Looking Through the Windows of the Master’s House
Kali Adams ’23
Audre Lorde, in addressing how we allow differences to define and divide us, made the claim that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (Lorde 112); that the systems of an oppressive institution cannot be weaponized and used against the same institution. The ballroom scene of the 1980s, as demonstrated in the groundbreaking 1990 film Paris is Burning, validates Lorde’s statement by virtue of the ways in which it subverts societal standards and seeks to create a new “house” for its participants, and by how the same scene ultimately undermines its own purpose. Within the confines of the ballroom, participants possess the potential to define and shape their community, but the power and appeal of normative standards that still manage to infiltrate the queer community create a culture that is caught between societal overhaul and conformity.
In order to explore these ideas in relation to the ballroom scene, it is important to first consider Lorde’s definition of “the master’s house” and its significance. Speaking about the struggle that comes from existing as someone whose identity (in Lorde’s case, as a black queer woman) did not align with societal norms, Lorde explained, “Survival… is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish… For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (Lorde 112). In this statement, Lorde was claiming that, in order to destroy institutions that oppress those who do not adhere to their idea of normality, it is important to come together with those similarly oppressed to create a new institution based solely on the values of its creators. For her, “survival” wasn’t about trying to reshape institutions in ways that would benefit those that they had previously oppressed, but rather it was about working to shape entirely new institutions. While many still believe in the power of changing the system from the inside, it is important to consider how deep the roots of most institutionalized oppression go. If one was to take the “master’s tools”–the same ideas, rhetoric or systems that had been used as a means of oppression–and try to utilize them in their favor, the sole outcome would be a stronger institution because its values had been reinforced in yet another iteration. Working inside the established societal boundaries will not allow for exploration of new ways in which we can disrupt and overcome oppression, and therefore the method of utilizing Audre Lorde’s “master’s tools” will not allow us to create a world that gives its citizens a chance to define it for themselves.
Defining “Common Cause”
The ballroom culture explored in the film Paris is Burning is an example of a community that allowed its citizens to define the norms and structure of their spaces for themselves in ways that subverted the white, heteronormative standards of the time. The film looks into the New York City ballroom scene of the 1980s, a scene that was dominated by queer African American and Latino youth. The ballroom itself centered around competitions where participants might dance, model, vogue, or otherwise perform in categories that ranged anywhere from “best dressed” to “realness,” in which performers seemed to embody an identity they themselves did not possess. But this community also extended far beyond the ballroom floor.
As seen in Paris is Burning, most of the ballroom attendees and performers were queer youth who had been kicked out of their homes for being LGBTQ, a circumstance that led to the establishment of another significant part of ballroom culture: the houses. The houses served as surrogate families, giving the youth a better shot at survival (since the other option was often simply living on the streets), and they also gave individuals a space to live without fear of the repercussions one might face as an out queer individual. Since this system of found families fully subverted the heteronormative notion of nuclear families, the community centered around the ballrooms avoided using the “master’s tools” in order to create structure within their developing society. By choosing to redefine social structures in ways that elicited greater openness and acceptance than those found in the “master’s house,” these ballroom spaces literally create a new kind of “house” while epitomizing Lorde’s idea of finding “common cause with those others identified as outside the structures.”
Performance and Presentation
But the ballroom scene also embodies Lorde’s claim that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” in more than one way. While the ballroom scene may seem removed from the pressures and expectations of mainstream society, the lines between the two worlds are far from definite. As previously mentioned, an important part of the ballroom scene was the performance of “realness,” in which the performers would try to emulate an archetype of heteronormative life–the businessman, the movie star, and likewise–with the goal of being able to “pass” as this persona.
In the beginning of Paris is Burning, some of the queens explain how the performance of “realness” allows them to fulfill their desire to fit into conventional society, to temporarily live up to the ideas of success that were being expressed in mainstream media. The appeal of fitting into the ideals of the dominant culture is undeniably strong, especially when considering the fact that most of the youth of the ballroom were just leaving the world in which they had been discriminated against and oppressed, and entering another that was ready to fully accept them as they were. When one grows up trying to reach unattainable standards, it is hard to shake those ideals, even after finally entering a space that allows you to exist simply as you are.
Understanding the conditions which “realness” was born from makes it easier to understand why those in the ballroom scene would go to great lengths to replicate the very culture that oppressed them. The categories of “realness” all obviously uphold many ideas important to heteronormative culture–perhaps the most problematic being the idea of a gender binary–and ultimately erase minorities, which seems to put the practice at odds with the purpose of these queer communities. As Phillip Brian Harper writes in his essay about the film, “The critical difference between normative subjects and those produced in the enactment of Realness is that the former are discursively constituted as recognizable within the governing social structure and thus are legitimated in a way that the latter are not” (Harper 43). In other words, the practice of “realness” works exactly as a way of letting the “master’s tools” enter and control a space that is otherwise perceived to be outside of the “master’s house.” The desire to be accepted by the dominant culture–to be allowed a place in the “master’s house”–is not an unreasonable wish. But by allowing this desire to infiltrate the ballroom scene, the space becomes corrupted by the master’s rules and can no longer be seen as a space with a “common cause” as defined by Lorde–a space wholly unconnected to the structures of conventional society.
The performance of “realness” also further perpetuates an act that LGBTQ individuals often have to execute daily in order to survive, but this performance is happening in a space that is supposed to exist outside of these expectations. Beyond the ballroom scene, its individuals must choose whether or not to conform to the rules of the “master’s house” in terms of presentation, a choice that contributes directly to their ability to earn a livelihood or maintain relationships with those that they are not out to. As explained by Dorian Corey, one of the queens featured in Paris is Burning, “They give the society what they want to see, where they wouldn’t be questioned, rather than have to go through prejudices about your life and your lifestyle” (Paris). In the world outside of the ballroom, performances of “realness” are no longer just that–performances. Outside of the ballroom, a bad “performance” puts the individual at tremendous risk, with the worst potential outcome being death, as seen in the case of Venus Xtravaganza, a performer who was brutally murdered when her identity as a trans woman was discovered (Paris).
A New Kind of “House”
It is undeniable that the performance of “realness” will have a role in the LGBTQ community as long as there is a heteronormative society to contrast and constrain it, but the question is whether there should be a place for this performance within spaces like the ballroom that have been established as safe. According to Lorde’s argument, there is not a place for the performance of “realness” in the ballroom scene because it is a “master’s tool,” a way in which heteronormative society forces minority groups to sacrifice their identities in order to simply exist. While establishing a community that fulfills every aspect of Lorde’s argument may be a greater achievement than what the queens of the ballroom intended, the ability of heternormative ideals to exert their strength in the ballroom setting does ultimately constrain the potential of the ballroom to allow its members complete and absolute freedom to express themselves . Even if the queens do not see the ballroom space as a place of political subversion, this scene cannot be expected to thrive while it allows ideas and stereotypes that originated in the “master’s house” into the culture it is trying to establish.
While the ballroom scene of the 1980s should ultimately be recognized for its contributions to modern LGBTQ life, it is important to recognize the duality of its existence. It successfully established a welcoming community for individuals who otherwise faced discrimination and oppression in the “master’s house,” but its community was also not yet strong enough to fully escape the power of societal conventions. In accordance with Lorde’s argument, the ballroom scene held the potential for political subversion because of how it established a “common cause” for an otherwise socially outcast group, but the perceived appeal of conforming made it much harder for its members to successfully lean into the fact that they would continue to be “unpopular and sometimes reviled” by mainstream society. Caught between these two ideals, the ballroom culture of the 1980s perhaps did not exert as much political force as it had the potential to, and yet, despite the ways in which it undermined itself, the endurance and power of the community that it managed to establish speaks to the validity of Lorde’s argument. In that case, the greatest achievement of the ballroom scene could be seen in the potential for true social upheaval if one could discard all systems belonging to the master and ultimately construct a new “house.”
Works Cited
Harper, Phillip Brian. Private Affairs: Critical Ventures in the Culture of Social Relations. New York, New York UP, 1999.
Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. New York, Random House US, 2012.
Paris Is Burning. Dir. Jennie Livingston. Prod. Jennie Livingston and Barry Swimar. Off White Productions, 1990.
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