Why Showgirls is a Sincere Masterpiece

A psychoanalytical, kabbalistic, and cultural reflection on the Verhoeven film.

I am very confused by the reception to Showgirls. I'm talking of course about the 1995 erotic drama about a young drifter with big dreams named Nomi. She arrives in Las Vegas as a stripper and rises to become one of the titular resort showgirls. It is one of my favorite films, but was considered at release to be one of the worst films of the decade. The film was famously panned critically, and nearly every aspect was criticized. Even the cast itself were confused with the end product. Kyle MacLachlan walked out in horror and exclaimed to press, “I thought we were making an art film!” It has grown in popularity since release on VHS, and within the last ten years has had a rediscovery and renaissance.

I'm not talking, however, about its transformation in the public consciousness from B-movie to cult satire. Even when I’m among fans of the film, I find it strange that they are perplexed by how seriously everyone working on it took the production. I, on the other hand, have come to a deeper understanding in my meditations obsessing over this picture. This is a film I have seen repeatedly. I know Showgirls like a Talmudic scholar knows every line of the Torah. As he can hold the 6,000 pages of the Gemara in his head, I am acquainted with every neon-lit frame, every ice-chilled nipple, and I am confident I am capable of performing the choreography myself under the right conditions. The film is not a campy satire, not ‘so bad it’s good,’ it should be taken at face value as a genius portrayal of not just the sex industry, entertainment, the American dream et cetera but of America itself.  

My favorite director of all time is Showgirls’ one and only Paul Verhoeven. A Dutch director who remembers a childhood in Nazi-occupied Netherlands, he has dedicated his career to making films that are known for their social commentary, graphic violence, and sexual content. His repeatedly stated goal is to arouse emotion and reaction in audiences. This is the mind that brought you Basic Instinct, Total Recall, Starship Troopers and Robocop. To quote the prophet himself on Showgirls, “ I thought I had made a very elegant film.” Alas, the hoi polloi do not want to recognise the brilliance in hearing a stripper talk about how what she does is art, only to hear a shadowy off-screen figure yell, “Hey, lady, show me your ass!”

Within the realm of mystical geography, Florida is America's id and California is America's super ego. Both sun-poisoned states represent liminal spaces in our minds, dream lands filled with dreamers. Florida is our deepest libidinal urges realized and she demands satisfaction immediately—to hell with the consequences. 

California is the end of the frontier, literally, and in many ways it is the end of America. This country was built upon the idea that if you didn't like it, you could always go west. The endlessness of the land and its equalizing quality were an escape valve for most of American history. California is the way it is because when you stare at the Pacific, you end up just looking back at yourself. There is only abyss. It is appearance and status obsessed, the critical and punishing end of all things. It is both the future and the future of bullshit. In this way, it is the super ego.

I posit that Nevada, and specifically Las Vegas is the ego. Baudrillard wrote how Disneyland is the real America and America is the fake America. This is a very intuitive concept for making sense of our hyperreality, our worsening ability to discern what is fake and what is real. However, it's clear that Las Vegas is just America, it is both very fake and very real. It is a flat desert with no industry but taking your money. It is a place no human could live, and yet they do, and they all are cogs in a city machine run by who we can only assume to be Archons to create and maintain grand, immersive, and insane carnivals of opulence. The whole of the strip is a middle finger to G-d.

Showgirls’ intelligence can be seen as a reflection of this incongruous American ego. Many viewers kvetch that the film is incoherent, that it is clearly trying to say something, but they don't know what that is. They withdraw from their own disgust of themselves. In this way, Showgirls is like Vegas. It shows you a nature beyond what the superego and id can understand. It shows who you are, your persona and face to the world around you.

Think about the main character’s name, Nomi, presumably implied to be a white trash spelling of Naomi. This requires a kabbalistic analysis. 

For those who do not live in the caves near Tzvat pondering the secrets of creation, gematria is a form of Hebrew numerology where words are interconnected with their numerical letter values. Spelled נעמי, Naomi comes from the root of ‘pleasant,’ and has a numerical value in Hebrew gematria when you add up the letters of  50+70+40+10 to equal 170. There exists here an obvious connection as the word ‘to survive’ also means ‘to strip’ נצל (nitzal) and it posses a value of 170.

But what about Nomi? Her name is not Naomi after all. We remove the Ayin and it becomes נמי. Under a standard system this would be 50+40+10 which is 100. Now let’s materially synthesize these two names by adding them together. We have arrived at the ominous number of 270.

Apart from the number of American electoral college votes you need to become president, what else has a value of 270? Evil רע (rah) has a value of 270, as do the words pure טהור (tahor), and impure טמא (tameh) when combined. יסר (yiser) also adds up to 270 and it means, ‘to torment, to cause pain, to chastise, to punish.’ Additionally, to say ‘man is a pig’ in Hebrew would be אדם חזיר (adam chazir). What is the value of the two words? 270.

Look at this gorgeous shot from the beginning of the famous pool scene. Las Vegas is a desert with ample artificially planted palm trees, but isn't it interesting how the palm trees in the background are in fact neon? In front of real palm trees no less. The word for palm branches in Hebrew is סנסנים (sansanim). You don’t even have to ask, you know it’s 270. 

If thinking about Hebrew numerology scares your loved ones, there are more conventional approaches to understanding the pool scene. Many have complained that the pool sex portrayed is completely absurd, ridiculous, and not logistically possible. These people are bloodless, hate life, and could not be further from the truth. The sex scene in the pool might possibly be one of the greatest literal climaxes in cinema. It is a pure spectacle. Nomi is using every part of her mind and body in complete coordination with the willpower, discipline, and training of an olympic athlete or classically-trained ballerina to get Kyle MacLachlan off. She has her small death as she acts like she is fighting for her survival, and in many ways she is! Her entire career leads up to this single sociopathic performance. This is her capability as an artist.  

The entire film shows not the way we think about ourselves but how we are. Cruelty is a recurring theme. The stage director's cruel and crass dismissal at the audition, the way the showgirls backstab each other to reach the top, how you can trust no one and everyone is using you for their own personal gain. This cruelty reaches its height in the brutal rape scene toward the end. The rapist, of course, gets away with it because he is a celebrity. In many ways Showgirls was ahead of its time, nobody wanted to think about anything like systemic sexual harassment in entertainment in 1995.

You cannot look plainly and soberly at this nation without risking madness. It’s having an encounter with a demon or other-worldly beings, the lovecraftian monstrosity is imperceivable to the human mind, thus breaking it. Instead of comprehending the suffering and power, your mind can only understand Joe Biden and Donald Trump. I distinctly remember being very confused in 2017 by the whole “There’s a Cheeto in the White House!” Twitter talk, and I understood it in a moment of enlightenment in the shower where I burst laughing and maniacally called my friend yelling “There’s a Cheeto in the White House, I understand!” Liberals were frustrated by what they saw as denigration of institutions and the long lasting impacts of the degradation of norms. They didn’t want the Cheeto dust to get over the whole building. Perhaps the same phenomenon is what made Showgirls so unwatchable at the time. 

Consider citizenship, in the classical sense, an earned privilege and a mark of status similar to a noble title. The Roman idea of citizenship exists in the popular imagination as a highly coveted sign of status and protection.

In America, your citizenship is directly tied to how much power you can wield over others. In other words, money. Every scene of Showgirls shows that how much of a person you are in this country, how much true citizenship you have, is tied to your ability to dominate others—and how money is the blood of this demonic force that allows you to curse other humans in this realm.

Kyle MacLachlan’s performance is fascinating for this reason. His character of Zach in many ways fills in the missing years of Agent Cooper’s Doppelganger (from the highly masonic series Twin Peaks), and explains his Vegas connection. Zach is outwardly charming and kind, but only to further his own ends. He is the most cynically-depicted character in the film. Everyone else is up-front in their desire for simple sexual gratification. This MBA-educated yuppie personifies the narcissistic characteristics of contemporary social liberalism. There is zero concern for any of the people involved, the concern is purely for appearances’ sake.

This is also why I am confused by the hatred Elizabeth Berkley received in her role as the lead. She did an amazing job in her overacting, embodying a very real and extreme type of woman. Have the people who criticized her never met someone like her? Have they never talked to someone with Borderline Personality Disorder? Have they ever talked to an actor, let alone a stripper? Have they not seen someone whose life is in a shambolic state hysterically throw fries and ketchup? Being Cluster B gets you ahead because you are rewarded for this behavior, this way of destroying each and every thing around you in naked self interest and impulsive hysteria. Throwing fries and ketchup is how you climb to the top.

Here we arrive at the truth of why Showgirls is so misunderstood, so hated. People desperately don't want to think about the ways this country thrives on cruelty and domination. That those are the heart of American values, even in an anything-goes liberal paradigm. Verhoeven, a Dutchman, sees us better than we see ourselves and tells us exactly who we are. As with his other work, you're lying to yourself if you don't at least love it a little bit.

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