Venus Xtravaganza, one of the pre-operative male to female transsexuals in "Paris Is Burning," states demurely, "I would like to be a spoiled rich white girl. They get what they want, whenever they want it ." Her desire to identify with and become a "spoiled rich white girl" is problematized by the fact that she is a poor Latino male sex worker who hires herself out for dates in order to afford shoes. Venus's desire to be "the impossible" is an instance in which the political directly factors into identification-formation, contrary to Freud's analysis which does not account for power dynamics or experiences based on race and class. Race, class and sexual orientation inflect psychoanalytic processes, or as Judith Butler suggests, bodies matter. In the context of the film, bodies matter very much: by the end, Venus has been killed by a male escort, probably because he found out that her gender did not correspond with her anatomical sex. When Venus says, "I want a car. I want to be with the man I love. I want a nice home. I want my sex change. I want to be a complete woman," processes of identification kill her.
"Paris Is Burning" is a documentary about drag as a vehicle for "realness" which is measured against white upper-class heteronormativity. Drag queens, transsexuals, and cross-dressers participate in a New York gay subculture by belonging to "houses" or "gay street gangs" which enables them to "walk at Balls" or cross-dress, not only as women but also as executives, military officers, and polo players. Filmed by Jennie Livingston, a white, middle-class lesbian, the documentary alternates between framing characters who critique the desire to be "real," and framing characters who revel in their "realness." As Brooke Xtravaganza (from the house of Xtravaganza), a black post-operative male to female transsexual notes, "America is nice. You can do what you want if you have money. You can be what you want--look at me." The camera then follows the giggling Brooke as she runs around the beach in a revealing swimsuit. As a friend notes, however, Brooke's laugh still sounds like a man's laugh. But Brooke can pass, she is real: now she experiences life as a heterosexual black woman rather than as a gay black man. Identification with biological heterosexual women, in Brooke's and Venus's case, is a way "out," as it were.