我表达，而现今这些街舞形式被如此大众化地表达，也不知道这其中的含义和故事能不能也被大众了解到。

小时候在舞蹈团，总是觉得舞蹈一定是美的，而跳舞的人一定是天鹅颈、纤腰细跨走路直直的。接触了街舞才发现街舞的要点就是需要放下偶像包袱、去掉我们所谓的“美”，而去找到属于自己的最真实、最发泄、最热烈的自我表达。所以我有时候不喜欢看kpop就是觉得kpop约束太多（当然只是个人爱好没有否定kpop），太过死板，不是我理解的街舞。而不论是hiphop和breaking的狂放、waacking的性感、vouging的奔放妖艳，他们的背后都有一些需要去了解的故事。艺术创作不易。

思路有点乱，这几天midterm特别忙，所以有想法随时记下了。这部殿堂级纪录片是相当推荐。

2019年才看到这部片子，停留在历史里的唏嘘感慨继续在作祟着。人们对滥交感染艾滋死亡的恐惧瞬间就会转变成一种冒险的刺激。

跨性别女性与变装皇后的身份混淆在一起，出柜同性恋身份还会被父母赶出家门，那里是80年代末的纽约。

不喜欢摄影师刻意用镜头展现ta们的女性气质，比如说话是手的动作，太明显暴露出来是一个直人在摄像了，一股子大惊小怪的镜头语言。

拍跨性别女性用群像的方式，只会是浅尝辄止。

上野千鹤子说gay大多是厌女的，我看是实然的。变装人妖的服化模仿的只是他们刻板印象中的女性，让我这个普女尴尬，他们时常有一种用力过猛的感觉，放在当代网络语境就是雌竞入骨的那批人，游离于时代，孤高孤独又弱小，迷茫并找不到自己的位置和归宿，只能拿声色犬马当作精神宣泄的出口。他们于女性也只是一个审视着的他者。毕竟里面老gay也不愿做变性手术(尽管自己也是弱势边缘群体),他们确实了解女性的处境也是弱势的，并没想象中那么好，变女性无非是从一种弱势到另一种弱势。电影描述的这批人同徐童游民系列的那批人也没什么不同，就是看见社会更多的灰的底层。影片里娇小身材的维纳斯的死还是让我很伤心，他青春同样有过梦想却die young。nobody总想成为somebody，也让我迷惑:是否底层人士的梦想更多的是一文不值，或许结果便是死于谋杀。

p.s这个电影并没有那么好看，只是够西方视角的政治正确所以才这么高分？啰嗦很多纯粹是由于女性的同理心—— 一种大多数男人并不具有的东西。几十年过去了，这类群体的处境也就进步了一点罢了，还是原来的剧本，本质没有一点改变。

It’s again, double-bill time! Two seminal documentaries invite us back to the 1980s, Jennie Livingston’s PARIS IS BURNING is an eye-opening watershed to survey Harlem’s drag ball subculture, and by extension, queer existence, meanwhile Hiroshi Teshigahara’s ANTONIO GAUDÍ lingers mesmerically in Barcelona mostly, to arrange a tour of the starchitect’s jaw-dropping achievements.

For anyone who has been acquainted with Ryan Murphy’s hit FX drama POSE (2018-), PARIS IS BURNING gets audience a vantage point of its real-life inspirations, interviewing prominent figures of the participants, both legendary “mothers” of different “houses”, and their “children”, also presenting footage of various competitions that can bring the house down (the fad of voguing is a benediction), candor and amazement is in equal measure under Livingston’s circumspect gleaning, for one thing, no poignancy is permitted to color the film’s holistic positiveness that encompasses hopes, dreams, yearning, being yourself and blatant exuberance, introspection is merely a side dish.

And that lies exactly the strength and extraordinariness of Livingston’s work, since there are already too many instances of sorrow, discrimination and horror incurred to these marginalized individuals (gays, queens and transexuals, predominantly African-American and Hispanic), it is core-shattering to find out that one of the interviewers, Venus Xtravaganza is brutally murdered in 1988, aged only 23, two years before the film’s release, and obviously Livingston resists a great temptation not to put that pathos-driven message on the screen for sensationalizing or eliciting our rage and outcry, in the last resort, PARIS IS BURNING is the celebration of a subculture and its members, to inspire and encourage.

The ball competition sustains as the apex of its participants to obtain some semblance of mainstream conformity, to prove they can cut it for any stereotypes residing in a heteronormative society, but also playing up their glamor, flamboyance to the eleven if the category fits. The yen for acceptance while retaining one’s uniqueness is soberly laid bare in this culturally influential and tactically formulated time capsule.