Holy Hell (2016)

September 23, 2016September 13, 2025 / swampflix / 2 Comments

What is it about Californians’ disposition/DNA that makes them so susceptible to cults? Whether it’s a documentary like Going Clear or a far-fetched thriller like The Invitation, I always get the sense that a California setting is downright essential for a fertile cult breeding ground. The recent CNN documentary Holy Hell only strengthens that argument. When its cult subject The Buddhafield begins in California it flourishes, offering a spiritual utopia for college educated depressives in the midst of Reagan-era yuppiedom. It isn’t until the cult moves from California to Austin, TX that its promise of inner peace starts to fall apart in favor of the cult culture cliché of serving an enigmatic leader as a Master. Not far from the atrocity of Waco, The Buddhafield miserably & deservedly crumbled. In West Hollywood it looked like The Garden of Eden, except with the unusual uniform of Raybans & Speedos.

One of the stranger aspects of Holy Hell as a cult life expose is its ungodly wealth of access. Documentation Will Allen was a film school student nursing childhood obsessions with Death & “The Truth” when he entered The Buddhafield cult on the ground floor, so he poured his filmmaking passion into documenting the “truth” that he found with his new “family” for the decades he was hypnotized under his Master’s spell. It’s rare (I hope) that a cult as contemporary as The Buddhafield would be this unknown & this under the radar, but Holy Hell’s hook is how intimately associated & submerged its documentarian was in the menacing organization’s trenches. Allen knows exactly how to make a cult look inviting & attractive to an outsider because he lived through it himself. He initially portrays The Buddhafield as an oasis of young, attractive, talented people losing touch with reality in the wilderness as they begin to feel “Alive” for the first time & revel in “freedom from self.” He then slowly introduces the more disconcerting aspects of life at The Buddhafield, like a ritual where members are hypnotized into “knowing,” “seeing,” and “tasting” God & the gradual realization that their “spiritual leader” is a selfish, life-destroying monster that permanently damages the very victims he dares call family. At the beginning of Holy Hell, members of The Buddhafield rationalize “If this is a cult, at least it’s a really good cult.” By the end they’re left empty & permanently scarred by a human monster who still abuses young, malleable minds today (back in the holy mecca of California, of course) . . . if they were able to escape his mental grasp in the first place.

It’s tempting to get hung up on the weirder aspects of Holy Hell and treat it like a tale of curiosity like Tickled or Finders Keepers, but the abuse at the center of this documentary runs even deeper than that of those deceptively dark human interest stories. It’d be easy to reduce this story down to its weirder details, like a cult member who’s convinced that he’s making fruit salads “for God” or The Buddhafield’s strange abstinence policy or the fact that although individual members essentially work as the cult leader Michel’s employees they were still charged money for their weekly hypnotherapy sessions. There’s a lot of very specific detail to get distracted by here. However, the film’s main function is as an expose of Michel’s inhumane crimes and abuses. Holy Hell’s real life horrors are way too grave for the film to be treated as an arm’s length curiosity. It’s not a flashy documentary; it doesn’t feel too different from what you’d normally expect form a CNN production. Yet, its intimacy & the ongoing atrocity of its subject makes for a fascinating watch. At the very least I’d recommend it as a double feature to drive home the severity of Karyn Kusama’s recent thriller The Invitation. As a pair the films call into question the dangers & menace of faux spirituality, not to mention make California look like a hellscape below its sunshine & bare skin surface.

–Brandon Ledet

Episode #12 of the Swampflix Podcast: The Marine (2006) & Pro Wrestling Documentaries

August 15, 2016 / swampflix / 3 Comments

inaworld

Welcome to Episode #12 of The Swampflix Podcast! For our twelfth episode, James & Brandon discuss five essential pro wrestling documentaries with friend & WTUL radio DJ Brandon Lattimore. Also, James makes Brandon watch the John Cena action vehicle The Marine (2006) for the first time. Enjoy!

Production note: The musical “bumps” between segments were also provided by James.

-James Cohn & Brandon Ledet

The Nightmare (2015)

December 10, 2015December 10, 2015 / swampflix / 8 Comments

EPSON MFP image

Rodney Ascher is a rare bird in the documentary world. His debut feature Room 237 took a wildly unique approach to exploring the cultural staying power of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. It didn’t detail The Shining‘s production or much of its technical achievements, but instead provided a forum for the film’s conspiracy theorists to voice their own outlandish theories about what Kubrick mean to achieve in the film, which ranged from ideas about Native American genocide & the Holocaust to the accusation that the film was Kubrick’s way of apologising for faking the moon landing. Ascher’s follow-up applies Room 237‘s judgement-free presentations of wild supposition to a different subject entirely: the phenomenon of sleep paralysis. Halfway between the late night paranormal radio broadcast Coast to Coast AM & the hyper-artificial dramatic re-enactments of Rescue 911, The Nightmare pushes the boundaries of what a documentary even is & what it possibly could be. Ascher’s approach has little concern for evidence or context, but instead builds narratives from the oral history end of anthropology. This technique is sure to frustrate many a purist, but in its own weird way it reveals more about the power of its subject than a Wikipedia-in-motion style of documentary could.

Sleep paralysis is a medical condition in which a person is temporarily left paralysed after stress-interrupted REM, caught halfway between dreaming & reality and unable to snap out of it. It’s a condition without any real, physically-threatening symptoms, except for an intense, psychologically torturous sense of fear. The strange, paranormal aspect of sleep paralysis is that the nightmare hallucinations are remarkably similar across sufferers’ personal experiences. Almost every sufferer of sleep paralysis reports the undeniable presence of “intruders.” Individual interpretations of “intruders” vary greatly & include such beings as aliens, ghosts, cats, soul-sucking demons and, most common of all, a dark, ambiguous figure called The Shadow Man. As the eight sleep paralysis sufferers interviewed share their experiences, they hypothesize about whether the condition is an out-of-body experience or a journey to the spiritual realm or something else entirely. The only theory they won’t accept is that it’s an imagined experience, both because it feels so palpably real and because the visions of the intruder are so universal among sufferers.

Rodney Ascher reportedly chose this project because of a personal experience with sleep paralysis, but he makes very few moves to legitimize the claims of his interviewees, instead presenting their personal anecdotes without bias, the burden of interpretation left entirely on the shoulders of the viewer. The dream logic of these anecdotes are fascinating & The Nightmare‘s strongest moments are in its dramatic re-enactments of run-ins with soul-sucking shadow demons, TV static aliens, and chest-sitting cats with glowing red eyes. The only time you can truly see Ascher’s own personality peaking through is in a fascination with the way sufferers find solace & community in films like Insidious, Communion, and (duh) A Nightmare on Elm Street, since their claims are largely brushed off by the scientific & medical communities (for obvious reasons). Ascher has obvious love for film and often indulges in somewhat radical ideas about the power of personal interpretation & the basics of what makes a documentary that can both excite & bewilder, sometimes simultaneously. I can’t say that I’ve specifically learned anything from his two features, but paradoxically they’re both distinctly informative in such an unusual, sometimes frustrating way that their power as oddities on the documentary landscape are undeniable.

-Brandon Ledet

Card Subject to Change: Pro Wrestling’s Underground (2010)

August 8, 2015 / swampflix / Leave a comment

Although Card Subject to Change boasts the subtitle “Pro Wrestling’s Underground”, it does very little to define the landscape of underground wrestling as a whole. The small-scale documentary instead mostly follows a single New Jersey indie promotion called NWS (National Wrestling Superstars) with only a few familiar underground faces & former legends popping in from time to time to afford the project some wide-scope legitimacy. Card Subject to Change is pretty decent for a financially-limited wrestling documentary, but its list of notable interviewees & exemplifying tragic stories are likely to only be worthwhile for the already-converted. Anyone looking for an informational gateway into the world of pro wrestling or a history lesson as to where or what the indies have been or meant in the past will likely be disappointed, but ingrained smarks are likely to be generally pleased by what is admittedly a cheap little charmer.

Card Subject to Change may not capture the entire history of local, indie wrestling circuits & how they evolved into (read: were destroyed by) the nationally-televised promotions most people are familiar with (for that I recommend 1999’s The Unreal Story of Professional Wrestling), but it does have a nifty glimpse into what the remains of that world looks like in the 2010s. The drop tile ceilings & wooden panelling of VFW halls and the corrugated roofs & raised basketball hoops of middle school gymnasiums set a definitive tone for the limited scope of the indie pro wrestling circuit. As I’ve already griped in my review of Body Slam, though, the bloated spectacle of mainstream promotions isn’t what makes pro wrestling special. It’s entirely possible to put on a great show without the opulence & fireworks of the WWE.

Speaking of putting on a great show, the promoter of NWS that eats up most of the film’s interview time, Johnny Falco, is a rare breed of show business everyman. Starting as a roller derby announcer, Falco tried to make it as a wrestler himself before finding his calling as a promoter. He makes no bones about his humble place in pro wrestling’s “minor leagues”, openly admitting that NWS mostly serves as a limbo for elderly legends, performers between major gigs, and newcomers who are just learning the trade. He poses the indie circuit as the start & end of a career cycle. It’s where wrestlers begin & often conclude their runs, but rarely where they see their greatest heights.

On the performers’ end of the interviewees, a relative unknown named Trent Acid provides most of the film’s insight as a subject. Although Card Subject to Change tends to glorify the indie circuit as a concept, it doesn’t shy away from its downfalls either. The sickening brutality of certain “hardcore” promotions & some on-screen steroid abuse both stick out as examples of where the film pokes holes in the indies’ splendor, but it’s Trent Acid’s specific story that gives the film a face & a narrative to exemplify the more problematic side of the “minor leagues”. A grungy Raven or Hardy Boyz type, Acid made quite a name for himself on the indie circuit, but allowed substance abuse & domestic troubles keep him from “making it big”. Instead of using independent promotions as a start to the cycle of a typical career, he made it a lifestyle & the results are tragic.

Besides the insightful glimpses into Falco’s & Acid’s lives, Card Subject to Change features an interesting list of interview subjects including Terry Funk, Necro Butcher (who had a terrifying turn in The Wrestler), Paul Bearer (billed here as Percy Pringle III), and Sabu (who now eerily looks like a drug-addicted HHH) among others. The movie mostly sidesteps the horrendous soundtrack problem I generally associate with wrestling documentaries (the end credits song is legitimately pretty great if nothing else), but for the most part it isn’t a particularly special example of its genre, form-wise. Outside of the insights of Falco’s & Acid’s lives, the film mostly just sort of checks in on its subjects, quickly updating the audience on where things were around 2010, larger context be damned. If you aren’t already invested in the world of pro wrestling before you arrive to the film, you aren’t likely to get much out of this limited scope, but if you’re used to marking out on a weekly basis, there’s plenty of interest to chew on, especially in the cases of Falco & Acid.

-Brandon Ledet

Ballet 422 (2015)

July 5, 2015 / swampflix / Leave a comment

Although I don’t remember seeing the first 421 Ballet movies, I found the 422^nd entry in the franchise to be remarkably accessible. Now that I’ve gotten that horrendously unfunny joke out of the way I can at least echo a similar sentiment in the way the documentary Ballet 422 indoctrinates outsiders into its tightly controlled world of professional dance. As if the film were a triple digits sequel for a franchise that’s been running strong since 1948 (when the New York City Ballet company where it’s set was established), the world it depicts is already well-established & lived-in. Instead of explaining the art of ballet as a whole, however, the film is smart to remain pinpoint-specific. This is not a film about ballet, but about the production of a specific ballet and that specificity allows it to reveal more about the artistry as a whole than broader strokes ever could.

Ballet 422 documents a world in which all of the participants are already on the same wavelength, communicating abstract ideas to each other almost wordlessly as they work together to create a new ballet. It’s strikingly intimate. The central subject is Justin Peck, a 25 year old dancer from the New York City Ballet’s Corps de Ballet (layman’s term: background dancers). Although Peck has been a dancer with the Corps for seven years, he’s still a relative youngster as far as choreographer goes (maybe? I’m guessing there; sounds young to me) and the film follows him as he pieces together the company’s 422^nd production in just a few months’ time. There’s a mostly dialogue-free fly on the wall approach to documenting these few months, which is entirely appropriate for an art form that is so physical, so visually based. It’s a rare treat to actually watch the ballet culminate slowly on film without its machinations being described by needless voiceover. After Peck’s production hits the stage, he immediately returns to his secondary role in the Corps de Ballet. It’s an oddly sad, abstractly affecting moment that the film allows to remain open to your own interpretation.

Ballet 422 sidesteps interacting with ballet’s historical or critical significance as an art form & instead reduces the dance into its most basic elements: music & movement. There’s a little insight into the physical tax, the backstage primping, and the politics in the interactions between the dancers & musicians involved in the production being documented, but those moments are mostly fleeting. The real meat & potatoes of the film is when the dancers are talking shop without talking at all. There’s a physical communication at the heart of Ballet 422 that reveals a great deal about the physical communication of ballet itself. It’s fascinating stuff without being flashy or pedantic. Like the ballet documented in the film, Ballet 422 is simple, straight-forward, and effortlessly elegant.

-Brandon Ledet

I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story (2015)

June 18, 2015 / swampflix / 4 Comments

Although he’s enjoyed a daily, masterful presence on television for over four decades now, Caroll Spinney is not a name or a face most people would recognize. With his quiet, reclusive demeanor & truly awful Prince Valiant haircut, Spinney hardly casts the image of a living legend, but his humbly dorky looks are entirely deceiving. As depicted in the profile documentary I Am Big Bird, it’s only when he transforms into the characters Big Bird & Oscar the Grouch on the children’s television program Sesame Street that Spinney’s true, wonderful self comes to light. There’s something magical hidden in those gigantic, yellow & tiny, green costumes that release Spinney’s inner child (& hopeless grump) and allow him to be himself in an extroverted way that he cannot even attempt out of costume. Part of what makes Jim Henson’s muppets so special in comparison to other puppet media is that they legitimately feel like real people. What’s special about Spinney’s relationship with the muppets he operates is that they also make him feel like a real person.

Instead of solely asking the I Was There, Man types in Spinney’s life to talk about how great he is, I Am Big Bird also digs into exactly why its subject is so hermetic. Since his dedication to puppetry dates back to his formative years and his first name happens to be Caroll, Spinney suffered abuse from his childhood peers in which he was subjected to homophobic slurs and asked questions like, “Oh Carroll, are you playing with your dolls?” The abuse persisted in his home life, where his doting mother could do little to compensate for the explosive, violent treatment he received from a father who also disapproved of his artistry. As an adult, Spinney continued to struggle to connect with others. On the Sesame Street set he felt like an outsider, struggling to connect with Jim Henson as a friend & a equal, because of his overwhelming sense of awe that tinged their relationship (can’t blame him there). When he had to deal with romantic, self-worth, and suicidal crises on the set, he had essentially no one close to turn to and would sometimes weep while wearing the Big Bird suit, a thought that will haunt me forever. Today, Spinney is a happily married man who’s proud of his life’s work and the legend he will leave behind, but it was not an easy journey for him. In countless ways, Big Bird & Oscar saved his life.

Although it’s Spinney’s emotional turmoil that anchors I Am Big Bird, the documentary also makes time to deliver a lot of behind-the-scenes information on Big Bird’s & Sesame Street’s history. There’s some insight into how Spinney operates the suit, who will take the reins once he retires, and anecdotes about the feature films & live tours of the show’s past. When Spinney was young he wanted to do something “important” with puppets and it’s a miracle that he found a home on Sesame Street, posed here as a researched educational experiment that has no doubt changed countless lives for the better since its premier in the idealist times of 1969. The story of Caroll Spinney’s career as Big Bird & Oscar the Grouch is extensive & populated with big personalities like Jim Henson’s & Frank Oz’s, but what I enjoyed most about I Am Big Bird is that it looks past the typical Wikipedia bullet points a lot of profile docs would stick to. It instead digs deeper to expose a very sensitive soul the world usually doesn’t get privy to under all of that green & yellow felt & feathers.

-Brandon Ledet

Rewind Moment: Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003)

June 9, 2015 / swampflix / Leave a comment

Rewind Moments are those special scenes in films that deserve to revisited over & over again due to their overwhelming impact.

One of my all-time favorite documentaries is Nick Broomfield’s Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer. Aileen Wuornos is known as a psychotic serial killer who murdered several johns while prostituting in Florida from 1989-1990, a life detailed in the 2003 biopic Monster. Broomfield used this documentary to shed some light on Wuornos’ unfortunate upbringing while giving her the opportunity to speak and share her own story. After watching the film in its entirety, it’s difficult to not feel some sort of attachment to Wuornos. Her bulging eyes will haunt you for days.

There are so many “rewind moments” in this unforgettable documentary, but my favorite is the shot where she pretty much begs for her execution. She’s so terrifying and unstable in this moment, but at the end, I just want to give her a huge high-five for saying something so badass. I swear, if she’d ever been released from prison, John Waters would’ve picked her up in a heartbeat to star in one of his films. She has that special kind of charm.

-Britnee Lombas

Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton (2014)

May 31, 2015 / swampflix / 1 Comment

Initially pitched to the audience as a history of the underground hip-hop record label Stones Throw, Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton actually works a lot more like an in-depth mental profile of the label’s founder, influential DJ Peanut Butter Wolf. That’s because the label’s identity is so closely linked to Wolf’s. The periods of creative excitement & devastating losses that shape Peanut Butter Wolf’s life also shape the history of his record label. Stones Throw is Wolf’s life’s work, so it makes sense that his life would have so much influence over its general sound & direction.

It makes sense then that the story of Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton begins long before the founding of Stones Throw. Providing childhood photos & home videos from Peanut Butter Wolf’s youth, the documentary shows us a young nerdy white dude as he grows in his music tastes from funk & disco to new-wave & punk to hip-hop, where he finds his calling as a taste-maker. Even in his younger days, before the turntables, Wolf is shown making mixtapes & playing curator, a skill that will later prove vital to his legacy. It’s when Wolf begins to collaborate with young rapper Charizma that his music career takes a definite shape and it’s after Charizma’s tragic, far-too-soon death that he becomes determined to make something of it. This is just one of many tragic losses Peanut Butter Wolf would suffer over the years, and it’s not until he gets excited by working with new collaborators that he can truly move on & grow.

The list of Peanut Butter Wolf’s collaborators interviewed in Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton is a staggering who’s-who of underground hip-hop & outsider indie music: Madlib, J Dilla, MF Doom, Common, and Anika are only a fraction of voices heard here. The interesting thing about these interviews is that the subjects are all too-smart-for-their-own-good nerds who are super awkward when faced with the scrutiny of a documentary crew. Because its subjects are so soft-spoken & nervous, the film has essentially no choice but to let the work speak for itself. An original score by Madlib (one of the label’s most influential contributors), throwback animation sequences, and rare footage of reclusive acts that don’t normally get a lot of face time all combine to show exactly what makes Stones Throw’s vibe so special. As Peanut Butter Wolf puts it, he sees his label as a stomping ground, a launching pad for people to move on from. The work isn’t always spectacular (to the documentary’s credit it doesn’t look away when Wolf gets into producing some really douchey Los Angeles weirdness), but it’s incredible how much work was made possible by a single man who knows great music when he hears it & knows how to bring out the best in his collaborators. For anyone interested in exactly how everything Peanut Butter Wolf’s put together came to be, Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton is an essential document. I’m not sure anyone who’s not a hip-hop nerd will be as pleased, but they might find themselves nerding out despite themselves.

Stories We Tell (2013)

May 24, 2015May 24, 2015 / swampflix / 2 Comments

By definition, Stories We Tell is likely to be the most literally personal project of Sarah Polley’s career. An actress since she was just a small child (picture her as the youngster in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen for context), her first documentary credit is just her third turn as a director, and the very first instance I know of where her own past & familial structure were the subject of scrutiny. This kind of navel-gazing has both inherent charms and flaws. The intimacy of Stories We Tell’s revelations about Sarah Polley’s past & family structure is striking. It’s highly unusual for a public figure to expose so much of themselves & their immediate loved ones in this honest of a way and that vulnerability alone makes Stories We Tell a memorable experience. On the other hand, the story at the heart of the documentary isn’t quite as fulfilling & engaging to outsiders as it is to the people who lived it and the film has a tendency to over-explain its own intent instead of simply allowing the story to unfold.

Without revealing too much about the story Polley tells here, I’ll just say that it’s focused on a nagging question about her paternity. Interviewing her siblings, her parents, and friends of the family, Polley looks back to her birth & childhood and retraces the steps of her deceased mother to hopefully answer lingering questions about who fathered her. Because the story of her childhood is told through many voices, it has a fractured, almost Cubist structure that calls into question the difference between truth & observation. Even though Polley is mostly interviewing her own family, she is relentless in her pursuit of “the truth”, referring to her own tactics as an “interrogation process.” It’s her unforgiving honesty & tendency to push her loved ones to their limits that make the documentary an unusual & interesting experience.

As interesting as Stories We Tell is in concept & execution, the story does wear itself a little thin in the final half hour, especially once the truth about Polley’s paternity is revealed. After the story has effectively been told from beginning to end, the documentary makes the mistake of over-explaining itself. Polley directly tells the audience that her film’s not only about that story in particular, but about the nature of memory & storytelling in general. Polley’s not giving herself enough credit there. The film had already spoken for itself, especially in its fractured interview structure & super-8 recreations of significant memories (like a critical phone call & café meeting that cracked the story wide open). It would’ve been a much better movie if it had ended once the story was over, instead of continuing to provide context when it wasn’t needed in a conclusive half hour that felt more like a DVD extra than a proper part of the documentary. As is, it’s a fairly solid documentary that shows a lot of promise of where Polley’s directorial career might go in the future, but isn’t exactly essential or even necessary either. I believe she’s got even better, more important work in her that will play much more confidently once she allows it to speak for itself.

-Brandon Ledet

Paris Is Burning (1990)

May 23, 2015 / swampflix / 19 Comments

Although the subject of the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning (ball culture) is unmistakably NYC-specific, it’s not difficult to see its connection to a more recent New Orleans trend: sissy bounce. There’s very little connecting the two geographically-disparate movements in the decade or so that separates them, but there’s still a similarly effortless punk spirit & vibrant defiance that binds them in my mind, a superficial connection or not. NYC ball culture was a fashion-minded escape fantasy for the city’s POC, queer, transgendered, and often homeless youth who used the platform to feel empowered instead of disenfranchised. Where sissy bounce offers New Orleans’ queer & transgendered POC youth access to the largely homophobic & hyper-masculine world of hip-hop, ball culture offered that same minority access to wealth & the world at large. That access may have been to more of a fantasy than a reality, but it was a transgressive fantasy that was so goddamn fabulously punk that there’s really nothing else like it, sissy bounce included.

We don’t have a worthy documentary about New Orleans’ sissy bounce culture yet, but there is a more than worthy NYC ball culture doc to be found in Paris Is Burning. As a culture, the film’s subject has everything necessary for a great film: sights (in the homemade fashion), sounds (in the music & dancing that accompanies the runway “voguing”), and narrative (in its long history as told through the eyes of old-timers who had occupied the scene decades before the film’s camera crew arrived in 1987). Part of what makes the film so arresting is its combination of both surface pleasures & much deeper, more meaningful aspects. Sure the film is stuffed with lush, beautiful fashion and the absurd hyroglypics-inspired dance moves of voguing, but there’s a lot of real heartbreak at the center of the culture’s need for escape.

These are marginalized people who’ve been abandoned by their families & society at large; they depend mostly on petty theft & sex work to get by. Although there is an aggressive, competitive aspect to ball culture, there’s also an intense comradery that includes makeshift families called “houses”. Ball competitors are seeking to better one another for a chance at a “legendary status” or at least a trophy for their troubles that night, but they also serve as their own support network, giving each other a place to go and something to look forward to when practically everything else has been stripped away. As the MC at one ball puts it to the more “vicious motherfuckers” in the crowd, “We’re not going to be shady, just fierce.” There’s a catty atmosphere on the surface of ball culture, but it’s a thin veneer on something much more thoughtful & fulfilling.

It’s a little sad, then, that the isolated act of voguing was assimilated & diluted into a much larger, uncaring pop culture by enterprising folks like Madonna the same way New Orleans’ bounce maneuver twerking was assimilated (poorly) by folks like Miley Cyrus. It’s sad that such a rich, complex culture had been boiled down to such a singular, somewhat superficial detail, but that’s often how mainstream success works. Part of what makes Paris is Burning so rewarding is that it arrived in time to capture that culture before it was exposed to the public at large. There’s still time for sissy bounce to receive the same reverent treatment , but not much. The recent national fetishization of twerking makes it feel like the moment has already passed. Of course, I may be oversimplifying both sissy bounce & ball culture by linking them with such a concrete tether, but I’m certainly not the first one to do so. There was even a huge event thrown last year celebrating their spiritual sisterhood. Although one had voguing & the other twerking and one was stationed in Harlem & the other in New Orleans, there’s still a rebellious, punk spirit of inclusivity for groups of young people who are normally excluded from everything. As one of the ball culture’s old timers puts it, “If more people went to balls and did less drugs the world would be a better place, wouldn’t it?” If balls were anything like the way they’re represented in the near-perfect Paris Is Burning, I’m inclined to agree.

-Brandon Ledet