reviews Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls ALTHOUGH IT is well made and at some points visually stunning. Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls is a confusing vacuous film.
Claiming to show the side of Las Vegas that you normally do not see, its concorder NomaDem Berkley) arrives at the desert strip seeking fame and fortune.
Joe Eszterhas' extremely plodding script mainly follows the conventional Hollywood genre of the showbiz rags to riches story.
But it perverts this by demonstrating—no doubt quite rightly -trat peo ple do not make it on their calent, but. on the back of who they know, who they fuck and who, they literally push out of the way and maim in the process.
his is an interesting loea which could have been much better exe cuted.
Also, in struggling to make Eszterhas's ill-conceived and cardboard characters come to life, the actors seem to be wading, trough a savannan swamp rather than treading lightly across the desert sand.
At the beginning of the film, we know that Nomi is a person with a past. writer do not revealanything of this until the end, they deny the possibility of dramatic tension and any shred of Where did it all go wrong, Poul?* - Verhoeven with Elizabeth Berkley Crystal Connors (Gine Gershon) pursues Nomi (Elzobeth Berkley) sympathy we might conceivably have for the character.
Until this moment she merely seems a contradictory and inexplicable mix of hard-nosed ambition and extreme naivety The him bener For example, on the one hand, to get to the top she is prepared to kick her rivals out of the way. Tes she is outraged when, after making it into the top Vegas show, it is suggested that she might earn a few extra•curricular bucks by providing a more personal. ised form of entertainment for a visit. ing Japanese businessman.
Pursued by Crystal Connors, the bisexual star of the sex review. Goddess. she flirts but refuses to be bought and the tension between them makes for some or the better acong in the film.
Drawing on the type of Jungian archecypes which he also used in his earlier Dutch film, "The Fourth Man". Verhoeven is suggesting that the new goddess must kill the old goddess in order to supplant her. While segments are technically complex, Vegas meat market But with the otherwise intellectual vacuity of the plece, such symbolism seems pointless and clumsy.
The flim has attracted controversy by containing extended sequences of women and men dancing either fully naked or only partially clothed.
The movie seems to exploit this at the expense of having any real character development. But Verhoeven has not even made an erotic film.
While segments are technically complex, the sum total is nothing more than an accurate but pointless replication of the Vegas meat market.
seemingey caugnt octween making an art film and providing a titillating and voyeuristic glimpse of the Vegas sex industry. Verhoeven and Eszterhas end up achieving neither.
Socialist Outlook 95 • January 25 1996. EL Socialist Outlook welcomes readers' letters. Address them to 'Feedback', PO Box | 109, London, N4 2UU. Letters over 300 words are edited for brevity and concision. Mass black support doesn't change reactionary charocter of Notion of islam Farrakhan: partner in racism JOE AUCIELLO totally underestimates the reactionary character of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam when he characterises it as merely "conservative" and refers to the "taint of anti-Semitism'" ("'The Nation of Islam: radical conservatives or heirs of Malcolm X?: SO 93).
Let us actually look at what Farrakhan says: "The Jews are blood suckers whom Jesus had condemned in the plainest of languages.. the scriptures charge your people with killing the prophets of God... You shout "Never Again but you can't say never again to God, because when he puts you in the oven "Never Again' don't mean a thing ".
If you came across that statement without knowing the source you would assume it was written by a nazi. In fact if you look back at Farrakhan's writSOCIALIST OUTLOOK ings and speeches up to the last 18 months, when he has been more careful about what he says. it is difficult to escape the conclusion that he is. indeed. a nazi.
More disturbing. perhaps, are the actions of both Farrakhan and his prede. cessor. Elijah Mohammed. There Is photographic documentation of both of them meeting with Ku Klux Klan mem. bers in the 60s.
More recently Farrakhan has associ. ated with Tom Metzger. leader of Aryan Nations, as well as being chummy with Bricain's fallen fascist star. Patrick Harrington.
Of course, it would be too simplistic to argue that because Farrakhan is, and Nation of Islam is a fascist movement. A Black nationalist movement in a white imperialist heartland cannot function as a full-blooded fascist organisation. The nearest it could come to that would be as a junior partner in a white supremacist fascist run country or state, actively recreating segregation.
We can safely assume that if the Nation of Islam went down that road, it would lose its mass support in the Black community, so there are cicaty suong limits to how far Farrakhan can pursue his vision.
Socialists have to be very clear about this. Certainly it is vital that we don't ignore this phenomenon. It is equally important that we don't give it any kind of left cover by participating in it.
Socialists, and primarily it will be Black socialists, have to engage with this issue insse the black communty but outside the Nation of Islam itself. On this question I think Angela Davis has got it right and Socialist Action (USA) have got it wrong. Dave Landau, North London IT NOW looks increasingly likely that on May 1 1996 the "Socialist Labour Parry " will be bom.
At first glance, this new party may seem attractive to socialists both within and without the Labour Party —it won't be led by Blair and it will almost cer. cainly put forward policies that socialists will agree with far more than those of the Labour leadership.
However, this project has several po. cential problems. The first and most obrious of these is the dismal record throughour history of those groups that have chosen to split from the Labour Party in the past. From the IL Pto the SDP. ion for those who have chosen that path.
For Militant Labour the motivation is all too clear—-they will seck to revive the high profile of this new organisation to revive the old LPYS to enable them to attract naive young people who are attracted to the idea of socialism. and practice. There is no sound theory behind Militant Labour's decision to and simple.
Scargill's motive for setting up this organisation is a profound misunderstanding of the nature of the Labour Party. The belief that Clause 4, before it was abolished. defined the Labour Party as socialist, could not be further from the truth.
Clause 4 never defined the Labour Party as socialist because the leadership never intended to carry it out!
Socialists and the oppressed are in the Labour Party because its links with che unions define it as a working class party, not because of its constitution or Now is not the time for a split. The working classes want the Tories out abore anything else-Scargill's new party won't be able to do that. Nor can it offer an alternative to the long. hard fight on the key issues of full employ. ment, the minimum wage and workers' Joe Naim, Southampton UP AGAINST mass unemployment, rampant employers with savage anti-union laws, and a war on hard-won public services, the working class in Britain faces a real crisis - an avoidable crisis created by the historic failure of its official leadership. Socialist Outlook exists to build a new type of working class by its need to maximise profits at the expense of the workers, has had determined, vanguard leadership by a brutal Tory high com. cro at a time. featist politics of 'new realism", effectively total surrender, while ditching any pretence of being a socialist alternative. Every retreat encouraged the offensive against jobs, wages, conditions and union conditions within capitalism. environment, peace and democracy, can never be achiered under Nor, as we argued long before the collapse of Stalinism, could these demands ever be achleved under the bureaucratically de. formed workers states and degenerated USSR, whose regimes survived only by repressing the working class. dies of state marxism, nor on the tame, toothless version of 'marx. Ism' beloved by armchair academics, but the revolutionary tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. Illusions of peaceful legislative change. topple the corrupt and reactionary rule of capital and establish its own class rule. sloners, of the black communities, of lesblans and gay men, of students, of youth - and of those fighting Imperialism in Ireland and mass revolutionary party can be buile simply by proclaiming our. selves to be one. This degenerates into sectarian posturing and abstention from struggles in the labour movement, playing into right instruggle, must be taken into the unions, the Labour Party and every campaign and struggle in which workers and the oppressed work together for common objectives while remaining free to dewith us in the struggle for socialism, readers' groups meet in cities Contact us now, get organised, and get active!
---leadership, based on class struggle and revolutionary socialism.
The capitalist class, driven by Its own crisis, and politically united The Tory strategy has been to shackle the unions, and to fragment and weaken the resistance, allowing them to pick off Isolated sections In response, most TUC and Labour leaders have embraced the deNew realism is the latest form of reformism, seeking only improved We reject reformism, not because we are against reforms, but because we know that full employment, decent living standards, a clean We are a marxist current, based not on the brutish totalitarian paroOur socialist alternative is not based on parliamentary elections or We fight to mobilise and unleash the power of the working class to We struggle against fragmentation by building solidarity, to unite the varlous struggles of workers, the unemployed, of women, of penSocialist Outlook is above all an internotionalist current, in solidarity with the Trotskyist Fourth International, which organises in over 40 counUnlike some other groups on the British left, we do not belleve a Nor do we belleve that the demands of women, black people, lesbians and gays or the national demands of people in Scotland, Ireland and Wales should be left to await revolution. The oppressed must or. ganise themselves and fight now for their demands, which are a part But propaganda alone, however good, will not bring socialism. The fight for policies which can mobilise and politically educate workers To strengthen this fight we press for united front campaigns on key issues such as racism and fascism - in which various left currents can If you agree with what you see in Socalist Outook, and want to join Get organised! Contact us now!
When is the time to split?