I am still trying to wrap my head around the idea “it is so bad it is good” – a comment that was made in connection with the film Showgirls and/or the director Paul Verhoeven.I certainly get the idea of not looking at the usual suspects when it comes to the auteur theory – where’s the challenge in that – and so looking at a Verhoeven. But I had a lot of difficulty stomaching the film. It was quite unbelievable that this film would have been made – and even more so that it made the amount of money on home viewing, in its afterlife.

Maybe I am at a disadvantage because I have not seem enough of the director’s films to have a good sense of his filmography, and so be able to appreciate his POV, his presentation, and his style. I can only say that I dislike the 2 American films of his I have seen fully – Basic Instinct and for sure Showgirls. I did catch his Dutch film – Black Book – that he made when he returned to filmmaking in this native Holland,. It was not a bad film, but it was not a particularly good one either. One among many, many WWII films is how I remember it.

I found though that Colleen’s post gave me pause – when she talked of the dichotomy in his portrayal of women. It is possible as she suggests that we cannot make sense of how he sees them, or what he thinks they are/should be about. But this still does not take away from my issue: the exploitativeness in his portrayal. And more importantly, just how bad his films are. Or to be specific, how bad Showgirls is – the story, the script, the acting, all of it!