Yesterday, I overheard some woman on her cell phone say that Willi Ninja had died. My jaw dropped. Willi Ninja. Mother of the House of Ninja. The legend. The man who taught Madonna how to vogue. “You know, I like to think he’s in Heaven,” my friend Jimmy said when I told him what I’d heard. “Whatever hustlin’ he had to do, I think he’s forgiven. He probably saved a lot of 17-year-old T-girls from the street.”
I remember watching Paris is Burning in college and being in awe. You cannot be a queer in NYC and go out and expect to be taken seriously if you’ve never seen this film. Rent the DVD, learn your history, learn something about the world, and remember Willi, one of the last legends.
3 comments:
There may be no way to say this that doesn't come off as close-minded and a little homophobic. So, though I certainly don't mean it that way and am speaking from simple confusion, I'll just say it:
What makes this guy a legend?
From everything I can gather from looking into him his primary influence was on the insular New York drag queen scene. His innovation - to the degree it can be called that - seems to have been to merge dancing and histrionic drag queen posing into the "vogue" - which Madonna exploited (not necessarily in a bad way) to create what is really, in the larger consciousness of the society, a minor cultural blip.
It seems like he was certainly a charismatic and flamboyant character...but if he'd never existed, would the world really be markedly different? Would even the world of drag queens really be markedly different? They existed before him, there are those among their ranks who are much more famous...I dunno...it seems like the sad passing of a character who was well known among a certain sub-set of people, but does "legend" really apply? The dramatic brand of posing and movement used by drag queens has roots in cultural movements from a variety of different cultures well before New York in 1980 - and by that time David Bowie had, as is his habit, already cycled through a period of gender bending drag, dramatic Japanese style posing and dancing and moved on to something else. And, like everything else, he ripped off and embellished those things from other, older sources.
Maybe this guy's influence was so subtle that people outside of the world in which he lived have been influenced without even knowing it. That happens.
Still - I feel about it a bit the way I do when someone tells me they consider GG Allin or Johnny Thunders legendary. There would have been an Iggy Pop, an Alice Cooper and a Marilyn Manson without GG Allin, who was impressive and influential largely among those few people within the appropriate circles who ever heard of him. The Sex Pistols might never have existed without the (in my opinion much more impressive) template offered by the New York Dolls, but if Thunders had killed himself with massive amounts of drugs 20 years earlier I'm not sure the American (or English) punk scenes would today be unrecognizeable...or even all that different.
Everyone is a legend to someone - and some are lucky enough to be truly influential in the lives of others, on however limited a scale. But do we misuse the word legend...and if so, does it lose its power?
We know you're not homophobic, Joe, you just don't know what you're talking about. When I say "legend" I'm refering to the term as used in the Ball Circuit. From Wikipedia's article on Paris is Burning: "contestants, adhering to a very specific category or theme, must "walk" (much like a fashion model's runway) and subsequently be judged on the "realness" of their drag[...]Houses and drag queens who consistently won in their walks eventually earned a "legendary" status."
See the film and you'll get it.
You're kidding me.
Are people supposed to know that?
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