Paris Is Burning (Jennie Livingston, 1991) captures the energy, ambition, wit, and struggle of African-American and Latino participants in the 1980s New York drag ball scene, an underground movement that inspired Madonna's "Vogue" and other pop culture phenomena. This book contextualizes the film within the longer history of drag balls, the practices of documentary, the fervor of the culture wars, and the development of queer theory and critical race studies.