Gender
The primary subjects featured in Paris is Burning are drag queens, or biological men who dress and perform in women's clothes. Through interviews with the queens, the film presents a nuanced and fluid understanding of gender, emphasizing the notion that gender is largely performative rather than fixed or absolute. The film is, in many ways, a dramatization of scholar Judith Butler's argument that the concept of "gender" is largely influenced by race, class, sexuality, and other factors, leading to its performative nature. The queens in Paris is Burning perceive gender as an opportunity for play, performance, and art, elements that were at the heart of 1980s ballroom culture.
Sexuality
Entwined with the film's focus on gender is the theme of sexuality. Paris is Burning is explicitly about the queer community, but focuses most heavily on the gay male performers in 1980s New York City (the film's director, Jennie Livingston, is an out lesbian). The film is interested in showcasing the overlap between gender and sexuality, emphasizing how sexuality, too, is a fluid concept that extends well beyond the heteronormative paradigm. This theme also invites the film's somber discussion of the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, which devastated the queer community and especially the gay male community in the country's urban landscapes.
Race
Because the film focuses on intersectionality within ballroom culture, the same members of the queer community featured in the film are also racial minorities. The majority of performers featured in the film are people of color, largely from the Latino and Black communities. The film emphasizes how diversified the queer community is compared to what was the "outside," more socially accepted world of white, cisgender, heterosexual behavior. Paris is Burning is often credited with bringing queer minority culture into the mainstream while also showcasing how these performers were ostracized and isolated by the rest of the world.
Community
Through its exploration of ballroom culture, the film establishes the importance of community – specifically, community for society's most ostracized subjects. The film emphasizes how many of its subjects became estranged from their families due to their queerness, but were ultimately able to find love and acceptance with their chosen families within the queer community. The film shows how the emergence of "Houses" is largely due to this need for family structure within the larger ballroom culture, and how the performers care for one another as if they are parents, siblings, and children of one another.
Art
Though there is a great deal of fun and playfulness depicted during the various balls, the film makes it clear that being a performer is not taken lightly. Indeed, the performers in the balls approach their work with seriousness and artistic flare; they make their own costumes, practice their dances, and strive to be the most convincing "wealthy woman" among the other performers. Paris is Burning showcases the accepting energy and love of the 1980s queer community, to be sure, but it also puts on display the immense artistic talent that went into this culture of celebration and performance.
The AIDS Crisis
The film takes a somber turn when it addresses the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. The epidemic was especially devastating to the queer community, and the subjects interviewed in the film express their first-hand experience with its effects. The film suggests that the AIDS crisis was partially to blame for the "death" of ball culture, as many of the most influential performers died during the 1980s and early 1990s. Angie Xtravaganza, for example, passed away three years after Paris is Burning was released, from liver complications related to the HIV virus.
Social Class
The performers in the film approach class in much the same way they approach gender. Though they are all, as queer minorities in the 1980s, from lower classes, their performances are meant to mimic, emulate, and even satirize lifestyles defined by extreme wealth. Indeed, one of the criteria on which performers are judged is the extent to which they are donning the "finest fashions." More often than not, this term denoted a handmade outfit made to look expensive or dramatize wealth without actually having access to money. In this way, one of the tenets of ball culture is also the performance of social class – anyone can appear "wealthy" as long as they have the style, attitude, and confidence to do so.