That precedent is well illustrated in Jennie Livingstone’s celebrated 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning. Shot in the mid-to-late ’80s, the film explores New York’s “ballroom” scene, a subculture that allows LGBT people in major American cities — especially disadvantaged gay or trans people of color — to forge together under new identities.
The kids on the ballroom scene form houses under house mothers, and often take on new identities that may include the house name as their new surnames. Within these houses they compete in dance and drag contests at specially organized balls. The scene still exists to this day, but it enjoyed its peak in the ’70s and ’80s.
Pepper LaBeija, a New York drag queen and the mother of House of LaBeija, observed in the documentary, “When someone has rejection from their mother and father, their family … they search for someone to fill that void. … I’ve had kids come to me and latch hold to me like I’m their mother or like I’m their father.”
This is how the ballroom scene emerged. Kids rejected by their families sought out new families and new communities with other outcasts, other exiles, other orphans. These houses became their families. Ballroom became their community. The ballroom scene is just one of the many ways in which LGBT people have created their own support networks, united by their common fears and dreams.
That is the fantasy that the X-Men represents.
Andrew Wheeler over at Comics Alliance writes his first part of his LGBT reading of the X-men, with House of Xavier: How The X-men Represent Queer Togetherness. (via kierongillen)
This is great. Go, read. (Also, it ties in with something Rachel – from rachelandmiles – and I were talking about last week, about the metaphor behind the X-Men and its limits, which is something I hope she has time/brain space to expound on publicly sometime, because as you might expect, it’s fascinating.)
