“In a ballroom, you can be anything you want – you’re not really an executive, but you’re looking like an executive, and therefore you are showing the straight world that I can be an executive. If I had the opportunity, I would be one. And that is like a fulfilment.”
These words were spoken by the New York drag queen Dorian Corey, as documented in Jennie Livingston’s landmark Paris Is Burning (1990). The documentary – this week re-released in New York cinemas and now available on Netflix – charts the subcultural “ballroom” scene of mid-to-late 1980s Harlem, where LGBTQ+ black and Latinx people competed in runway battles and Voguing dance-offs. The thriving community is also the subject of Ryan Murphy’s acclaimed FX-series Pose, currently available on BBC iPlayer.
Corey’s quote relates to an aspect of ballroom history I’ve long been fascinated with: that of “realness”. As part of their pageantry, ballgoers would compete at imitating the most conventional images of white America; categories ranged from “corporate executive” and “military general” to “high-fashion winter sportswear” and “going to college realness”. In this counter-cultural space designed exclusively for LGBTQ+ people of colour – most from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds – was an intent to wear the costumes of the country that denounced them. Debate still rages today about the way mainstream institutions appropriate LGBTQ+ culture – you’ll be hard pressed to find a brand that doesn’t flash a rainbow logo this Pride month – but what happens when LGBTQ+ communities instead steal from the mainstream? And what does this tell us about the relationships LGBTQ+ people have with the dominant culture?
For decades, queer artists have manipulated the language and imagery of heteronormative society. Drag’s rich history of lip-syncing is a vivid example. Many LGBTQ+ people can recall that first spine-tingling moment in a nightclub when they became hypnotised by a drag queen mouthing the words to their favourite song – and in doing so giving it a whole new meaning. For me it was a queen in New York, who transformed Whitney Houston’s club banger I Wanna Dance With Somebody into a gut-punching cry for intimacy after lifelong familial rejection.
There’s something immediately galvanising in seeing a queer person steal a product from dominant culture, only to empty it out and replace its original connotations with ones that resonate with their community. In a way, drag performers are to pop culture what Robin Hood is to the financial elite. And even if a performance isn’t explicitly political, the mere act of watching a queen/king lip-sync to a song originally designed for the masses can inspire hope. As LGBTQ+ people, systemic prejudices mean we implicitly feel unwelcome inside mainstream culture; there’s a sense of triumph in watching ourselves assume the culture that discounted us, and on our own terms.
This cold war between mainstream and counter-culture was at the heart of Andy Warhol’s work: he had to adopt survival strategies as a gay artist in the US of the 1950s and 60s. His ambition was to create spaces within an institutionally homophobic mainstream in which queer people could feel represented. Take the infamous Marilyn screen prints, where Warhol borrows the newspaper photograph of a female celebrity designed for straight male pleasure, only to colourfully distort it so she’s less a screen siren and more a drag icon. Warhol recycles a widely popular image, smuggling something back into mass culture with which LGBTQ+ people across the US might have a greater affinity.
But when does this strategy shift from political subversion to assimilation? For this is the inevitable tragedy running through Paris Is Burning. Although “realness” is by nature irreverent with heteronormative norms, it’s also undeniable that many who practise it are desperate for mainstream America’s stamp of approval. Within the balls, the more “realistically” gender-nonconforming bodies of colour can pass as corporate executives, the more trophies they win (literally). It’s a bit like that bittersweet thrill many gay people confess to when someone says, “Oh, I thought you were straight!” The sad paradox is that LGBTQ+ people have suffered so much exclusion – whether by family, faith, or society – that we’re often willing to accept any form of validation from the very institution that excluded us. By the end of the documentary, this tension plays out when a black trans woman admits that despite finding refuge in ballroom culture, all she really wants is “to live a normal, happy life. Whether it’s being married and adopting children. Whether it’s being famous and rich … I want so much more.”
As a queer person who has suffered a great deal of familial rejection, I know how seductive any kind of inclusion can feel. When you’ve not had much, even crumbs of acceptance feel like a lot. It’s partly why our community is so susceptible to being co-opted and commodified. So a message to all institutions pouncing on us this Pride – just because we’re vulnerable, it doesn’t mean we can’t see what you’re doing. To the Home Office: stop flying our flag while you deport LGBTQ+ asylum seekers. To the NSPCC: don’t boast our colours while you give in to transphobia. To Topshop: don’t parade our filter while you remove trans people from changing rooms. If you’re all going to steal our rainbow, we deserve more than your crumbs.
• Amrou Al-Kadhi is a British-Iraqi writer, drag performer and filmmaker. Their first book, UNICORN: The Memoir of a Muslim Drag Queen (4th Estate, Harper Collins) is out on 3 October
