The time for waiting is over. Your prayers to the almighty Cher have been answered. The shrine you made last winter with an offerda of mascara brushes and hair extensions has been received and welcomed. Burlesque will finally descend on us Thanksgiving weekend.
The truth is, if you need to get some fresh air after the Thanksgiving meal, and you’ve got a good group of friends with you, and you’ve had a few drinks you would be hard pressed to find a better movie option, unless you’re a Harry Potter fan, then you should probably go see that one. The problem is that, if you’re looking for the next gay camp classic, like a sequel to Showgirls say, this sadly is not that.
Showgirls, Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 masterpiece, set a very high bar, one that no intentionally campy gay-market targeted movie has ever been able to meet. Verhoeven is a true visionary, as evidenced in his other classics (Basic Instinct, Total Recal, Robo Cop, Starship Troopers). In each of these films he was able to convince his cast and crew to follow him down whatever dark and ridiculous path he saw fit to achieve cinematic glory. Not that he necessarily got good performances out of his actors, but he makes each one believe she is on the verge of cinematic greatness. Hell, he sure put Sharon Stone on the map. Burlesque director, Steven Antin, on the other hand, doesn’t have the clout or the balls to make a daring film. Burlesque in contrast is tame, like Disney Channel tame, and I have to blame Christina Aguilera for that. It’s trademark Aguilera – all sexiness all the time, but strictly chaste when it comes to real sex. Where’s the raunchy fun from Showgirls? There are no lap dances, no nudity, no writhing spasmodically in animal ecstasy (Nomi’s signature sex move). Even Bob Fosse’s Cabaret from 1972, which Burlesque draws huge inspiration, had a dark and dirty underbelly, like really dirty, that stage had probably never been cleaned. Instead in Burlesque (spoiler alert) we get a scene of Christina’s virginal deflowering that delicately cuts away to some silly love ballad and returns with sheets carefully draped around swim suit areas. Even Cher’s character, basically a glorified Madam, gets all judgmental on Xtina for having two boyfriends. Excuse me, Cher, they are both hot and one of them’s a billionaire. Isn’t having a billionaire boyfriend a perk of this job? And of course the clichéd pregnant girl has to get married in a little girl fantasy princess wedding – no birth control or single moms allowed in this universe, and don’t even breath the A-word on this film set.
Now, one could argue that the name of this film is “Burlesque” and not “Whorehouse”, and burlesque by nature is a cheeky tease not a striptease. In that case, just drop the Cabaret references to Weimar Berlin, a much more sexually liberated milieu than the one here. You should also drop the references to 1940s nightclubs. (If you think that Dietrich was entertaining the troops from on-stage only, then you are sorely mistaken.) While we’re at it scratch off anything that vaguely resembles the classic Vegas show. What is “burlesque” then? It’s a question the film repeatedly tries to answer. In this film the answer closely resembles the Pussycat Dolls, a performance art project not-coincidentally conceived by the director’s sister Robyn Antin. In this world sexiness is safely divorced from the notion of real sex. I can’t help but see it as another symptom of the sexual Puritanism at the forefront of culture since the end of the 90s. Can we blame Bush for this too?
As I said, Burlesque is an innocuous good time. It’s benign and pretty easy to forget. Just don’t think to0 hard about it. Focus on the wigs, the make-up, the costumes, the dance moves and pretend this is as good as it gets. You never know, it just might.
Ryan Hicks is a film fan and contributor to Seattle Gay Scene.
