Paris is Burning Response Paper. Visual & Performing Arts Movie Review

Paris is Burning Response Paper
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Paris is Burning Response Paper
In the 1990 movie “Paris is Burning," by Jennie Livingston, the documentary focused on way on how the minority groups, especially the LGBTQ+, deal with the demands of society's conventional norms and values. The movie talked about varying perspectives of the characters to fully understand the difficulties of being homosexual during the 70's and the 80's. In the movie, they emphasized that the white male often stereotypes and marginalize homosexual behavior, so, they needed a way to defend themselves against homophobic prejudices and discrimination by creating their own social norms and values where they can express whatever they wanted to be without any judgement. Voguing is the dance style on which the LGBT+ in the movie tried to express their identity and thinking. Although there are many ways on which the LGBTQ+ express their sense of identity in the movie such as the Harlem balls, the houses and extravagant outfits, the purpose of voguing for self-empowerment and throwing down “shade” provides further insight on the way where the community communicate their thinking and identity.
In the movie, the LGBTQ+ community used voguing to empower themselves in controlling the factors that molds their sense of identity. This community knows that they are the owner of their own bodies and they control the way their body would look, so, dancing is one way for them to show empowerment. In class, I often generalize the form of dance as the art of expression through bodily movement, but watching the movie made me realize that dance is also associated with a group’s sense of identity where the slightest movements are associated with their thinking and image projection on how people want themselves to be viewed by others. Additionally, we learned the elements that generally represent voguing. I observed that the dance is specific in the movement of the extremities and its relationship with your inner feelings like having a pictorial session and successfully projecting yourself like a model. The movie explained that it is because voguing is based from the magazine “vogue” and the steps are based from the poses of magazine models. This implies that the dance is related to the vision of being socially accepted like those magazine models through the engagement of the whole LGBTQ+ community by voguing.
Voguing is a way to communicate thinking; particularly, throwing insults or “shade” against other members of the LGBTQ+ community. Initially, I thought that expression is only for the self or group identity, but I learned in the movie that voguing can also communicate insult in a symbolic and indirect way. In the movie, if you hate something about another including make-up, clothing style, or hair styles, you just need to “shade” them by showing-off your vogue dance moves; whomever had the best moves will win. According to Dorien Corey, one of the interviewed characters in the documentary, “Shade is I don't tell you you're ugly, but I don't have to tell you, because you know you're ugly. And that's shade” The movie emphasized on the vogue dance battle aspect of shading since it is the most subtle way of expressing disgust against another at any place and any time including the streets of New York city. However, towards the end of the movie, voguing as explained by Willi Ninja, is that as voguing evolved through time, it lost this aspect of shading.
Reference
Livingston, J. (Director & Producer). (1990). Burning in Paris [Motion picture]. United States: Academy Entertainment Off White Productions
Rize Response Paper
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Rize Response Paper
When I started dancing in class, I viewed the activities as an engaging way to relieve both my body and mind in the stressors of daily life. Dancing is a fun way to maintain physical fitness and balance within myself. In a way, dancing is how I convey emotion by resonating into a strategic choreography and movement to express myself to my audience. In class, krumping is the dance where I instinctively knew that powerful raw emotions are meant to be expressed. The aggressive movements and the sharp gestures observed in krumping generally implies the channeling of potentially negative feeling through dance. In the 2005 movie "Rize," written and directed by David LaChapelle, the birth of krumping was documented to observe the role of dance as one way to change the hateful "gang" culture of Los Angeles into a more peaceful and progressive one. In the movie, two related dance styles were documented, which are both meant to turn pessimism into optimism, these styles are clowning and krumping. Although the activity in class mainly focused on krumping, the roles of both clowning and krumping in the dance culture of South Central, Los Angeles should both be further discussed as they are the dance styles that have the purpose to communicate help for the people to not develop a criminal mindset and help them channel away all their aggressive emotion.
In first interviews of the movie, Tommy the Clown introduced his passion on making the children in his neighborhood to develop an optimistic mindset. His ways include the use of cosmetics and costumes to transform himself into an ever-smiling clown. I never heard of clowning before I watched the movie, but Tommy the Clown's intention to put smiles and help decrease the number of gang members are highly commended by the people. The most basic movements of clowning, as described by the different clown crews in the movie, is hip hop variation of the “stripper dance” combined with shakes and flows in the body with the use of face paint to entertain a crowd usually at birthday parties. I was touched with the way where Tommy the Clown created a dancing group to give those who wants a better life away from danger. In class, I only focused on the superficial benefits of dancing to alleviate stress, but Tommy the Clown considers dancing as an important tool to separate life and death for the people. Although clowning is intended to put inspiration and fun to others, I observed that the expression of emotion is dispersed or not focused to only one emotion.
On the other hand, krumping is the dance style that branched off clowning and is continuously evolving to express current aggressive and violent emotions of the dancers. According to the interviews of the Krumpers crew, dance is taught at performing arts schools to learn the conventions of each such as ballet, tap, modern, jazz and the like, but there are no such schools in South Central, Los Angeles. They emphasized the role of music to match emotions. These emotions will then be transformed...