ABSTRACT
Paris is Burning is a film that many audiences assume is inherently oppositional because of its subject matter and the identity of the filmmaker. Watching Paris is Burning; the author began to think that the many yuppie-looking, straight-acting, pushy, predominandy white folks in the audience were there because the film in no way interrogates whiteness. The whiteness celebrated in Paris is Burning is not just any old brand of whiteness but rather that brutal imperial ruling-class capitalist patriarchal whiteness that presents itself, its way of life, as the only meaningful life there is. Within the world of the black gay drag ball culture she depicts, the idea of womanness and femininity is totally personified by whiteness. Many heterosexual black men in white supremacist patriarchal culture have acted as though the primary evil of racism has been the refusal of the dominant culture to allow them full access to patriarchal power.
