Hooray for You

"You don't have to bend the whole world.   I think it's better to just enjoy it.  Pay your dues.  And enjoy it.  If you shoot an arrow and it goes real high....hooray for you."

          ---Dorian Corey, in Paris is Burning (1991) directed by Jennie Livingston


Today's quote is taken from Jennie Livingston's controversial, award-winning documentary Paris is Burning.  This film documents the black and Latino tranvestite subculture of New York City and their performances at balls.  Livingston introduces her audience to some of the key terms of the ball culture, such as "voguing," "shading," ""mopping," "legendary," and most importantly "realness."   Ball participants perform in a wide range of categories in which the goal is to look and act as much like one's white, straight (and most often upper-class) counterpart as possible.   

Livingston's work has been praised for the way that it exposes identity as largely performative.  Yet her film also underscores the impenetrability of racial, sexual, and class-based boundaries in defiance of the American myth of the self-made individual.

Dorian Corey is one of the older drag queens and his sage reflections provide a unifying narrative thread to the film.  His musings point to the possibilities and the ironies of life, not only within the drag community, but for the white, straight audience that Livingston seems to anticipate may be viewing her film. This quote--the final line before the credits---is not uttered with resignation as much as amusement and the knowledge that comes from years of successes as well as disappointments.  Corey's wry humor in addressing people we might well refer to as life's "archers" keeps his commentary from succumbing to the mere cliche.