The Outcast is a new podcast from Out Magazine, hosted by the deputy editor Fran Tirado, dedicated to queer culture and news. On the debut episode, Fran is joined by the senior editor of Out, Mikelle Street, to talk about everything ballroom: the history of the scene, how it became so mainstream, the purpose of the Houses, and what the future holds. Later, Fran talks with Tre’vell Anderson and Ira Maddison III in their segment This Week In Gay (or WIG for short) about the Emmy nominations, speculating on what Beyonce will have to do to complete an EGOT, when we’ll see the first nominations for trans people in writing and directing categories, and how Catherine O’Hara and "Cersei Lannister" “are gay rights.”
Thanks to shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race and Pose, the ballroom culture created by queer black and Latinx people is fairly ubiquitous these days. But it all started as a response to discrimination in the gay drag community. Pageants and balls run by white people were simply not giving awards or prestige to queens of color, in pretty much the only place those performers could look for recognition at that time. “It's always been really interesting to me to know that...this started because these people and queens were rejected from the mainstream drag society,” Mikelle says, “and now these things are all claimed for mainstream drag.”
Fran asks Mikelle to tell us about “how ballroom has basically had three essential emergences into mainstream culture,” and Mikelle talks about the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning, saying how useful it was to show how the community created and influenced beloved mainstream moves like vogueing, break down ballroom slang, and put the performers front and center. Then, the advent of YouTube and dance competition shows further shoved ballroom culture into the spotlight, especially when the team Vogue Evolution competed on America’s Best Dance Crew in 2008. “That did two things, that appearance,” Mikelle says. “It one, proved that vogue was an art form and a dance form just like any other, because...they were required to do other styles of dance. And they did those very well...And so at that point, ballroom never went back completely underground because there was always this access point for people who were not of this community.”
Now, with this “third resurgence” of ballroom culture into the mainstream, we’re seeing a power shift, Mikelle points out: “[It’s] being done on the community’s terms...not only...in the forefront...but they also generally have some power on the back end, in terms of being producers, writers, consultants...some type of ownership over the means of production.” Even so, there’s still a long way to go, he says; “My hope is that there is an accumulation of enough power that...they get to decide whether a project gets greenlit or not. They’re not having to...prove to someone outside of this community that this...is important enough to do a project on.”
All that is great, but Fran wonders if there are some risks to having the culture become so mainstream. “Red Bull is sponsoring major balls,” he points out, in kind of a “corporatization, almost, of ballroom. Which is great because these people are getting paid, in theory...but what do you think this means for the community?” Mikelle has thought about this a lot, he replies, because ballroom culture was created to a safe space for queer people when there was nowhere safe to be yourself. “What does it mean when that space is now in the spotlight, and everyone wants a piece of it?” He says the biggest problem is the usual one of “people coming in and attempting to use this community for their own benefits or their own gains...and not genuinely considering the interests or the needs of this community. Which obviously can be detrimental.” So fans of the ballroom scene, respect the traditions, the terminology, and the turf of the culture. They were here before you, and they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Listen to the episode to get the full breakdown of ballroom and hear all their Emmy predictions ("I'm happy for my girl Lena Heady," Ira says; "give her that Emmy for standing on the balcony all season!") on this episode of The Outcast.
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