Showgirls — Soft, Sparkly and Angry

My kind of trash

Part of what makes cult film audiences with an affinity for camp unique is their way of viewing trashy efforts like Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls, a film that was in no way attempting to be bad, and seeing things to appreciate in it, or “turning the worst piece of trash into gold (Osterweil 2003). This way of viewing returns to the aesthetic nature of seeing art through the lens of camp-appreciation, Showgirls fails in terms of scripting, pacing and performance, but is undeniably an attractive film to view, particularly if the viewer does have a taste for shiny, tacky aesthetics.

Less than two minutes to the movie, the image of Nomi Malone’s profile is obstructed by the switchblade she pulls in warning against the male who is driving her to Las Vegas, immediately disrupting the soft image with a literal sharp object in front of her face. Showgirls (1995) is famed for its often ridiculous hyper-sexuality and ubiquitous nudity, the women of it shot often in soft light with sparkling, flawless skin and exposed breasts. However, the softness that often seems to be inherent in representations of the naked female form is removed in this film, not least by Nomi herself, whose almost every movement, be it walking across a room, dancing, having sex, is done with a jerky kind of aggression, and not at all with the smoothness with which she is made up, framed, and shot. Though rather more visually ‘on-the-nose’ than other examples, this type of attitude is not unique to the character of Nomi Malone in the time period in which she was created. 90’s media as a whole full of emerging images of the ‘strong and capable woman’, Kat Stratford from 10 Things I Hate About You, Buffy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vivian in Pretty Woman, and even Nomi Malone of Showgirls all serve as what now seem like quaint and rather dated prototypes for the empowering female characters that are increasingly ubiquitous in 2019.

It is worth mentioning these other 90’s female icons because of the fact that Nomi is not found in the lists and articles beside them, even with the cult popularity of Showgirls. There are a few potential reasons for this, not least because frequent nudity and sex are often eschewed as being behaviour that does not represent the ideal image of the woman. This is not to say that criticism of Nomi’s nudity it invalid and automatically equivalent to criticism of nudity in general, the text can be potentially read in such a way that views the camera as salacious rather than just observing, and the sleazy attitudes of the men in the film towards naked females objectifying and cruel, as the male gaze often is in films directed by men (Isrealsen-Hartley 2017).

Even aside from any broader issues concerning sexuality and the male gaze, Nomi as a character is rather difficult to summarise or pin down, and this is perhaps one of the reasons that she has not resonated with audiences in the twenty-two years since Showgirls was released. As infamous as the movie is, she as a character becomes lost in a mass of volatile emotion on her part, and erratic narrative that never truly gives the character chance to present much depth as a person. Visually, this unevenness carries through, as with the above image, the red light on her face flashes on and off, making her expression difficult to focus on, and her curled hair and loud-printed shirt mean she becomes lost against the background of bright Vegas neon, slamming things on the table and throwing her fries, pushing away the audience as well as the characters in the film. Nomi could not be further from the delicate, lounging image of the painted Romantic woman, still, passive and unmoving. In fact no woman in this film falls into the traditional image of style or behaviour, almost all speak bluntly and explicitly about each other and their own bodies, dialogue that goes some way to contribute to the view of this film as being trashy. Having Nomi tell a man she cannot have sex because she is on her period, and then to request him to check, is abnormal dialogue coming from a female character in a film and audiences often react negatively to this kind of blunt, unsentimental way of talking about female bodies.

Nomi is the protagonist of this film, and it is her image that draws the most scrutiny, particularly as her aesthetic and body are rather representative of the bodies of most of the women in this film. This being a film about the Las Vegas showgirl/strip club scene, the vast majority of the women are slim, tall and conventionally attractive. When we as the audience do see a woman that does not fit into this classification, she is played for comedy, and referred to as a mother-like figure by the other women that work in the club. Being an older, chubby woman in this film means being completely stripped of any sexuality despite working in a strip-club, serving rather more like a comedy drag act than a cheeky burlesque piece. The film places the audience here in the position of the patrons of the club, incapable of seeing any sexuality from a woman that does not look like Nomi, and seeing her as the film presents her: a funny, out-of-place woman serving as filler material before the real titillation can begin. Classifying the audience this way is not necessarily unfair, aside from having a broad following of people who love camp, its unintentional humour and the aesthetic of the direction, Showgirls is also popular for being film shown on late-night television and being a fairly soft, convenient way to view highly sexualised female nudity, and those viewing it from that context are most likely not viewing to see this comedy act either. That is why this scene is afforded only a few seconds of screen time, where Nomi’s jerky, thrusting dancing scenes make up a good portion of the rest.

A major issue with Showgirls as a movie is the dissonance between what the camera is telling the audience and what the script is saying. In one of the most infamous scenes, Nomi gives a lap- dance to Zack, the entertainment director of the biggest topless show in town, and boyfriend of Cristal Connors, Nomi’s future adversary, to completion (on his part). The scene is perhaps the most famous in the film, one of the most overtly sexual and leaving no inch of Elizabeth Berkeley’s nude body un-viewed. However, perhaps because of the egregious and open smuttiness of the scene, the implications of it often go unexamined: how Nomi actually feels about the act is frustratingly unclear precisely because of this lack of cohesion between script, performance and direction.

When Nomi is being paid for the act by Cristal, she appears confident and quite comfortable with what has taken place, leaving with a smile and last touch to Zack’s face (who she later ends up romantically involved with). Immediately after this scene, when she is visited by James and shamed for what she did, she appears to be hurt and ashamed by it, so we as the audience are left confused and with less understanding of her as a person. There is an ineptness to the failures in characterisation and the distance between image and narrative that is undeniable, and something that critics attempting to argue against the initial backlash to the movie seem to ignore (Williams 2003). Not every person who hated this film hated it because of a predilection to react negatively to overt sexuality or because they were simply unable to to see the joy in extreme tackiness, there are enjoyable aspects of the film that are detracted from because of directorial failure. Linda Williams (2003) posits that Showgirls will one day “reemerge in triumphant glory to gain the praise that it deserves,” and the film does deserve praise, it is often visually impressive and genuinely, if unintentionally, funny, but it is not underserving of its criticism, not least because of the disservice that it does to its protagonist.

In the last of many narrative flips, Showgirls ends with its last fifteen minutes as an I Spit on Your Grave-esque rape revenge story, in which Nomi brutally beats the man who violently sexually assaulted her best friend. Though only a brief section of the story, it contains with in it several tableaux’s that represent themes from the film that are easy to miss through the distracting visuals at narrative shifts.

First, female solidarity plays a huge role in this film, and not just a sense of support and love for one another, but of inherent kinship in spite of the ways they may treat each other. It is shown first between Nomi and Molly, who, immediately after meeting (and fighting) press their heads together like old friends, Molly’s instinct to comfort this distressed woman outweighing sense and stronger than her anger at Nomi lashing out at her car. Despite being another facet of the narrative moving too quickly to keep up with, it is indicative of a central idea of the film, that being that women can become quickly linked to each other in both love and hate. Very quickly, Nomi tells Cristal that she hates her and they are placed as adversaries: the seasoned, jaded Vegas dancer and the young, blonde interloper come to take her place, but, by the end of the film, that sexuality charged animosity on the part of Cristal seems to become something else. This is conveyed entirely through performance rather than scripting, the narrative indicating little more than grudging respect in spite of everything that has happened. But the expression on Cristal’s face after they kiss and Nomi leaves for good indicates far more feeling on her part:

In just this brief shot, Cristal changes from the predatory, cruel enemy that she has been framed as for the whole movie to a woman that genuinely loved another and is heartbroken to see her leave. Suddenly, the film can be viewed completely differently, the central conflict shifting from the old trope of the tired, burnout showgirl jealous of the young, new blood, to a woman, Cristal, being unable to appropriately deal with her love for an obsession with this woman she can never have. But, because the movie is a trash movie, this type of high drama is only suggested at, teased, and perhaps not even fully intended by the screenwriter or director. Cristal is held to her representation as the evil bitch, not as messy but equally as trash as Nomi.

The appeal of trashy movies and what is attractive about the women in them is the surface, enjoyment of trash is usually seen as being outside academic interest because it is most predominantly enjoyed because of its surface appearances and failures. “Showgirls is a mad kaleidoscope of exposed breasts, lip liner, seizure-like orgasms, more lip liner, and muscular men in gold lamé thongs. It is the fantasy imagining of sex before you discover that sex is more complex than champagne and pleasure,” (Gibsone 2014). Despite its strong emphasis on nudity and sexuality, there is something quite innocent and pure in the enjoyment of the film; away from sexual titillation, the bright lights, frantic energy and gaudy colours make for a impactful and memorable visual experience, complimented by its flaws, rather than ruined by them. Like the film, Nomi is endearing in her ridiculousness, entertaining because it is difficult to imagine her existing outside of this mad kaleidoscope.