Fierce Femmes (Pride pt. XXI)
Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria
Shakedown
Salutations and slay, my sweet readers, and happy Pride month! As your local obnoxious ally, it is my duty to inform you that despite the rising tides of homophobic, transphobic, sexist fascism, we gotta fight for our right. In this day and age, there is never a shortage of bad news, but the queer community cannot afford to get bogged down by the bad vibes, there is far too much at stake to be complacent or apathetic. Just recently, the current administration quietly released an updated national counter-terrorism strategy that aims to identify and “neutralize” what they deem to be “violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist”, further proving how dangerous this moment is if you’re not a white, cis, straight man. It is incredibly important to support your queer and trans family and friends right now—whether that be in the form of personal donations, mutual aid, community service, showing up to a protest, voting, staying informed, or simply being a kind and caring human being to those whose human rights are consistently being threatened. I may suffer from seasonal affective disorder in the summertime, but Pride Month makes things a lot brighter and more exciting. I have loved LGBTQ+ people and media since I was a baby, and I’m immensely proud to call myself an ally—not just for my queer friends and family, but for every person who identifies as queer in our persistently-oppressive world. People in the LGBTQ+ community make up approximately 10% of the world’s population, and yet republican lawmakers and other close-minded people seem to use queer people as their scapegoat for every single issue. Left-handed people also make up about 10% of the world’s population, and I’m not just saying this as a lefty, these minorities are simply not the cause of the world’s problems. Queer rights and trans rights are human rights, and human rights are constantly under attack—it just so happens that the main person attacking them currently, is our first gay president. (I am fully being honest and sincere here, btw. Gay people can be evil too.) I’ll never shut up about how much I love queer people, and I’ll never stop watching queer movies. This is the twenty-first Pride double feature featured on Double Feature Thursday, and I wanted to kick off this month of queer cinema with another round of educational, energetic, queer documentaries. Both of tonight’s documentaries are historical documents and time capsules of other eras—not necessarily simpler, not necessarily more wholesome, but they are both brimming with raw, radical, unfiltered power, and they were both directed by badass women.
First I watched a publicly-funded documentary created by Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman from 2005, that details the events of a heated, historic, often forgotten, queer uprising that occurred before the infamous Stonewall riot in NYC, this is Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria. This documentary follows Susan Stryker—a professor, author, historian, and theorist whose work has been instrumental in the education of queer history—as she uncovers the truth behind an event that significantly shaped the queer and civil rights movements. “The 1969 Stonewall riot is remembered for being the start of gay militantism, but it was actually three years earlier,” she explains, as she sets the scene for a groovy and gritty story of queer and femme liberation. Using archival images, and interviews with trans legends Amanda St. Jaymes, Aleisha Brevard, Felicia Elizondo, Suzan Cooke, and Tamara Ching, along with progressive Reverend Ed Hanson and former police officer Elliot Blackstone, Stryker puts together the pieces of this momentous evening at a regional chain restaurant, where a boiling point led to a major turning point in history. Compton’s Cafeteria was a 24-hour diner with reasonably priced food, and San Francisco’s location was situated right in the thick of what was referred to as the Tenderloin district. “Tenderloin”, in addition to referring to meat, can also refer to a vice-ridden district controlled by corrupt police men—drugs and sex work ran rampant in this neighborhood, and every dirty cop on the block got their cut of the profits. As one interviewee notes, trans women didn’t have the luxury of other patrons and performers who could come and go from this wonderland, they faced police brutality every day for simply dressing in female clothes out in public. In the day time, no one wanted to hire any drag performers or trans people, so of course they partook in the sometimes seedy nightlife of the Tenderloin to make a living. On the corner of this bustling, draggy district, sandwiched between a gay bathhouse and a Woolworth’s, was Compton’s, and one night when a police officer got a little too rough with a queen, the queens decided to band together and fight back. Like so many stories of the civil rights and women’s rights movements, it’s difficult to pinpoint when and how, exactly, certain progress and revolutionary acts took place. But this riot at Compton’s marked a major shift in the local government and police department’s treatment of their very large queer community, and if it weren’t for this vibrant and violent night, who knows if Stonewall would’ve even happened. It was so fascinating, to hear this story told by the people who were there that evening, and to watch them walk down the old streets where it all took place, reminiscing on the dazzling “depravity” that once existed there. I cannot explain how much joy I am overcome with when I get to see rare images of 1960s era drag queens, it makes me feel like Nicolas Cage when he sees the invisible map on the back of the Declaration of Independence in National Treasure. This was far from the most progressive time in American history, but considering all of the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation frequently being introduced these days, it was inspiring to see what can be accomplished when people stick together, and decide they’re not gonna take it anymore.
Speaking of bad bitches sticking together, next I watched a documentary I’ve been wanting to see for sometime, a queer archival project that made history as the first film to be streamed on the Criterion Channel and Pornhub simultaneously, this is Leilah Weintraub’s 2018 film Shakedown. Just as the Tenderloin and Compton’s were much-needed safe spaces for queer people to operate and exist within, Shakedown explores the fleeting but fabulous urban lesbian strip club scene in Los Angeles that existed in the 90s and early 2000s. Created from over 400 hours of footage that Weintraub collected over 15 years, the film incorporates live tapes from the club, backstage videos, archival material, flyers, and interviews with a plethora of past and present dancers and performers. She focuses specifically on a legendary club called Shakedown, where all were welcome, but black, lesbian women ran the show and filled the dancer’s pockets. Weintraub chronicles the explicit performances and personal relationships of the party’s dancers and organizers including Ronnie-Ron, Shakedown Productions’ creator and emcee; Mahogany, the legendary “mother” of the community; Egypt, their star performer; and Jazmine, the “Queen” of Shakedown. Each of the interviews and clips reveals the special nature of this strip scene: how clean yet chaotic it was, how unique the talents were, how they all treated each other like family, how there wasn’t even an ounce of toxic masculinity present—only women creating fantasies of their own design(s). Similar to the ballroom scene, there were different categories of dance and skills on display, different personas like butch and femme queens and banshee girls, and the highest standards of performance. You could sense how freeing and liberating it was to walk into Shakedown if you were a queer woman or a closeted woman; how the only concern would be hitting up the ATM beforehand. I loved seeing each performer fulfill their own desires on the dancefloor, wearing the chicest of skimpy fashion, featuring thong and pasty technology I’ve truly never seen before. Even as privileged and hetero as I am, I can understand the need for comfort and the desire for genuine rapture in a nightlife environment—especially when so few options are catered to women, especially when so few options are safe for women. It made me nostalgic of a time that I’ve never really experienced: when no one had a camera or a cell phone on them at the club, and all that anyone was focused on was having a good time with their friends and lovers. This is a highly explicit, decidedly not-safe-for-work documentary, that presents so much expert krunk dancing and pussy-popping that it may make your jaw drop, but that’s exactly why Shakedown is so special. It captured a moment in time when you could be that free and that fabulous out in a crowd, but it also captured how fearless and poised these women were when the LAPD would inevitably come knocking on their door. Eventually, on July 23, 2004, Shakedown hosted their last party ever, though different, roving iterations of this operation continued for months and years to come. I loved hearing from each of the dancers, they were all stunning and talented and had incredible wisdom to impart—it made me yearn for another, present-day check-in with this cast. I was utterly amazed by this film, and the sincere ways in which Weintraub celebrated this pure yet horny institution. Weinraub once explained that the film’s narrative “functions as a legend where money is both myth and material,” in which she herself emerges as a desiring participant, and she also described the challenge of “how to portray the before and after of a utopic moment.” Shakedown made me wanna get up, go out, and attempt to shake my own ass, or maybe kiss a stranger, or both! That is the power of cinema, and that is the power of a safe, comfortable space where you can truly be your brightest, boldest self. I was thoroughly inspired by both of tonight’s stories of vibrant, vivacious, and violent femmes, and I hope my rambling inspired you to watch these films! Until next time, HAPPY PRIDE!
