Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / Sept. 19, 1991, edition 1 / Page 12
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DTH Omnibus Page 7 Thursday September 19, 1991 V Exploring homosexual subcultures Page 6 DTH Omnibus Thursday September 19, 1991 I'll - 1 -5 -i iiai tt It-hTimiii "- Possibly the most beautiful man in the world Femme Queen Octavia Saint Laurent Glossary of voguing terms BALL A type of fashion show originat ing in Harlem, where minority men and women compete for trophies in a variety of categories. BUTCH QUEEN A masculine gay man; in ball terminology, a man whocompetes in men's clothing. CATEGORY A division of competi tion at a ball. Categories for both Butch Queens and Femme Queens include: Sports wear, Eveningwear, SchoolboySchoolgirl Realness, Executive Realness and Military Realness; other categories include Muscular Body (Butch Queens only ) Luscious Body and Model-type Body (Femme Queens only) Best Dressed Butch (for masculine lesbians) and Best Dressed Woman (for feminine women, gay or straight). CHILDREN The younger ball-walkers, or members of a House. EXECUTIVE REALNESS Category in which walkers wear business suits, carry briefcases and copies of The Wall Street Journal. Detail is important: briefcases may contain real plane tickets and charge cards. FEMME QUEEN In ball terminology, a man who competes in women's clothing. Often these men dress as women in their daily lives. Various surgical improvements are not uncommon. HOUSE An organization of ball-walkers, a gay street gang. Houses can be named after a designer, as in House of Chanel; after a House founder or Mother, as in House of Labeija; or simply for impact, as in House of Ninja. Houses provide support for the ball walkers in preparing for competition, and serve as surrogate families for younger mem bers who are orphaned or rejected by their families. LEGENDARY Noteworthy in the ball world, winner of many trophies, as "The Leg endary Dorian Corey" or "Pepper Labeija, Legendary Mother of the House of Labeija". LUSCIOUS BODY A category for fat, curvaceous, sexy Femme Queens; also billed as "Femme Queen 300 Pounds and Over", proving that ball standards don't al ways adhere to conventional ideals of femi nine beauty. MOTHER A leader, often founder of a House, either Butch or Femme Queens. Mothers must be very talented, popular, hard working and wise and compassionate. A Mother acts as surrogate parent to her Chil dren both in and out of competition. READING The act of verbally abus ing, criticizing and humiliating a competitor or rival in a witty and stylish manner; having a "reading session". REALNESS In ball categories, the ability to pass as something you are not, as in poor for rich, male for female, gay for straight. In life, Realness can be a matter of survival, as passing for straight to avoid homophobic vio lence. VOGUING A ball category in which dancers recreate the poses of models, inte grating acrobatic moves and complex expres sive gestures. Named for the magazine. WALK In ball terminology, to com pete, as to "walk a ball". Walking the balls is to House Children what street fighting is to gangs. WORK In ball terminology, a term of encouragement shouted during competition, as "Work, Miss Pepper, work!" Chapel Hill reacts to gay ball documentary RAHUL MEHTA Stall Writer Paris is Burning is hot, sizzling with the emotion of inner city gay fantasies of success and acceptance, cooled only by the chilling reality of a homophobic soci ety unwilling to aid in the realiza tions of these dreams. Lesbian director Jennie Livingston's cutting documentary of gay balls and the gay culture in Harlem, Paris is a powerful inferno that burns through gay stereotypes and homophobic tendencies, con suming any viewer who happens to stumble into theshowing with a closed mind or closed heart. The film played to a sellout crowd at the Varsity Theatre Friday night at midnight as a benefit for the HOPE (Helping Our People Everywhere) Fund, an AIDS support service at North Carolina Memorial Hospital. At $7 per ticket, over 230 tickets were sold, and including poster sales, about $ 1 ,700 was raised for the HOPE Fund, Richard Hess, Varsity assistant manager, said. The film opens for general showing Sept. 27 at regular admission prices. The benefit drew a primarily ho mosexual male audience, Chapel Hill resident Todd (not his real name) said, noting that "Anyone who's any one (in the gay community) is here tonight. "It's not often that the gay com munity gets a chance to get together like this," he said. "Look at all these straight people walking by saying, 'What movie is tfiis.'"' After a "socialization" period of about 45 minutesduring whichcham pagne, fresh fruit and chocolate were served, the movie began a little be fore 1 a.m. The documentary delved almost immediately into shocking scenes of the decadent world of the gay balls. As men slinked around in silk designer eveningwear, wiggling their hips and flaunting their "breasts," it was easy to forget that these femme fatales weren't strutting down Paris runways but rather on the floors of a filthy Elk's Lodge in the heart of Harlem. It was even easier to forget that after winning a trophy for real ness or beauty and having a shot at legendary status, many of these men had no homes to go back to after setting Paris on fire there was little for them to do but go back to the cold reality of homelessness, or at the very least loneliness in a frigid, self-obsessed society. In addition to the femme queen category, there were categories for gay men dressed as school boysgirls, Wall Street executives, military ser vicemen, in short, anything they couldn't be in real life. In an essay about making the documentary, Livingston comments on the irony of "imitating the very people who were excluding them." "There was an intense irony at work here," she writes, "as people expressed themselves by imitating a world that, if given half a chance, would spit on Black and Hispanic gays or at best ignore them." Howe ver, there is a sort of hope for the gay Harlem culture. Explained as "gay street gangs," houses and house mothers provide a positive society for drag ball participants. House moth ers, legendary drag queens, form houses named after famous designers or other aspects of pop culture (such as the House of Saint Laurent or the House of Xtravaganza.) These houses com pete as a sort of team at the balls and provide a "family" of "kids" that stick by each other, complete with "mother" and all. So inspired by this concept of a positive gay society, area drag peformer Pureena Chow (real name: Coleman Temple) dubbed herself at Friday night's showing house mother of the newly-formed House of Chow. When in drag the male performers refer to themselves in the feminine. The 28-year-old Durham resident is hoping to start having gay drag balls in the area. "If you're unique and different you tend to get things done," Chow said. "People stop and listen just to find out what's coming out of that strange thing." Pureena is quite aware that people look at her as a "freak." In her "high camp"drag,pillow-stuftingbreastsand nicely-curved pillow buttocks, Pureena doesn't see how they could see her as anything else. "I don't enjoy dressing like a woman," Pureena said. "It's purely a stage thing." But she does feel strongly about giving the gay community in the area something positive like a drag ball. "Most people can't understand what it's like for these people to walk a ball, win a trophy and be somebody, God give them grace," she said. "(The movie) makes people aware of what these people will do for a moment of glory." "I think people should see the movie just to understand what some poeple do to achieve some sort of success, a star status, regardless of the oppression and prejudice that may be keeping them where they are," she said. But she doesn't really expect any one to be changed by the movie. "Prejudice will never end," she said. "People teach their children the wrong way to think. Still others are more optimistic. Senior Joe Smith, an economics and public policy double major and co chair of the CGLA, said that Paris "enlightens" viewersabout the "search for self-esteem that gay people need to fullfill." Senior English education major Eric Houck said that seeing the dra matically tragic and remarkable lives of gay men in inner-cities helps view ers when they encounter more main stream gay people. "Whenever you deal with the ex treme of any belief, you automatically have a better understanding of the moderate view," Houck said. "By be ing thrown into the extreme of gay lifestyle you get a better understand ing of moderate gay life." Optimism aside, if the people pass ing by outside the theater shouting comments like "Okay, where are the transvestites" or "I must be tripping," protecting their girlfriends from the "freaks" lined up on the sidewalk, are any indication of the reception the documentary will receive, it's hard to tell whether it will have any sort of impact at all. Perhaps Paris is simply too hot to handle and viewers, rather than working to extricate any sort of insight or understanding, will decide it's much easier just to get out of the kitchen. L ) n f ( 1 rA ft ; ' : .- ? v ri'i v L;:fp i . r s. t- . & ., iAh nil- nun - mnrn in riiniirmi Miss Pureena Chow, Mother of the House of Chow, displays her first-place costume at the opening night of 'Paris' iS ? ' s: v O ii I - - iWM Si 'JJT 1 ity Out of the theater and into your neighborhood tit J V, 2 v -.Ml in iri hoi., nr nn . ,- r w I IMIMllMllliliilMUMnillilllMlillil mi lBMi iTifWIT JTgroup of ball-walkers, most of whom have already achieved Legendary or House Mother status, who serve as role-models for children of their Houses and Upcoming Legends JAY CARDO StaH Writer Four homosexual men walk into a Roy Rogers burger shack in New York City under the scrutiny of a docu mentary camera recording them for the startling new film Paris is Burning. One man saunters over to the cam era, which focuses between the heads of an elderly white couple, and ex claims in a lilting falsetto, "Look, they put cheese on the meat!" The look that couple shared at that moment expresses perfectly the shock this film hopes to generate. Actually, though, the reaction seemed less one of shock and more like these people's brains had been sucked out by this homosexual phenomenon so counter to their entire sense of real- Give it a rest, Mom and Pop America! These guys are just gay, not alien, threatening or infectious! Es sentially, that admonition becomes the core message of Paris is Burning. The movie seeks to prove that de prived, gay, black and Hispanic men in New YorkCity could rise to achieve anything in this world if they were only given the chance. Their me dium of expression? An acrobatic, flashy dance known as "Voguing." "Voguing is a way of expressing yourself in dance ... a way to tell the person you are dancing with what you want them to know about you," said 22 year-old Rick Burwell, a 1991 UNC graduate. In this way, local Voguing differs slightly from the dances in Paris is Burning, which has contestants competing for prestige and trophies for the honor of their House in addition to seeking a sense of personal satisfaction. Amid protests from homophobic friends and family, I ventured to The Club on Franklin Street one Thurs day night in an attempt to see just what this Voguing really is. Were there homosexuals there? Yes. Did they bother me, harass me, hit on me? No. "Just look around, man," said Eric Zollicoffer, the 1990 graduate who was feeding me Rolling Rocks from behind the bar, "it's straight here most n ights. There are straight people here now." Having gotten momen tarily lost in my notebook andor beer bottle for about ten minutes, I turned back towards the dance floor and saw the homosexual couples 1 had seen dancing before but a number of het erosexual couples who had moved in as well. "Eventually you start to get the outer fringes of Bohemian society at tending these Vogue balls. The hip people become involved with this practice, and soon it's co-opted into just another dance. And that phe nomenon is as old as society itself," professed visiting RTVMP lecturer Brian Austin from the University of Texas at Austin. Now wait just a minute, there! He couldn't possibly be saying that some of the homo sexual subculture might be drifting into our ever so sacrosanct hetero sexual world, could he? Surely that Madonna song "Vogue" has nothing whatsoever to do with these gaysdanc ing in drag, right? Heads up, passers by, I have a premonition that some insulted boys and girls from our na tionally infamous Bible Belt will be hurling the tapes and CDs of that gay embracing Material Girl out of many campus windows any moment. Such an immediate and closed minded shunning of homosexuals forms the walls that Paris is Burning attempts to destroy. "In the larger cities like Washington and New York, you don't see the fearful homophobia in heterosexuals, but down here in the South the reaction can be nega tive, but usually not directly," com mented Burwell. Well, Mr. Burwell probably knows better than I ever could, but in my three-day sojourn into the homo sexual community I was witness to jeers, derisive stares, and curses heaped upon homosexuals both in and out of their presence. The worst of the open homophobia I experienced centered on Chapel Hill's introduction to Paris is Burning by a midn ight benefi t show ing at the Varsity Theatre on Franklin Street last Friday the 13th. A veritable legion of homosexu als, most all of them male, ventured forth into the bright lights of the crowded streets, confident and open about their sexual preference even under the damning gaze of the college crowd. "It's not very often that the gay community is able to get together like this," said Todd, (not his real name). "Atoccasionslikethiswegetachancc to come out and watch what's going on." With the recent controversies that have arisen in the past weeks con cerning The Club and its potential loss of lease, many people involved with the homosexual community feel concerned about having no place to congregate. If The Club does close in January as expected, homosexuals will be left bcioft of any gathering place where they can have a sense of com munity. "Hopefully," said Richard Hess, the assistant manager for the Varsity and a Chapel Hill resident for five years, "this film might put some pres sure on the situation at The Club." With the powerful anti-homophobic message and the resounding approba tion it received from the homosexual community at its opening, this film could indeed work wonders for ad vancing the cause of homosexuals in this area. Even if, however, the effects amount to naught, the patients and staff in the Infectious Disease wing of the UNC Moore Hospital are thank ful for the movie. The benefit show ing Friday night supported the H.O.P.E. Fund, which has been loosely described as a Ronald McDonald house for victims of the AIDS virus. Susie Wilson, the director of In fectious Disease Case management, greeted the sold-out crowd and con veyed the thanks of those patients who were unfortunately unable to attend. The H.O.P.E. Fund works to ease the financial burdens of those suffering from AIDS (not all of whom are homosexual) by helping with rent and insurance and by purchasing medication, equipment and supplies needed for the care of these people. Perhaps it was Miss Chow who could say it all the best. "Anything else I want to say? Just live and let live, child. What else can you say?"
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Sept. 19, 1991, edition 1
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