hooks, Butler, sexuality and performance.

Well, finally we're leaving behind marxism and moving onto sexuality and performance.
Paris is Burning...Is Paris Burning? I got to see some episodes of this documentary - very powerful, impressive, lots to  learn...
I enjoyed reading the two analyses of this documentary by bell hooks and Judith Butler. Two women - different approaches. First detail that struck me - the name of the first author - why does she spell it with small letters? At first I though it was a typo, but apparrently not!
hooks starts with her own exprience as a black woman who used to picture cross-dressing of women into men as empowering, which represented moving from "powerlessness to privilege". For men to dress up and represent women was degrading to both men and women. She also brings up that especially black women were ridiculed in the "white machista society". The author agrees that impersonations of women  were desempowering to both women and men.
From her point of view as a black female, hooks states in regard to Livingston's documentary: within the world of the black gay drag ball culture she depicts, the idea of womanness and femininity is totally personified by whiteness". White womanhood is the most sought after in that environment. That's why black gay men try to be like white women, not black ones. They hope being (acting) like white women will bring them closer to the white male, partiarch, which symbolises power and class.
In general, we feel a strong criticism from hooks towards Livingston for emposing her view on the black gay portrail. The film is clearly shaped by the perspective of the director although she tries to exclude the author. We hear her ask questions without seeing her. But the meer choice of questions giudes the characters in the direction that the interviewer wants. hooks compares Livingston's appropriation of black experience to Madonna's. hooks takes them out of the context of their lives by situating the documentary almost exclusively in the balls. "Certainly the degree to which black men in this gay subculture are portrayed as cut off from a "real" world heightens the emphasis on fantasy, and indeed gives Paris is Burning its tragic edge" (p. 154).

Butler presents another point of view on the documentary. Her article "Gender is Burning".
Butler starts by discussing the misconception/misinterpretation of drags and lesbians as based on misogeny (hatred of women) and misandry (hating men).
She talks about ambivalence which in this context  can be both appropration and subversion of sex/race. Sometimes the tension between the two can be solved, sometimes appropriation takes over subversiveness.
I'd like to understand better what Butler says about denaturalization and the  concept of performance.
That's all for now.