It Doesn't Suck

I have a confession to make. I actually haven't seen this movie. Not that that's a shocker. Name any 100 must-see movies and it's likely I haven't seen about 80% of them or more. And I have weird taste in movies - I may be the only person I know who prefers Batman and Robin to The Dark Knight, didn't think Glitter deserved all the bashing, thinly-veiled autobiography or no, and who is over eight and still enjoys watching Space Jam.

Don't judge me. Fuck you.

ANYWAY, I haven't seen this movie, but I kind of feel I have after watching The Nostalgia Chick's review of it, and reading this fascinating blog that hypothesizes that Showgirls borrowed the lipsticked nipples bit from Pennies from Heaven, and also that Joe Eszterhas and William Shockley (the actor who plays rapist Andrew Carver) might be the same person.

Jokingly, of course.

Even though I am not an active participant in it, I enjoy reading about pop culture. I was really excited to see that a new essay collection about pop culture was being launched on Netgalley (called "Pop Classics"), because most of these sorts of essays are written about music and I've never understood the hooplah about getting all up in arms about music. It's fucking music. You listen to it. You can't do that if you're too busy prattling about it's many (questionable) merits. At least with movies and TV shows there's something solid to talk about, and there's the benefit of visuals.

In IT DOESN'T SUCK, Nayman discusses Showgirls in detail, parsing each scene and its merits that may have been overlooked when the movie first came out. First he talks about director Paul Verhoeven's career, his controversial Dutch movies (including one called Spetters, which has a homosexual gang-rape scene), and his American efforts, such as RoboCop, and Basic Instincts. Verhoeven is a director that doesn't appear to have over-the-top in his mental lexicon, and his movies have become somewhat notorious for sexual and physical violence, offensive stereotypes, and gore.

It's also interesting that Verhoeven and Eszterhas didn't get along - in fact, according to IT DOESN'T SUCK, they hated each other. (There is some evidence that on the set of Basic Instincts, Sharon Stone didn't like Verhoeven either - he allegedly told her that during the infamous crotch shot scene, the lighting would be a lot darker than it actually was; she was outraged to see that her naughty parts were fully visible in the movie. So there you go. I'd be pissed too.)

My brother, who is a movie film buff, told me that Showgirls is part of the reason NC-17 ratings are practically unheard of now. It was an experiment to try and make a mainstream movie with a non-mainstream rating - and it backfired, horribly. Movie critics tore the movie a new hole, and Elizabeth Berkley had to lie low for a while and now seems to pretend that the movie doesn't exist.

As a writer, I can understand that. You want to experiment - but sometimes experiments don't work, and you're forced to make a decision: do you want to keep trying and get better, despite the fact that nobody seems to be in your corner? or do you want to go back to what you know, even though you'd like to move on from it? or do you want to just call it quits? I think Nayman did a great job sympathetically discussing Berkley's dichotomous motivations: on the one hand, she is an inexperienced girl doing her first "adult" movie, but on the other hand, she's supposed to take all those childhood dance classes and turn them into something erotic and hard and cheap.

Even though I'm not a big fan of the so-called cult classic, Nayman made his sale. I kind of do want to watch this movie now. It's the same reason I read bodice-rippers: they're so misogynistic and cheesy and over-the-top that you can actually learn something from them (namely, that they're misogynistic, and cheesy, and over-the-top and make us feel like feminism is a lot like standing in quicksand and doing the macarena). Showgirls is a horrible, graphic, offensive movie, but it also shines a light on just how badly women are treated. The rape scene towards the end just goes to show how the victims of sexual assault often aren't the people who are allegedly "asking for it", and that the "she was asking for it" defense is total bullshit anyway, because everyone has their limits, and the real perpetrators aren't the people who have the limits, but the ones who are incapable of respecting them.

I think the fact that all the most horrible scenes take place behind closed doors in private rooms is telling - oh, and I loved the symbolism with the mirrors, too. IT DOESN'T SUCK is a great book that makes you think - just be prepared to do a lot of running back and forth from Google.

4 to 4.5 out of 5 stars!