bell hooks - Is Paris Burning?

Selection from text:

"For black males to take appearing in drag seriously, be they gay or straight, is to oppose a heterosexist representation of black manhood. Gender bending and blending on the part of black males has always been a critique of phallocentric masculinity in traditional black experience. Yet the subversive power of those images is radically altered when informed by a racialized fictional construction of the 'feminine' that suddenly makes the representation of whiteness as crucial to the experience of female impersonation as gender, that is to say when the idealized notion of the female/feminine is really a sexist idealization of white womanhood. This is brutally evident in Jennie Livingston's new film Paris is Burning. Within the world of the black gay drag ball culture, she depicts, the idea of womanness and femininity is totally personified by whiteness" (bell hooks, 1992: 147).

Video Clip of Young Girl - The Ignorance & Destructive Manifestation of White Supremacy
There are many things we can take from this video clip, especially the fact that this girl's parents are instilling concepts in her head about what her race is all about. She is not old enough to have developed these ideas on her own, but will now go through life with these things drilled into her memory. I think bell hooks would be appalled at what this girl's parents are teaching her, especially since they are not only saying that her race is inferior, but that her basic existence is inferior to that of a white girl's.


White America - clip from Paris is Burning
I found this clip on YouTube; it is a small piece from the film Paris is Burning. I think it is one of the most profound parts, and wanted to post it so that people can refer to it whenever they want. :)

Wikipedia "explanation" of the film
It was funny to me that a description of this films actually exists on Wikipedia. Sure, there are components of the film that are universally understood, but I do not see how it is possible to make such broad, generalized statements about a film that has so many complexities.

Sources:
bell hooks. 1992. "Is Paris Burning?" In Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End. Pp. 145-156.
http://www.youtube.com/
http://images.google.com/imghp?tab=wi
http://wikipedia.org/