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After the Ball- Tav Nyong’o

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Nynog'o writes an analysis of the film Paris is Burning, deviating from other including bell hooks, who have criticized the film's centering of the white gaze. While Nynog'o recognizes the problems in the film's production and audience, he also call for us to appreciate what the film is able to give us. "Its all the more quixotic to seek to protect ball culture from commercial exploitation given how successful the ball scene has been at maintaining itself as a viable underground movement long after many other “subcultures” have burnt out or turned mainstream. Not even as powerfully a commercial force as RuPaul has managed to denature the art form, or alter the terms under which it sustains the communities to which it belongs. Watching the Houses United ball, I was reminded again why that is: while the form is very presentational and solicits the onlooking gaze, it possesses its own internal logic and aesthetic standards, and rarely stops to educate its audience about. To walk a ball is the only real way into the performative logic of vogue and runway, and that seems both right and just. Just because the ball is on display, just because a dancer is in your video or at your concert, it doesn’t mean that everything is on display."

Analysis continues with Phillip Brian Harper's piece, "The Subversive Edge."