Yes, except for the mediocre movies, which are bad.
Not only has lissener been condescending, the thread title is obnoxious.
Oh lord. Is this really a thread debating Showgirls ?
Isn’t that one of the signs of the Apocalypse? Are the Four Horseman coming?
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s pause for a minute.
Robocop was a satire?! A conscious satire?!
I don’t disbelieve you. I watched it for the first and only time last summer on cable and it was so, so, so bad. I was appalled and sad. I hope it is a satire, because then it would have some a redeeming quality and not make me quite so sad.
I’m actually relieved that it wasn’t meant to be taken at face value but just tell me…what was it a satire of? Cop movies in general? (If it helps, it was released when I was like 2, so I’m probably missing stuff…)
It’s a satire of 80’s consumer culture in general. The general point is that people aren’t really people, they’re all just potential consumers for whatever product one is selling, ie drugs, war machines, luxury cars, political influence, news as entertainment, sex and violence in the media, tv shows that appeal to the least common denominator, and even police protection.
Makes sense to me. Thank you.
We’ve been over this already, lissener. I haven’t dismissed Showgirls. I don’t think it sounds very good, but maybe if I gave it a try I’d like it. (It’s not very high on my “to-do” list, though.) I can’t really have much of a problem with a movie I’ve never seen. What I can have a problem with is the way you’ve chosen to express yourself here.
For someone who’s made such a big deal about his great insight that Showgirls isn’t a bad movie, it’s ABOUT bad movies, I’m surprised you have such difficulty distinguishing between criticism of Showgirls and criticism of the way you discuss Showgirls.
No, all I’m saying is, “You have every right to defend this film and encourage other people to reconsider it, but a lot of people hated it anyway and it’s obnoxious and unbecoming to sneer at them over this. It’s also unlikely to make them change their minds.”
I’ll repeat, since you ducked it again: please quote me being superior or sneery.
Meanwhile for the rest of you, the storm continues.
Your bandwagon has no passengers. Quote me being condescending. Show me what you mean and I’ll reconsider it in that light.
Well, beginning your subject line with “I TOLD you!” was a fine opening move. Then you continued with
Yeah, someday the lion will lay down with the lamb and everyone will agree with you because you’re so right. Scrolling down the first page of this thread some more, I see you comparing Little Nemo to a middle schooler giving a bad, clueless book report because he didn’t think Showgirls was good. Then you bring up Sirk, and when the comparison is questioned you support it by…posting a Roger Ebert quote about Sirk and saying that it “could be applied practically word for word to Verhoeven”! You liked this sort of evidence so well you used it twice in a row.
It was at this point that I entered the thread. I don’t have any personal feelings about Showgirls, but I do like Sirk, and I don’t like ridiculous arguments. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have made the mistake of trying to be nice about it. I don’t think I’m by nature a very nice person, and my attempts to compensate for this don’t always work out well. Despite this, I think I’ve behaved in a much nicer way to you than you have to me, or anyone here who actually dared to say they thought Showgirls sucked, and much good it’s done. I should have simply said that you had posted the film critic equivelant of “Everyone says I look just like Drew Barrymore. Don’t believe me? Just look at this photo! It looks exactly like me!” Perhaps this would have spared you some confusion and we wouldn’t have had to waste so much time going back and forth with the “How can you criticize Showgirls when you’ve never seen it?” and “I’m not criticizing Showgirls, I’m criticizing your obnoxious attitude!”
Anyway, after that you carried on being superior and sneery some more, but enough is enough and I’m not going to go over the rest of your posts for you.
Feel free to quote a single line of this post, ignore everything else, and respond with nothing more than yet another condescending remark. I’m sure you’d do it without my permission anyway.
So I rented Showgirls this weekend. I haven’t processed all of my thoughts about the film, but as is my wont, I’m going to come down square in the middle of the argument: Verhoeven is obviously being satirical – or at least he’s not approaching the material with a straight face – but I’m not convinced that that saves the movie from mediocrity. Is it damning with faint praise to argue that the movie is a lukewarm satire rather than a bad sexploitation flick?
Granted that I went in knowing that the reappraisal had begun, but I can’t fathom watching this movie and not clueing into Verhoeven’s non-straightforward approach. I mean, that sex scene in the dolphin pool is one of the least erotic things involving female nudity that I’ve ever seen (almost, but not quite, matched by Nomi’s lapdance for Zack) – the woman fucks like a Kitchenaid mixer while dolphins barf fountain water and neon palm trees glow in the background! It’s patently ludicrous, and I refuse to believe Verhoeven didn’t realize that.
Nomi as Goddess seems ridiculous as well – until you remember how the Greek goddesses tended to behave. Then it seems all-too-fitting that this casually violent, touchingly naive sociopath would end up immortalized.
As for Eszterhas: I think Veroeven’s making the movie’s real villain (Andrew Carver) look an awful lot like Joe back in the '90s speaks volumes about what Verhoeven thought of him.
Actually, I think if the movie had been about 30 minutes shorter, I could be more sympathetic to the possible-masterpiece arguments. As it is, it wears out its welcome, although most of the best stuff is saved for the later acts.
And while I understand the comparisons to Sirk – presenting the audience with one thing while making a completely different movie underneath – I don’t know if the comparison helps Verhoeven or Showgirls. Sirk was a master at the technique, and even he couldn’t pull it off consistently. Verhoeven’s just pretty good at it. And I think the telling difference is that Sirk is able to make a movie that people watching for surface enjoyment can enjoy just as much, in a different manner, as people watching to enjoy the subtext.
I’m open to watching the movie again, though. And not for the boobs.
Jeez, I was cracking up when I wrote the OP! Did you really picture me sitting in a tweed jacket, seriously intoning such phrases “master filmmaker”?
Sorry, Lamia, if you didn’t get that my tone was meant to be funny: that Showgirls, the trashiest movie ever made, is also a deeply layered work with a serious subtext, cracks me up. It’s like a joke about serious movie criticism at the same time it’s worthy of serious movie criticism. It’s an enlightening slap in the face, but it’s still a slap in the face.
This. Cracks. Me. Up.
And I don’t feel superior to people who haven’t seen what I’ve seen in the movie, so any such tone of superiority was unintentional. The reason I don’t feel superior is that I see how easy it is to miss what Verhoeven’s done. I certainly missed it the first time. So I don’t hold it against anyone.
I do, however, hold it a little against you that you SAY you were only attacking my “attitude,” but it took you quite a few posts to admit that: you started out by passive-aggressively arguing about the movie, when in fact you meant only to engage in ad hominem bullshit. Please do so more honestly from here on, and thanks for clarifying.
And anyway, your Drew Barrymore bit is bullshit: I didn’t claim Ebert or Taylor as my only evidence. I’ve made this argument myself many, many times, speaking entirely for myself and making my own case from the ground up. I only quoted the other critics to indicate that, as outlandish as many of you have viewed my interpretation of Showgirls, I’m not the only one who’s drawn those conclusions. I’m not offering those other opinions as proof that I’m right–although with great muddying effect I lampooned that claim in my OP (sorry, if you knew me you’d know I was being intentionally obnoxious)–not as proof that I’m right, only as proof that I’m not *alone * in holding that opinion.
And as far as the Verhoeven/Sirk parallel, I was trying to get people to look at Verhoeven in a new light. If you can see the ridiculosity in Sirk, which was the point of Ebert’s piece, then perhaps the ridiculosity of Verhoeven won’t be held so much against him.
So I apologize for forgetting how badly I get my intended tone across. I was pretty much going “Nana nana booboo” and poking you in the ribs.
To make myself look even more ridiculous: I guess I was kind of unconsciously adopting Showgirls’s tone in writing the OP. Not my conscious intention, but Showgirls’s gleeful obnoxiousness kind of colored my mood while I was writing it. FWIW.
Haw. This is almost exactly, word for word, the reaction of the first person I talked into rescreening *Showgirls * after I flipflopped on it. Mine too, for that matter: I long considered *Showgirls * to be a dark spot on Verhoeven’s career. It took a whiff of reappraisal from France (Jacques Rivette, to be precise) to get me to watch it again in 2000, with five years’ perspective on it. It clicked then; it had NOT clicked in '95. I was utterly whooshed back then, and would have argued just as strenuously against a reappraisal if I hadn’t sat down and watched it with a fresh eye in 2000.
Interesting thought. It’s clear to me that Esterhas has never been in on the joke, but I never thought of this parallel.
to the possible-masterpiece arguments. As it is, it wears out its welcome, although most of the best stuff is saved for the later acts.
And while I understand the comparisons to Sirk – presenting the audience with one thing while making a completely different movie underneath – I don’t know if the comparison helps Verhoeven or Showgirls. Sirk was a master at the technique, and even he couldn’t pull it off consistently. Verhoeven’s just pretty good at it. And I think the telling difference is that Sirk is able to make a movie that people watching for surface enjoyment can enjoy just as much, in a different manner, as people watching to enjoy the subtext.
I’m open to watching the movie again, though. And not for the boobs.
[/QUOTE]
My response to the above linked letter:
Just to be clear, I didn’t mean to imply that I would’ve been in on Verhoeven’s joke back in '95. Just that it’s pretty clear now.
Also, I didn’t really get to my final point in my earlier point, which is: yes, Verhoeven is not playing Showgirls straight. Yes, it’s a satire, and not just the funny kind. But as it stands, I don’t think it’s an exceptional achievement, unless you’re giving Verhoeven tons of bonus points for having the brilliant idea in the first place.
If I enjoyed the surface of the film as much as Taylor seems to, I might cut the movie more slack, but I found it only intermittantly pleasurable even as a garden of earthly delights.
I largely agree with you, !?, but yes, I do give him extra points for the sheer audacity. Talk about pearls before swine. Or something like that. It’s one thing make a movie with a subtext that closely parallels the surface text. But to do what Verhoeven does–and what Sirk did–to bury a subtext almost entirely at odds with the surface–that’s damn impressive. The tension between the text and the subtext is pretty great in a Sirk film–more even than your average Hitchchock–but it’s HUGE in Verhoeven. I think his most successful text/subtext juxtaposition is with Starship Troopers, but again, the sheer audacity of *Showgirls * eclipses anything he, Sirk, or Hitchcock ever achieved.
Gee, thanks so much for speaking for me. Don’t you think you should take a vote first before making such claims?
Oh my God, it’s English PhDejavu all over again! The hipster contrarion slouches forth on Rocinante to claim its kingdom of flotsam and jetsam and declare it a bed of roses. Come, be my Sancho Panza.
Shall we deconstruct the night, while grooving to The Shaggs and drinking Thunderbird grape (served “very cold”)? Spam fritter, anyone? CHiPs and chips?
I can see the Emperor’s balls from here!
My favorite review of Showgirls: “I don’t care how horny you think you are, you still don’t want to see this movie.”
I still ain’t that horny. Now get off my leg.
One time, I held a chewing gum wrapper up in front of my eye, and it covered up the whole sun.
So, you think maybe Showgirls was edited in the can?