REALNESS.

Paris Is Burning...

I've known of this film for a long time. My best friends quote it and have taken on some of the lingo from it. I've seen it, but never all at once and never the whole thing. I'm on a bit of a documentary kick right now and I've had it on my comp for a while, so I finally sat down and watched the whole thing.

It was so good.

The individuals profiled in it are all so beautiful and wise and... real. The documentarian does a perfect job of capturing a very specific sub-culture, and by the end of the film you really feel you understand what the balls were and why people got involved in them. I mean, as much as you can understand without having participated yourself. It's really interesting, and a lot of the themes within are still very relevant. I would say that some of those themes are the American dream, luxury, the impact of models and celebrities... At the end of the day though, these are (or were) real people, with real lives and real dreams, and the only differences between us are where we live and how we spend our free time.