Jessie Spano’s All Grown Up: 7 Good Reasons to See Showgirls

(5 of which are not Elizabeth Berkeley’s breasts)

The summer I turned fifteen, I found a copy of Fear of Flying in my mother’s bookshelf (she was a feminist back at the University of Michigan, and still gives me lectures on what life was like before women’s lib). It was a huge bestseller back when it came out, a well-written, daring account of a woman who was trying to live life both as an intellectual and a woman aware of her own sexual needs—or so it struck me at the time. For whatever reason, that summer, Fear of Flying influenced me in a way I’ve never been able to explain, and ever since then, my views towards sex have been somewhat skewed toward the ideal. I still believe that a modern American woman should be able to spend the night with a man without ever learning his name, and then speed-read a little Schopenhauer over breakfast the next morning.

And maybe that’s why Showgirls, possibly the worst movie released in the nineties, appeals to me so much. At seventeen, I still believe wholeheartedly that a woman’s experiences only demean her if she allows herself to be demeaned by them. Once I grow older and become a little more jaded, I doubt I’ll feel the same way. But for now, I see Showgirls as a sweet coming-of-age story: Dirty Dancing meets All About Eve, with a little Deep Throat thrown in the mix.

(Let me also add here that, while I am giving a glowing review of this movie, I don’t think I’m technically allowed to recommend it. It has an NC-17 rating, and its lead actress, Elizabeth Berkeley, of Saved by the Bell fame, spends a little over a sixth of the movie topless. Which should probably be incentive enough.)

The first time I saw Showgirls, I was in a motel room in Walla Walla, Washington, and the edited version was being shown on VH1. It was about twenty minutes long. A few weeks later, I rented it from Trilogy, and saw the rest. Showgirls tells the story of Nomi Malone, a young drifter who comes to Las Vegas with the dream of becoming a dancer. Through a combination of talent, deceit, and sex appeal, she works her way up from stripping to backup dancing to being the headliner in a hotel’s show, after pushing the previous lead dancer down a flight of stairs. It’s a journey of self-discovery that requires her to be completely naked in half her scenes, ending with a heartwarming finale in which she leaves town for bigger and better things.

If it sounds like total trash, well…it kind of is. But showgirls, despite all its blatant exploitation, awful dialogue, and terrible acting (not to mention the awful haircut Kyle MacLachlan, who obviously misses David Lynch very, very much, sports throughout the whole thing), Showgirls is still a weirdly entrancing movie, and will always be ten times more entertaining than the benign romantic comedies the big studios turn out every year (“okay, so—Jennifer Lopez and this guy fall in love, but then it turns out that Jennifer Lopez has split personality disorder, and it turns out that the guy is really a figment of her imagination! Named Brad!”).

And so, without further ado—your five reasons for seeing Showgirls:

1. Come on, you always wanted to know what the smart, overachieving feminist one from “Saved By The Bell” would look like doing a lap dance, right?

It almost goes without saying that Elizabeth Berkeley, until then best known as Jessie Spano from “Saved by the Bell,” took this role to try and create a new image for herself. If you’ve ever watched even one episode, the cognitive dissonance of seeing the whiny rich girl with the 4.0 GPA kick a guy while wearing stiletto heels will be reason enough.

2. The snappy dialogue.

There’s an awful lot to choose from, most of it too explicit to print here—but the best, without a doubt, is Nomi’s repeated catchphrase of “it doesn’t suck!” From the way she says it, you can tell that the studio wanted it to become a pop culture sensation, like “love means never having to say you’re sorry” or “where’s the beef?” But Showgirls flopped, and “it doesn’t suck!” will forever be relegated to the limbo of failed entertainment. Which is kind of sad, really. I’d pay good money for a shirt with that printed on it.

3. It’s cinematic daring.

Let’s be honest: it isn’t Lasse Hallström. It isn’t even Lasse Braun. But—and probably contrary to its intentions—Showgirls actually represents a stunning leap in big-budget Hollywood’s utilization of cinema verité. Independent filmmakers like Todd Solondz and Harmony Korine are always trying for realism in their films, away from the “bubblegum” values of modern Hollywood. This is pretentious independent filmmaker lingo for “let’s try and make as many horrible things happen to our characters as possible.” Showgirls certainly lives up to these standards, but it has been ignored by the artistic elite, and unfairly—it’s a lot more entertaining and affectionate towards its characters than half the contestants at Sundance.

Showgirls is, at base, a movie about show business, like Sunset Boulevard or 42^nd Street or—the movie it is most often compared to—Flashdance. They both were written by Joe Eszterhas, and they both have the same plot, more or less: a young, working-class girl seduces her boss, rises from her less than reputable beginnings, and becomes (sigh) a real dancer. The differences between the two lie in the way the story is executed. Flashdance, for all its street-smart pretensions, is a dreamy music video of a movie: the dancing done in it is more artistic than exploitative, the male lead is handsome and kind-hearted, and the heroine is too good to be true: the exotic dancer who is as beautiful as she is kind.

Showgirls, however, is a whole different kettle of fish. There’s no idealism to it: the career ladder is cruel and exploitative, and Nomi has to fight tooth and nail to get what she wants. The male lead has a bad haircut. Men use and abuse women. And Nomi, the heroine herself, is temperamental, crude, and not really all that pretty. Showbiz is a disillusioned take on show business, and labeling it an erotic big-budget drama was where MGM went wrong. If they had drastically cut the budget, handed the script to an independent filmmaker, and slapped some Aimee Mann on the soundtrack, it probably would have swept Cannes.

4. Its feminist implications.

Showgirls is a movie about abuse, harassment, stripping, rape, lap dances, and Elizabeth Berkeley’s breasts. But it is also about a girl who, against all odds, beats the system, uses men to her advantage, and rises from prostitution to stardom. Despite everything, it is ultimately uplifting, and somehow, in the midst of all that cleavage, that’s the one thing that everybody forgets.

5. It’s a movie about dancing.

And movies about dancing are just better than other movies, somehow. Think about what Dirty Dancing would be like if Johnny taught Baby about archaeology.

In the end, you don’t have to recognize Showgirls for its cinematic merits. Simply recognize it is a funny, campy, and oddly inspiring way to spend a Sunday night. Then try and explain to your friends just why you wasted two hours of your life on it, and see if you can do better than I.

Dance: 10; looks: 3, and Sarah Marshall’s still on unemployment—dancing for her own enjoyment? That ain’t it, kids, that ain’t it, kids.