Southern Pride: towards a universal pride. And Pride.

REVIEW by Drew Rowsome

3 JUN 2019

"I don't know if I should start drinking now. Or now."

Toronto Pride is a well-established, monolithic machine that is full of cracks and fissures over issues of corporate takeover, infighting among groups representing different factions of the LGBTetc umbrella, and systematic racism. After close to 40 years, it is an event that, year after year, teeters on the edge of implosion but always happens. It is an institution. 

Southern Pride takes place in the small southern towns of Biloxi and Hattiesburg, Mississippi where Pride is not an institution. Where an official Pride Day had never taken place. Both towns boast a gay bar that also functions as a community centre. And both have a charismatic and scrappy lesbian as an owner/promoter. The two owners, independently, decide that, following the divisive and dangerous election of Trump, a show of solidarity by creating a Gay Pride Day is an important step.

Initially Southern Pride sets up a very southern ambling narrative exploring the life of the bars and their importance to the community. Organizing a Pride requires logistics and finances and the struggle to find both would have made for a intriguing and compelling documentary. Especially as the owners, Lynn Koval of Biloxi's Just Us Lounge and Shawn Perryon Sr of Hattiesburg's Club Xclusive, are quirky and entertaining characters. Koval is all bluster and determination, while Perryon exudes a deadpan cool from behind large sunglasses.

There is one crucial difference: Just Us Lounge's clientele is predominantly white, Club Xclusive's is predominantly black. Koval and her staff get most of the attention and director Malcolm Ingram, via the clever insertion of footage and interviews about the devastation of hurricane Katrina on Biloxi and the Just Us Lounge, builds considerable suspense about just how Biloxi's first Pride will fare. It is telling that homophobia is only talked about or implied but never really seen. The trans bartender and the fabulously tatty drag queens are more than defiant enough to stand up to rednecks. 

Perryon is more ambitious and political. The Club Xclusive event is billed as an "Unapologetic Black Gay Pride" and the poster features a fist more prominently than any rainbows. The two events intertwine and conflict in subtle ways that Southern Pride presents without comment. Koval tries to raise funds by selling crayfish at Biloxi's Black Spring Break beach party. Perryon talks obliquely about her past troubles with the law. The only non-white seen in the Just Us Lounge is a thong-clad boy who is fetishized during an Easter drag act. Both Koval and Perryon recount their struggles to stay afloat and profitable, they are on parallel tracks in two very different worlds. And when they meet a surge of hope fills every dynamic frame.

The narrative climaxes with Biloxi's first Gay Pride and it as cathartic and sweet as one could want it to be. Even the appearance by a RuPaul's Drag Race alumni Gia Gunn is upstaged by Perryon working the scene promoting her event. The footage of the Unapologetic Black Gay Pride is considerably different and Southern Pride turns into a devastating and powerful mediation on race and inequality. There are minorities within the minorities and support and solidarity does not necessarily flow both ways. Southern Pride is not just about gay pride or black pride, it aims to instill universal pride.

It is also fascinating to see two lesbians dominate the narrative. There is a gay man who ran a bar but it went under and is now an evangelist church. His appearance is brief. Both bars are run by and mainly patronized by women and trans folk. As are both Pride events. It may not have been intentional, but Southern Pride is a timely reminder that gay men and the bared torsos that dominate coverage and the imagery of Prides, don't necessarily reflect who is doing the work that makes Pride, and pride, happen.