Girls Gone Wild - Showgirls
Friday, May 20, 2016 at 8:00PM Dancin' Dan here to play a bit in the lusty month of May, with our favorite pseudo-lesbian "dancers".
Yes, there are no two wilder, lustier girls in recent memory than Cristal Connors and Nomi Malone.
I often try to figure out why I like Showgirls so much, especially since I'm not one of those people who think it's a misunderstood masterpiece (I think it's too at odds with itself for that). I think it's because in its heart of hearts, Showgirls is a (not-so) secret musical. Except instead of songs, it only has dance numbers. So, really, the best kind of musical.
In the old days of Astaire & Rogers, it was said that the dancing was a stand-in for sex. It would be easy to say that the dancing in Showgirls is meant to stand in for sex, but that's not entirely true. I mean, it IS true, but each number is standing in for a different aspect of sex, a different kind of lust...
The first time we see "Goddess", the show at the center of the film's world, Nomi is deeply in lust with the glitz and glamour of Vegas - as many are when they first see the lights of the strip. Then later, when she's dancing for Cristal and Zack at the Cheetah, she's not so much in lust as performing lust - making her audience, and on some level, herself, believe that she wants them.
It's here that we run into some trouble, of course, because Elizabeth Berkley - God love her - commits a tad too much to Nomi's dancing. Or "dancing". For all that she keeps insisting she's a dancer, not a stripper, Nomi is kind of hilariously not very good at either. Watch her on the floor of the Crave Club (where she meets the even worse dancer/choreographer James, who somehow danced with the Alvin Ailey company), and you could be forgiven for thinking she was having some sort of epileptic fit as opposed to actually dancing. And when she's stripping at the Cheetah, she adds all sorts of high kicks that have no business being on that stage, and commits to the least sexy ways possible to actually, you know, STRIP.
But then we get to Nomi's big audition, and we can see that she actually is a pretty passable dancer when given the chance, although gay Marty is right when he tells the director that she's "all pelvic thrust". But then, when you have a gay ginger screaming in your face to "THRUST IT!" after a long day of dancing, maybe you'd be all pelvic thrust, too.
But this is when we get to the heart of Showgirls. The "Goddess" numbers are a reversal of all that's come before: Instead of Nomi doing the seducing, here she's the one getting seduced - by the intoxicating life of a professional showgirl dancer, by the niceties of performing for a "reputable" business, and most (in)famously by the show's lead, Miss Cristal Connors herself.
The only time when the dancing in Showgirls is explicitly about sex, and ONLY sex, is when Cristal and Nomi dance together. Part of this is because, ironically, Cristal might just be the only person who wants Nomi as more than just a sex object. Their relationship is complicated from the start, as they use each other in ways that aren't always apparent (possibly even to themselves), but it's always clear that Cristal's desire for Nomi runs deeper than she lets on. How deep exactly, we don't know, but despite treating Nomi like a plaything at times, you can always see the lust in her eyes. She wants her. And when they dance together, it becomes even more clear. And despite their heated verbal confrontations, Cristal and Nomi are never battling each other when they're dancing together. Instead, they're seducing each other, releasing their pent-up sexual energy from a show that can't be entirely explicit (but might as well be) on each other in the language they both speak best: dance. They're the Astaire & Rogers of the twentieth century. And THAT'S truly wild.
Reader Comments (13)
Such a bad movie but man, it's a lot of fun.
I love this movie in every conceivable way.
If Showgirls is wrong, then I don't want to be right. (Cristal is one helluva character and characterization.)
I actually was reviewing movies for my high school newspaper when Showgirls came out. It must've been a progressive high school 'cause I got to review Seven, Showgirls, Strange Days, etc. on the school's dime. Boy, was it worth it.
P.S. Nomi's clutching her heel while thrusting is everything.
I used to love Doggy Chow.
So spectacularly bad this movie is. I love it. I also love this review. This is a way more serious treatment than I could give it.
I was JUST reading about his latest film, which premiered in Cannes this morning. It's generated a very interesting reaction and everyone says Huppert's great in it!
I am not sure why I love it but I do,Berkley and Plummer are really really bad in it,except for that awfulrape scene which i always skipover.
A trash classic- ( except for the unfortunate rape scene)
The rape scene in Showgirls is kind of key to the whole misunderstood masterpiece (or even simply considering it on its own terms as a good movie that's not just a campy trashterpiece). The whole film is about the garbagey vulgar way America venerates entertainers/celebrity. It takes the whole 42nd St./Star is Born narrative and blows it up by centering it on a horrible feral monster who can barely replicate normal human behavior. Why we find it repellent is that it hits all the same emotional beats of the young ingenue rises to the top story, but we experience the cognitive dissonance of rooting for Nomi and we can't deal with it. Also, it doesn't give us the All About Eve out either by having us root for the aging star who is being undermined because Gina Gershon's brilliant performance as Cristal Connors is also just as repellent and hard to root for as Nomi. Basically Verhoeven is throwing our obsession with celebrity into our face by giving us the distorted fun house mirror version of what we want and mocking us for wanting the safe and normal one.
The rape scene is the final twist of the knife as we see how Molly basically gets chewed up and spit out by this depraved star obsessed system and how the celebrities we admire and venerate are a) horrible and b) couldn't care less about our worship. The scene shocks the complacent viewer from laughing at the absurdity of the movie and its characters up to then by forcing us to see our own complicity in the system with our veneration of celebrity and the Star is Born narrative. Verhoeven's truly devious maneuver, however, is that Nomi learns nothing from all of this. She exacts her revenge not because she sees the system for what it truly is, but because the rape almost shook her out of her madness and she doesn't want to let it go. The rape scene shocks Nomi out of her Pollyanna insistence that there is a moral difference between dancing at the Stardust or stripping or being a crack whore (which she is revealed to have been the whole time, despite her repeated insistence that she wasn't). Yet, she learns nothing from it, only exacting her cartoonish, revenge fantasy against Andrew Carver as she prepares to leave Las Vegas for the next logical step, Hollywood.
It's highly rewatchable...like Titanic.
I understand the point of the rape scene and we do get to see Nomi avenged her friend- but for such a ridiculous over the top movie it's a bit too real unless the filmmaker thought the were making a serious movie- not one of the all time great camp classics
How do you like having them?
I love Showgirls - I remember being carded at the theatre when I bought my admission ticket! I always loved the soundtrack and was super disappointed when they didn't release Dave Stewart's (Eurythmics) score. The only musical number to appear on the soundtrack is "Goddess". I always loved the music. Dave Stewart has a great chapter on the making of the score in his new book "Sweet Dreams". Paul Verhoven sounded like a real nutcase. Worth checking out if you are a music fan.