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Have you watched Pose yet? The FX series from producer Ryan Murphy about the drag ball scene of mid-’80s New York City is one of the most exciting and immersive shows on television. It’s also a look at an incredibly detailed subculture. You think you know drag from RuPaul’s Drag Race and To Wong Foo? That’s only part of the puzzle. ’80s house and ball culture is like stepping into another universe altogether. Especially if you’ve never seen Paris Is Burning.

If you have ever known a homosexual in your life, then at some point you’ve been told that you simply must watch Paris Is Burning. The 1990 film from director Jennie Livingston is essentially the documentary version of Pose (minus those pesky Evan Peters/James Van Der Beek diversions into banker culture). Paris Is Burning gives you the balls: uptown events, usually in Harlem or the Bronx, where queer people would gather in drag, costume themselves extravagantly, and walk the floor in various categories, some more intricate than others. Butch Queen First Time in Drag or Executive Realness or even male drag like Military. There were rules and judges and an emcee even more hype than the one Billy Porter plays (to perfection) on Pose. Paris Is Burning brought this vibrant scene full of big personalities and rivalries and conflicts and shade to a wide audience, and in doing so, delivers one of the best and most complete portraits of an LGBTQ subculture the world has ever seen.

The influence of Paris Is Burning can be felt throughout the drag and pop landscapes. Most famously, the drag balls were where Madonna was first exposed to the style of dance called “vogue,” which is described in Paris Is Burning as an elegant and opulent way of throwing shade (delivering insult) to your rivals.

Madonna’s appropriation of vogueing — and her subsequent commercial success with her song “Vogue” — has long been a point of contention for many, leading to an enduring sense that Madonna stole from and got rich off of the culture of poor black and brown queer people whose talent and creativity she mined for trends. However fair or unfair that reputation, it’s bolstered by Paris Is Burning. Especially when the film steps outside the balls and follows the “legendary children” in their day-to-day: young, queer, often homeless, often shunned by their families and communities. These people found home and community in the houses and the drag balls. Your House was your family; you took the house’s name as your own. In Pose, when Blanca leaves the House of Abundance to start her own House of Evangelista, this is a big deal. It’s a change of identity.

Immerse yourself in Paris Is Burning and find yourselves at the nexus of more queer culture than you even knew existed. The great drag houses of Ninja, LaBeija, Pendavis, and Xtravaganza. These names are royalty in the right circles. Even if your only familiarity to the House of Ninja is remembering Benny Ninja from his appearances on America’s Next Top Model, that’s the legacy of the ball scene. You’ll find these real House names show up in Pose, giving it a sense of verité. (House of Verité would have been a great name, by the way.)

Obviously, RuPaul is the greatest connection from ’80s drag culture to the more modern, semi-mainstream drag world of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Ru was more of a downtown club kid, but her reverence for the ball scene, her fondness for its language and customs and extravagances can be found in every corner of her career, from music to TV and beyond. The language of drag alone owes massive debts to Paris Is Burning: reading, shade, “10s across the board,” “mother” … watch the documentary just once and you’ll be floored at how much of what you thought was a Drag Race original comes from this film.

If nothing else, watch Dorian Corey explain the definitions and purposes of reading and shade, before watching the Drag Race queens attempt it in the annual “Reading Is Fundamental” challenge:

One striking thing about comparing Paris Is Burning to both Drag Race and Pose is how much murkier, shabbier, darker the real thing was than the candy-colored productions we have today. This isn’t bad (no shade!), but it’s a testament to the kind of unvarnished realities that the documentary was getting to. Queens putting on their face in their cramped apartments, gathering on street corners and park benches, emulating the midtown women with their heels and shoulder pads while stomping around the crowded dance halls of Harlem.

In many ways, Pose is attempting to capture and dramatize a lot of what Paris Is Burning did decades ago. The sense of pride that the queens felt while competing. The sense of family in the houses. The shunned and victimized subculture of queer people in the most heartless of American eras, all gathering together to compete and show off and reign like the queens they knew they were.

Stream Paris Is Burning on Netflix