Postscript Clarification to The Last Showgirl Post ...

I've added some things to that post to help clarify, but wanted to highlight those points here.

Some questions I was asked (one male, one female) about my perspective on the film itself and perhaps why it was snubbed at the Oscars, as well as about the main character, Shelly (Pamela Anderson)  ... 

(Not by family, and definitely not Mark -  he loved it, made him tear up, too. He said he still thinks of Pam Anderson as a bimbo, but she did a good job. 😂 I said then he missed one of the major the points about the movie - especially in show business, perception is not reality 😉)

Don't you think the film was choppy and like it was missing critical information?

Yes, I do - and I did mention that some scenes were apparently cut that were actually pretty important, such as a scene in which she apologizes to the younger show girls for shutting the door in their faces and for lashing out/blaming them for her own refusal to race reality, when she was melting down.

Gia Coppola is still a young director and clearly made mistakes about what to cut and what to keep, which is common mistake in younger filmmakers. She will grow, she will learn from it - it's in here genes, and she's clearly got the coal to turn diamond someday.

However, I thought the individual performances in the film made up for it or at least most of it.

Not the best performances I've ever seen, but affective.

Do I think that Shelly was selfish?

Yes and no.

Yes -  in the sense that she followed her dream and her passion, however delusional or ridiculous it was to the rest of us - and there's a bigger risk and cost for that - particularly in artistic fields like acting, dancing, music, writing, etc.

Here's the double-edged sword about following your passion and dreams ... 

If you succeed following a dream, the price you paid is perceived as "sacrifice." - 

However, if you fail, then you're "selfish." 

... especially if female. 

No - in the sense that I think she saw the best in people and was very giving and generous to her friends, a really good friend to Annette with a gambling addiction, and I think she had been previously very loving and giving and mothering to the younger showgirls, up until she melted down, and then acted at least momentarily very selfishly.

Was it selfish of her to give her daughter to a friend that was as stay-at-home mom in a safer, more stable, more lucrative environment?

Again, same as above - eye of the beholder.

Selfish or sacrificial, depending on your perspective.

Is giving up a child to adoption - or even having an abortion -  selfish or sacrificial? 

Or both?

Perhaps we women need to make up our minds about that, or at least start looking at it on a case-by-case basis rather than blanket it always/never - because it's never that simple😉

In Shelly's particular case, I think it was a little bit of both?

I think she stuck to her dream, but realized it was no environment for a child and not lucrative enough to properly care for her.

Plus Shelly somewhat romanticized everything and everyone to the point of being escaping reality altogether and being somewhat delusional, until it was too late?

But even in the end, she was still escaping reality again - because we know that last show night didn't go like that.

Do you think Shelly should've addressed her daughter's feelings more?

I think from what she said - "Please forgive me, I can't keep apologizing and defending myself" - she already had many times - we just didn't see it and perhaps should have to drive that point home.

Plus, let's be honest, her daughter's approach was mean. 

It's not like she said "Here's how I felt" or even "I'm so pissed at you" - she basically ridiculed her mother's career and her mother herself as a joke to make her point. 

In fact, in that scene, I wanted to feel worse for the daughter, but she was just so merciless that I ended up feeling sorrier for Shelly instead.

Maybe it was justified - and yet I don't think that approach helped anyone, least of all, herself.

Regardless, Shelly shouldn't have just walked away saying she's done apologizing/defending and to finally forgive her, no.

However, she does apologize for that - and in the end, she explains something that I'm assuming her daughter never heard "I wanted you to be safe and happy without having to worry."

I don't know if her daughter, at 22, was able to understand that yet, or if it helped, but it was important to distinguish the difference between not wanting her and wanting her to have a safer, better life.

"But she forgot her daughter's age."

Erm - I didn't interpret it that way. 

I interpreted it as she was nervous on the phone about inviting her to dinner and tripped over her words several times - which should've been evident when the smoke alarm went off and she cussed, then she tried to erase and rerecord, but hit send?

This is basic human stuff that happens.

So again - are we judging Shelly harshly because she's Pamela Anderson, because her character was a Vegas showgirl instead of a CEO, because she gave her daughter up, or because our society has become more judgmental in general rather than less? 

Regardless, all of that is not the part of Shelly's story I related to or that many women are relating to - with some women condemning her, revealing more of our societal confusion and residual judgmentalism about the choices other women make, though never having been in that situation.

And in case that wasn't clear in that post, I did NOT follow my dreams.

I didn't have the talent nor the confidence, and I was a lot more realistic about what was possible for me than Shelly (perhaps to the point of self-limiting.)

So I took what was initially a safer path, medical transcription, which initially paid more than your average secretary, until we started getting replaced by offshore outsourcing, check-the-box EMRs/EHRs, and AI.

So here's what I related to:

 

1) I related to the judgments and assumptions made as a young, unmarried pregnant woman without family,  damned if you do or don't, with even other women with more family and more opportunity oversimplifying or being totally clueless of how much you actually can make without a college degree at more basic types of jobs like store clerks, cashiers, and secretaries, or even waitressing, versus how much child care costs - often more than your rent - and God forbid you take public assistance. 

 

2) I related to the value of women still being mostly based on appearance in 2025, proven by the fact that the wage gap still exists, and that the highest-paid group of women in America aren't CEOs or neurosurgeons, they're women who take their clothes off in some way, shape, or form. 

 

3) I related to the fact that as women age, they lose more value than men - especially women in show business.  By the time you're 40, you're done in show business. 

 

4) I related to trying to stay positive, finding the best in people, and giving the benefit of the doubt to others (sometimes too much or for too long), who weren't always doing  the same for me, and continuing to do the right thing when others can't or won't -  and sometimes growing tired of it; however, I would never, and have never, handled it the way she did, shutting the door in the young girl's faces that viewed her like a mother, like she did. 

 

5) I related to getting tired of the shame, especially now, as I learned through therapy, not all of it should belong with me.

 

6) I related to having to apologize for mistakes I DID make, over and over again (though the movie implied she did, we didn't actually see it, but should have), as well as being the only one to apologize in situations where it shouldn't be JUST me apologizing, but others can't or won't. 

 

7) I related to the expectation from people, who don't know you, that you should regret or apologize for things they assume you did or motivations they think you had, but didn't. 

Or things you actually had limited or no choice on. 

Or things you had no control over, and shouldn't try to control, because they involved other people's choices and behavior.

No one person is powerful enough to control all of that, we can only take responsibility for our own choices. 

In fact, that was the most powerless I've ever been.

 

I tend to like movies with complex characters, rather than white-hatted "good" and black-hatted "bad" people anyway - because that doesn't exist, it isn't real, and it holds us all to an unrealistic, idealistic standard - like family TV shows in the 50s. Very few families were actually like that.

Most people are a mix of both, somewhere along a spectrum - flawed people who make mistakes and regret them later is my favorite type of character - because it's real.

Plus good and bad can be very subjective on what is morally good and bad anyway.

(Look at what Trumpers think is moral and good versus us lol.)

Shelly was complex, flawed and real - perhaps just in a different way as a Vegas showgirl - and Pamela played her perfectly (her performance getting better as the movie went on) - you almost felt like in a way, this was her life story, especially with what Jason Schwartzman says to her and how she replies during the audition.

Also, in case you missed it - which even many women did - the film is about the dichotomy of how easily society forgives men for mistakes of youth without holding them accountable, including fatherhood, versus the mistakes of women and accountability expected of women.

I found it interesting that the only critics who panned the film were male 😉

And there were a couple of female critics who didn't pan it, but didn't get it.

If you don't want to have to think about gritty reality for women in show business or single moms without support in favor of other stuff, that's fine ... but then how does that make you much different than Shelly?  😉

We are all escapists from reality or in denial, in one way or another - some just more than others, and some in more destructive ways, either towards the self or others, and we all romanticize the things and people we like a little, especially after they're gone - because the truth is, reality suuuccks.


So the point of my post - and that movie - was how about we cut each other a little more slack?