Showgirls takes over the world
Filed under: Classics, Drama, Critical Thought, NSFW
Happy International Showgirls Day!
No, seriously. The best I can figure out, a bunch of bloggers got together and decided that today was the day to celebrate everybody's favorite ode to golddigging poledancers with lists of daddy issues only out-lengthened by their acrylic nails. I discovered the hoopla via Flickhead, who, to my mind, has the best essay going on the subject at hand. "A case of the dragon consuming itself by the tail, Showgirls transcends the limitations normally set by genre and dramatic convention — and comes to embody every foul, odious thing it professes to abhor," he writes. "That it evolves into a compelling (and very funny) reflection of western culture spiraling out of control for lack of dignity and shame was surely an accident."
Follow through the jump for a look at a few of the many other rants and raves littering the blogosphere today in tribute to Paul Verhoeven's legendary craptacular:
- Girish: "Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls (1995) reminds me of the movies of Douglas Sirk, especially his voluptuous farewell to Hollywood, Imitation Of Life (1959). Here's the key to both films: glorious artifice, and blithe rejection of verisimilitude. They cry out: Down with realism!"
- Fagistan: "She arrives in Las Vegas, a place that has no use for humanity, as evidenced by the brutality inflicted on Nomi's roommate, a seamstress who is the film's only good character. Here, she rises to power the old-fashioned way. She fucks, fights and sabotages her way from doing lap dances at the Cheetah to erupting from a plaster volcano wearing nothing but some sequins and a g-string. Along the way she eats some quesadillas and infamously buys an ugly, slutty "Ver-sayse" dress. Then she eats some chips."
- Cinephiliac: "Just because it was marketed as a seductive movie doesn't mean its rampant sexuality was posed to tantalize, at least not as main course. A congruent studio-enacted error happened with Verhoeven's hilarious ode to antiquated science fiction and propaganda films, Starship Troopers, which was wrongheadedly pitched to consumers as a straightforward interplanetary blow-em-up. Though we'll never know, it would be a curious experiment to see if today's mainstream and arthouse crowds would see more or less eye-to-eye if this trashy pop-art extravaganza were released in theaters today, and if the New Puritanism would affect ticket sales."
- Nilblogette (who takes the very appropriate step of discussing Showgirls in the same breath as Verhoeven's early Dutch kitsch classic Spetters, an equally mind-blowing though slightly more authentic look at sex, class, ambition and fast food): "Spetters unflinchingly delves into paralysis, suicide, homosexuality, gang rape, the hypocrisy of religion, parental abuse, and public humiliation without ever ceasing to be entertaining, and even manages to be quite touching. SHOWGIRLS is driven by most of the same themes, but with the emotion and realism taken out ... [Elizabeth] Berkley inShowgirls and [Renee] Soutendijk in Spetters have the same hair...body, and ambition, and the two films even share the "I'm on my period" scene in which the man actually checks. "
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