Paris is still Burning: drag queens, gender and language

The aim of my dissertation is to analyze the documentary Paris is Burning both in socio-political and linguistic terms. Paris is Burning is a 1991 documentary that sheds light on the lives of New York’s African American and Latinx drag queens, their rituals and their iconic language. I chose Paris is Burning because the community it depicts is an incredible example of how gender, class and race come together, in very complex ways, to create Queer identities. With my work I intend to find an answer to the following questions: how can we define a group that does not fit into society’s standard? And how can such group define itself? How are Queer people limited by heteronormative language and society? To answer, first I looked into the history of drag and of the Harlem’s ball circuit, the backdrop of the documentary. For the second chapter, I explored Queer Theory, in particular the work of Judith Butler, and sociolinguistics, to determine which are the best tools and guidelines to analyze a community as complicated as that of Paris is Burning. For the last chapter I used as reference Lakoff’s women’s language (1975), African American Vernacular English and elements of gay subculture to do my own analysis of the language used by the documentary’s queens.