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Argumentative Essay On Drag

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Drag is an act. Yet, an act of what? Can drag be discerned as imitation or critique of gender tropes through parody and exaggeration of heterosexual archetypes? Is it a complex and multidimensional performative act with subversive potential, or merely an expression of gender identity or desire? Is drag a radical political machination that can be used to denaturalise heterogeneous norms? Is drag is an object which casts a dense and expansive shadow from which implications of existing on the marginalised periphery of mainstream culture can be discerned? In this essay I seek to explore the motives and outcomes of drag, in Jennie Livingston’s documentary film Paris is Burning (1991), which records the activities of gay and transgender black and latino men aligned with the Harlem underground drag-ball circuit. …show more content…

Trophies are won by exact The men are fixated with the execution of ‘realness’ or precise replication of heterogonous social types such as executive or military realness and also occasionally minority types such as ‘bangee boy’ or ‘bangee girl’, which are terms directly routed in gay subculture. This realness is paradoxical. Precise replication occurs within a Ball context, which in itself contains codes that are strictly adhered to. The Ball culture is in itself a microcosm in which a reality is created. In this reality success and stardom is something that must worked for to be obtained. There are levels, hierarchies, a distinct

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The film documentary Paris is Burning is a complex film portraying the lives of African American men who are gay and transgender. The characters are Dorian Corey, Pepper LaBeija, Venus Xtravaganza, Willi Ninja, Octavia St. Laurent, Freddie Pendavis, and several others. This film focuses on how these men support each other and find happiness by embracing their culture. The film uses rhetorical strategies, such as pathos to allow the audience to respond emotionally, logos because this is a documentary about the lives of real men who are rejected by society, and ethos the integrity of this film comes from the whole film crew and the director Jennie Livingston who is openly lesbian (Clark). Livingston made a film that showed the audience a community that has its own cultural norms who are outlawed by everyone but themselves.

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However, in the late 1950s, the “tease” part vanished as it outlived its usefulness, and having been ravaged by time was shortened to “stripping” or traded in for the euphemistic “exotic dancing”” (Shteir 2004, 1). “Nudity in the theatre became both a symbol of free love and a mark of men’s oppression of women, and topless and bottomless dancing…” (Shteir 2004, 5). Since then, this kind of demure performance turned into explicit stripping and nude lap

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