When Paris is Burning was originally filmed in the early 1980s, few people outside of the queer community in New York City would have known what balls were. Indeed, balls often took place in the late hours of the evening and early morning for a number of reasons: to accommodate those performers who had day jobs, to ensure the safety of performers who faced discrimination and violence during the day, and to maintain a relatively undercover operation that was exclusive to the queer community. What Paris is Burning did after its release in 1990 was bring awareness of ball culture into the mainstream, framing the performers not as outcasts or misfits but as thoughtful and dedicated artists.
In the decades since the film's release, ballroom culture continues to play a significant role in the queer community while also having trickled into mainstream trends. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the ballroom lexicon that Dorian Corey and other performers help explain in the film. Words like "slay," "sashay," "shade," and "reading" are now common slang terms in English. Of course, with the inclusion of a traditionally queer vocabulary in mainstream communication comes the question of appropriation: many argue that straight culture has appropriated queer or ballroom culture for their own benefit or amusement. Furthermore, some even argue that ballroom culture itself is an appropriation of black femininity, and that Paris is Burning wrongly attributes ballroom trends to queer men when they in actuality began among black women.
Today, ballroom culture is best recognized in the form of drag shows, where performers (usually gay men) dress in women's clothing, model, dance, and lip sync to popular songs. There are also television shows dedicated to these performances, the most notable of which is RuPaul's Drag Race, a drag competition loosely based on model Tyra Banks's show America's Next Top Model. While ballroom culture has certainly evolved over the years, many of the tenets of ballroom performance are still observed today by those who wish to make a name for themselves as gender-bending stars and artists.
