To write about The Substance is to expel. The gruesomeness of this body horror leaves its audience with a thoroughly filthy feeling, similar to the one that comes after a greasy meal, the kind that leaves a slimy film on your tongue and fuzz on your teeth. After 2 hours of some of the most repulsive, attention-grabbing scenes — punctuated only by wet noise production, shrill screams, pulsating electronic music, and aerobic workout hits (as opposed to dialogue) — it is clear that this film has achieved high praise for a reason. For there are few horrors that can adequately capture the terror of being a woman without the need to incorporate direct male violence or degradation.
Because, although the male gaze is ever present in The Substance through the depiction of toned tummies, tight asses and curved spines, the consequences of its evil are primarily demonstrable in the internalised misogyny of its main character, the ‘matrix’ who chooses to sacrifice her own full-time sentience for a younger, more beautiful replacement. A male presence is, in this sense, not needed. Elisabeth Sparkle’s life spent in an industry that will suddenly dispose of her at the turn of her 50th birthday is enough to convince her that her ageing, now non-commercial body is worth trading, at (almost) no cost.
French director, Coralie Fargeat, draws on the bloodied excesses of Carrie, the monsters of Cronenberg, stylisations of The Shining and cultural critique of Sick of Myself to reveal a hellscape of feminine yearning. Saturated by neon lights and vivid lycra, the Cannes-Film Festival Award Winner is a woman’s worst nightmare complete with uncomfortable fish eye zooms and absurd prosthetic makeup. But even beyond its aesthetic unforgetfulness, The Substance’s major win is in its contemporary feminist framework. Contrasting the watered-down tidiness of Barbie-type feminism, Fargeat manages to expose the toxic undercurrent of feminine ambition, thereby deconstructing the glittering yassification of ‘womanhood’ in all its supposed wholesomeness.
Fargeat, shows us that the horror of femininity is, in many ways, self-inflicted, but not necessarily self-determined. In this case, the self that inflicts pain is embodied in the co-existence of two dichotomous beings, one old, one new — one and the same, but inherently rivalrous. The film plays out in the same way that body dysmorphia does, with two reflections becoming increasingly disconnected and detached, angered by the impossibility of the other looking back at them.
What results is an epic metaphor for self-harm imposed through unencumbered beauty modifications? The main character’s niggling inner judgements eventually turn to the vicious yielding of needles. Intravenous injections and blood transfusions take the not-so-bad to the absolute worst, turning beauty into beast at a disturbing rate. Meanwhile, the facade of her better self, her ‘other self’, becomes increasingly villainous, whipped into a self-obsessed frenzy that exposes the ugly beneath the surface. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, one of these women will move to scratch it out. As the film develops, the extremities of the matrix become increasingly dichotomous and self-sabotaging, ambitious to the point of brutality. The pendulum swings between their binge and purge, one character embroiled in hedonistic vanity, the other punishing themselves through sloth and gluttony.
This film, dedicated to the inevitable fragmentation of self that our fetishistic culture calls for, also comes at an important time in our scientific history. It is not surprising that such a film would
resound as it does given the prevalence of ozempic scandals, where celebrities’ misuse of pharmaceutical drugs has led to unintended social and medical costs. While we watch cheekbones become increasingly gaunt and once plump smiles melt into cameras, medical emergencies whereby actual diabetics cannot access their prescription medication evidence the failure of American regulatory systems to mitigate the corporatisation of medicine for entertainment and, more importantly, vanity.
One need only slap some simple messaging onto toxic chemicals in a high-impact font to encourage the most vulnerable of us to alter both lives and appearances in search of personal improvement. Is this the self-care economy we always wanted? Or is this merely the misguided commodification of our deepest insecurities? The answers are clear in the film’s consequences, but less clear in real life. It reminds us of the ease at which media messaging can destroy any sense of balance among women exposed to the frantic oscillations of pop culture’s trends, as dictated and demanded by the power centre that is white male supremacy, characterised by the vulgarities of studio heads and suit-and-tie shareholders.
Most women or female-identifying people will likely watch this and, although repulsed, not find the character’s motivations particularly unreasonable or illogical. She is, unsurprisingly, driven by immense loneliness, a deep need for validation. At a time when individuality is prioritised above all else, and stardom is our Roman Empire, most would do anything to achieve recognition. Elisabeth Sparkle, rather than living her life in increasingly unfamiliar skin, chooses to use the medical tools available to her to bring back her hoard of fans, which she has long since substituted for love. Although such things are marketed to offer liberation, experiments with The Substance reveal a compounding social cost.
Such choices are characteristic of a culture that has traded community for attention, fulfilment for beauty, and the gracious acceptance of life’s natural cycle for surgical modifications. In the glare of TV screens, under the shadow of billboards, our own monstrous fascination with beauty is exposed. Moore’s manic but empty yearning met with Qualley’s insatiable fixation, is a testimony to our collapsible foundations. It asks us, when only your own skin stands in the way of success, why not peel it back?
