Paul Verhoeven's 1995 film, Showgirls, was critically and commercially decimated upon its release – reviled for its campy acting and dialogue and almost universally declared one of the worst films of all time. As years passed, and no doubt partially inspired by famous Cahiers du Cinema critic Jacques Rivette's claim that Showgirls was “one of the great American films of the last few years,” (Bonnaud) other critics started to acknowledge that, perhaps, they had overlooked the film. Australian critic Adrian Martin even admitted “I learnt the lesson that Showgirls knew more than I did.” (Martin) It is with very little shame that I admit the same was true of me, upon my first viewing. Despite my fondness for other Verhoeven films, especially Robocop, I was unprepared to accept the level to which Verhoeven would mix sincerity and irony into an ambivalent postmodernist stew of indulgence and critique. I, as so many other viewers did, took the film at its very face value – I called it “fantastically directed kitsch” – and laughed callously at star Elizabeth Berkeley's flailing gesticulations and Gina Gershon's hollow, now-you-see-it, now-you-don't Texas accent. What I didn't realize was that I was becoming the exact thing that Showgirls was satirizing – an opportunistic viewer, gazing at the characters depicted on screen and, in my gaze, robbing them of their humanity.
Following mammoth box office successes with Robocop (1987), Total Recall (1990), and Basic Instinct (1992), Paul Verhoeven seemed set for a long, successful career in Hollywood. Working with Basic Instinct screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, and given the greenlight by backing studio MGM to explore the recently minted NC-17 rating (designed to replace the older X rating, which in the public's eye had become synonymous with pornography) in a big budgeted drama about Las Vegas show life. The resulting film, Showgirls, grossed only 28 million dollars domestically, compared to its 45 million dollar budget (Box Office Mojo). It won a then-record seven prizes at the Annual Golden Raspberry Awards (Scheers vii), including Worst Director and Worst Picture. Eventually its more campy aspects would be embraced in the home video market, earning it 100 million in home video sales and making it one of MGM's top 20 best-selling videos (MGM.com).
While some would argue that its campiness is unintentional – that Verhoeven believed he was making a serious film and accidentally made something hilarious – I would say the truth is much more ambivalent. Showgirls is both kitschy and serious. What other way could there be to depict Las Vegas, a city so cartoonishly surreal and yet so celebrated as a pinnacle of modern American capitalism? The artifice of the performances and dialogue, which are almost all consistent in tone, are an extension of Vegas' existence as a city of smoke and mirrors. Verhoeven claimed his interest is in realism, but he bends the idea that the words “realism” and “realistic” are necessarily interchangeable. Showgirls is not realistic, but to Verhoeven's mind it is realism. What he depicts is an honest summation of his feelings about humanity, especially as it relates to America. As Rivette puts it, “it's about surviving in a world populated by assholes, and that's his philosophy.” (Bonnaud) This is especially apparent in scenes between Elizabeth Berkeley and Gina Gershon. Despite their outwardly obvious and sometimes baffling dialogue (bonding over a childhood love of dog food), they eye each other with a shared sense of distrust tinged with hints of malevolence. Berkeley, especially, uses a form of stripped down acting in which she and the character fuse into one indistinguishable person. Over the course of the film she, just as her character Nomi Malone does, “learns” how to act. Early on she is full of wild fire, throwing herself into every emotion with reckless, occasionally ludicrous, abandon. But after Nomi's ascension to star of the show Goddess, she transforms into a replica of Gershon's Crystal Connors – eyes twinkling with deceit and lustful power.
By choosing a story about strippers, and using a rating intended for Adults Only, Verhoeven is able to extend the metaphor in many different directions. It is a film critiquing the world of cinema, and the unrealistic power fantasies it creates. It is a film critiquing the world of Hollywood, and it's role as a town – like Vegas – that feeds off new life, before eventually spitting it out, chewed and broken. Especially as it pertains to young, hopeful performers. And, of course, it is a critique of the real place, Las Vegas, and the world of strip clubs, prostitution and the sometimes blurry line between the two. In every instance there is a huge gulf between the promised fantasy and the lived reality. This, I suppose, is true even of gambling itself. Gambling, in its own way, is a microcosm of the ways in which rich people offer a hint of The American Dream to the working class, encouraging people to say “what if I win?” and ignore at what cost their small winnings came from.
This is the format with which Verhoeven uses a postmodernist lens to examine the history of the Hollywood musical. Behind the scenes films such as 42nd Street (1933), All About Eve (1950), and A Star is Born (1937, 1954) (Henderson) are the fodder with which Verhoeven assails musicals, and, by extension, film itself, as a morally bankrupt dream factory that has helped create a world like Las Vegas. But, at the same time, Verhoeven is aware of the hypocrisy inherent in this kind of message. He doesn't shy away from an understanding and sympathy with the audience's desire for fantasy. In Total Recall, he was delighted at the audience's relief when main character Doug Quaid, forced to confront whether or not he has been living a dream, decides it isn't a dream and shoots the target of his confusion. The audience wanted to believe so badly that, even though it was a movie, what they were witnessing was real within the context of the movie, that Arnold shooting a man is a cause for celebration and relief from anxiety (Scheers 223). Thus Showgirls is structured to take maximum advantage of the audience's desire for internal consistency and genre formula. Viewers want to root for the main character and root against the bad guy, so Verhoeven pushes hard to make both of those things difficult to do. Malone's dissolution from naïve girl from out of town to cocaine-snorting opportunist stretches the boundaries of audience willingness to sympathize. This combines with Nomi's eventual attempt to reclaim her lost sense of self and fight back, literally “kicking the shit” out of Andrew Carver for the rape of her best friend, being both a fulfillment of audience desire and a cold nod to the reality that a small measure of revenge doesn't balance the world's order. All it does is invite Nomi back into living the fantasy, dooming her to repeat all the decisions she's made. This gives the film a frightening sense of despair, using a mirror effect of the sign post to Vegas in the film's opening shots to the sign post to Los Angeles in the ending, to imply a fatalistic circle of entrapment. The poor and disenfranchised, particularly women, will be locked into roles at the mercy of men for the rest of their lives.
Men are central to much of the concerns of Showgirls and their odious, completely self-serving, behavior throughout the film is evidence of a strong leaning towards feminist theory on Verhoeven's part. Once again toying with notions of film literacy and archetypes, he sets up three familiar “meet-cute” scenarios. The first occurs in the film's first scene, when a drifter in a brown duster picks up Nomi hitchhiking. In a typical film romance, this could be the beginning of a relationship. He's even kind of a jerk – prime material for the “opposites attract” formula Hollywood has been pumping for years in their romantic comedies. By the end of the road trip they are getting along and he even offers to help her get a job at the Riviera, where his uncle is floor manager. He gives her $10 for the slot machine and says he'll be right back. This scenario ends, of course, with him making off with all her worldly possessions and disappearing for almost the entire film. This pattern of men swooping in to Nomi's rescue, only to selfishly backstab her at the earliest convenience, is played out two more times in the film – first with a bartender/dancer James, and then again with creative director of the Stardust Hotel, Zack. Each of these again toy with the audience's expectation for wish fulfillment. Each man appears nice, and would be plausible as the film's romantic interest, but their disregard for her well-being proves a one-way street. The women in the film can only screw over each other and have no real power over the other men, especially the rich ones like Zack. After nearly two hours of being at the mercy of her male handlers, Nomi's small exploitation movie-esque revenge fantasy against pop star Andrew Carver feels hollow and useless. Quite plainly, in a world in which women are prized for their beauty and a man can walk up to a girl down on her luck at the slot machines and ask “Lost all your money? Wanna make some more?” there is almost nothing one can do to escape the institutional oppression that movies help socialize us towards. Even when men mean well, they cannot escape the base nature of their feelings, as when Verhoeven gives pretty much everyone the middle finger by capping a clichéd, heartwarming reunion between Nomi and her previous bosses, Al and Henrietta with Al telling Nomi “Must be weird not having anybody come on you.”
This fatalistic attitude is at the crux of Verhoeven's arguments throughout his career. There's a sense of bleak inevitability to his films, as he acknowledges their existence as representations of people rather than as real human beings – caught as they are in the machinations of a script already written. And then he uses this idea to paint broad strokes about our own nature as people, and the ways in which we seek to serve ourselves at the cost of others. This level of moralizing might be off-putting in the hands of a less skilled director, but Verhoeven cloaks his moral stance in such a pointed satirical gaze that it never comes off as casual nihilism. Instead it elevates Showgirls, and much of the rest of his oeuvre including more recent films like Starship Troopers (1997) and Hollow Man (2000), into an apparently perpetual state of relevance as America marches forward every year with new versions of the same old fantasies to force feed its increasingly class divided youths.
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