Ball Culture In The Film 'Paris Is Burning' By Jennie Livingston

“Paris is Burning” is a film regarding ball culture and the struggle for stardom, though it is director Jennie Livingston’s choice of remaining behind the camera, unseen, that gives her film validity. In her scathing critique of Livingston’s work, bell hooks depicts Livingston as a horrible person for creating a film on black drag culture being that as the film editor, Livingston has the power to alter subject’s meanings, something hooks does not believe Livingston has the right to do as a white person. As the director and editor of “Paris is Burning,” Livingston indeed holds a great amount of power, however, her awareness of her place in society proven through her lack of presence throughout the documentary shows that she did not abuse her

In the scene starting at 1:00:55 that concludes at 1:03:33, Octavia St. Laurent enters a modelling contest held in a mall. Though the focus of this scene is of Laurent and her shot at stardom, Livingston often focusses on other white model contestants. Often, Livingston depicts Laurent as hidden in the shot, or comes in and out of the focus. Livingston purposely shows the mall scene in this way to emphasize how white culture lacks awareness and is detached from the black drag community. Although hooks believes that Livingston has “so little awareness of the politics that undergird any commodification of "blackness" in this society” (hooks 152), Livingston consciously uses these shots of Laurent getting lost in the crowd to stress the ignorance that surrounds her. The lack of knowledge about black culture that is so apparent in this scene is precisely what Livingston is attempting to change through this film. hooks may disagree that Livingston was well intentioned making this film, however it is apparent in the style of her film work that Livingston created “Paris is Burning” to bring attention to an unfamiliar