Even 16 years after the documentary Paris Is Burning shed light on New York City’s gay underground house ball scene, misconceptions linger about the scene’s past, present and future.
Jennifer Livingston’s misleading 1991 documentary Paris Is Burning brought the underground world of black queer “houses” and “balls” to the attention of the mainstream public, yet the film left much to be desired in terms of understanding how these social networks have transformed the culture of black gay New York in innumerable ways.
Almost 20 years after Livingston began shooting footage for Paris, and perhaps as a result of the stereotypes the film presented, the house ball community continues to be grossly misunderstood and stigmatized by the masses of black people, both gay and straight. In a moment when being unapologetically black and gay has dangerous consequences, house ball culture continues to provide a viable space for a new generation of “ball kids,” which has created a subculture that has redefined notions of family, masculinity, friendship and, of course, what it is means to be a diva.
Where did it all begin?
The history and legacy of the Harlem drag balls Numerous historians and cultural commentators have traced the origins of today’s house ball scene to the notorious culture of Harlem drag balls in 1920s and 1930s New York. Between roughly 1919 and 1935, an artistic movement that would come to be known as the “Harlem Renaissance” transformed the culture of uptown Manhattan not only as a result of its establishing new trends in black literature, music and politics but also for its scandalous night life and party culture.
The Harlem drag balls — usually held at venues such as the Rockland Palace on 155th street or later the Elks Lodge on 139th — were initially organized by white gay men but featured multiracial audiences and participants. The annual pageants became a sort of who’s who of Harlem’s black literary elite: Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen and Richard Bruce Nugent were all frequent attendees. Moreover, white photographers and socialites, such as the infamous Carl Van Vechten (author of the scandalous 1926 novel Nigger Heaven), were also in attendance.
The mixed racial dynamics of these early drag balls reflected the interracial nature of the Harlem Renaissance in general: African-American artists looked to wealthy white investors for patronage, while white spectators flocked to “hip” Harlem spaces as sources of trend-setting and exotic “negro” spectacle. The drag balls thus became a space where newly migrated African-Americans from the south and “liberal” Northern whites could imagine themselves as mavericks, as radicals pushing the norms of a then highly racially segregated U.S. culture. The lavish, carnivalesque drag balls became spaces where racial taboos were broken through sexual and gender nonconformity. The events soon evolved from grand costume parties to outright gay beauty pageants with participants competing in a variety of categories, many of which still bear resemblance to the categories of today’s house ball scene (such as “Face”).
However, not surprisingly, the early drag balls were plagued by an imbalance of racial power. Black performers, though allowed to participate in and attend the events, were rarely winners at the balls and often felt restricted in their ability to fully participate in the scene. Soon the black queens looked for opportunities to create a sociocultural world that was truly all their own.
An exclusively black drag ball circuit in New York City began to form around the 1960s; almost three decades after the first “girls” started to compete at the earlier drag events. However the cultural and political landscape of Harlem, specifically the neighborhoods’ earlier carefree “acceptance” of drag culture, had changed drastically.
Due to the growing popularity of 1960s black nationalist rhetoric (with its rigid restrictions on how “real” black men should express themselves), the balls became a more dangerous pastime pleasure. The balls began to be held as early as 3, 4 or 5 a.m. — a tradition that continues to this day — in order to make it safer for participants to travel the streets of Harlem safely with high heels and feathers when “trade” had gone to sleep. The early morning start times also made renting out halls cheaper, and ensured that “the working girls” (i.e., transsexuals who made their money as late-night sex workers) would also be able to make the function.
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