Hold That Pose!

There's a scene I absolutely love watching that's in "Mother of the Year," the eighth and last episode of Season One of Pose, the FX television drama series about the black and Hispanic LGBTQ drag ball/voguing world. 

Billy Porter's character Pray Tell, the emcee/DJ, calls out to the participants on the dance floor to "Pose. And pose. And pose. And pose." Each time he says those words, everyone on the floor changes their pose and holds it.

It reminded me of when I attended the 75th Street Elementary School in South Central Los Angeles in the  1950s and 1960s. Every morning in the schoolyard, when the first bell rang, someone, probably the principal, shouted over the public address system, "FREEZE!" Everyone, including the teachers, no matter what they were doing or where they were standing in the schoolyard, became living statues. We would hold that pose until the second bell rang. 

My mother got a kick out of seeing this morning ritual because it was such an unusual sight at a public school.