ABSTRACT
This chapter lays out the different apparatuses historically used for viewing showgirls: the theatre, cinema, VCR, and the Internet, in four modes of viewing. Each apparatus is linked with concurrent strands of thought on the showgirl and cultural artefacts that explore her. Thus, in Mode One theatre viewing is related to observing, Siegfried Kracauer and Roland Barthes, and an Edward Hopper painting. Laura Mulvey’s text, ‘Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema’, cinematic viewing, ‘the gaze’, and classic stars of cinema Marilyn Monroe and Rita Hayworth are considered in Mode Two. In Mode Three queer theory is positioned in relation to VCR viewing and doing a double-take, alongside Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls and Pipilotti Rist. Finally, our current Internet-based Mode Four viewing borrows the term ‘the grab’ from Theresa Senft and also draws on the writing of Jack Halberstam. Aligned with this are videos by Natalie Bookchin and Sophie Lisa Beresford.
