Happy New Body - A Substance New Year

issue 277, 31st December, 2024

CJW: Welcome to a special bonus issue of nothing here. We’re dropping this issue on New Year’s Eve as - following on from Strange Days - we’re celebrating the holidays with another NYE special bonus for you all and talking about Coralie Fargeat’s film, The Substance.

We’re going to be talking about the movie from start to end, so obviously there will be spoilers. If they worry you, watch the movie and come back. I promise you that even if you don’t love or just like it, you will certainly have feelings about it…

Content Warning for discussion of eating disorders. The Substance is a very bodily and very disgusting film in a lot of ways, so if it seems like us discussing that is likely to be hard for you, it might be best to skip this issue.

With that, let’s get on with the show.

ACT 1: Elisabeth

CJW: I’ll start us off with a quick recap of Act 1. Elisabeth Sparkle - played by Demi Moore - is a former Oscar-winning actress who has been spending the latter years of her career as the host of a morning aerobics show (if you’re old enough, you remember these shows - though now I’m wondering if they’re still running. Imagine binge watching an aerobics show on Netflix while doomscrolling…). On her 50th birthday, she’s unceremoniously fired by her disgusting and also disgustingly misogynist boss Harvey, played by Dennis Quaid.

Discarded, angry, and despondent, Elisabeth is involved in a car crash in which she is miraculously unhurt. However, a disturbingly handsome nurse slips something to her and sets her on the path to discovering The Substance.

DCH: What stood out for me most about the first act (and throughout really) is just how isolated Elisabeth was. So much of the time we spend with Elisabeth is alone, frequently without any dialogue or at best on the phone with The Voice (customer service for The Substance) or yelling at the tv. Out of a 146 page script only 29 pages have dialogue (and I’d guess much of that comes in act 2 with Sue tbh). 

The movie is obviously a satire of beauty standards and addiction but I think it’s also a very poignant mediation on the pressures of aging and the loneliness that often comes with it. As I struggle with that myself this dimension really became the emotional heart of the movie for me.

It really is a tour-de-force performance by Demi Moore as much of the power of her acting in it is through non-verbal means–an angry glance here, a slump of the shoulders there. Truly Oscar-worthy physical acting. 

LZ: For me, casting Demi Moore after all that commotion on the internet with her supposedly botched face on a fashion show was really interesting. I was wondering how much of these actual things that happened to the actress would be mentioned in the movie, but she was impeccable, the character only being discarded by the TV channel because the executives got bored or too greedy. She didn't really “age”, as in she didn't have actual wrinkles, didn't gain weight, didn't get less flexible, and didn't have grey hair or anything. So this kinda put me off in the beginning, but that's how things are nevertheless…you can still look the same, be the same, and it still won't be enough.

Of course, there are all the bad vibes when she is fired and all, but then instead of her deciding to do something else with her life or be something different, she decides to go for the Substance, so she can relieve the same things she lived, over and over again, despite knowing how shitty it is. That got me pissed and all the terrible things that would happen to her only made me feel like she deserved it. 

It's ok to feel bad about aging and maybe recurring to something extreme like the Substance, but her point was simply to keep taking part of the meat-grinder industry, never really being critical about it, just binging on the laureates, no matter what tomorrow could possibly be. I mean, girl… haven't you learned anything? Apparently no, not really, and, as a matter of fact, so many women feel like they have no value besides their appearance that they may find themselves lost when this supposedly only exchange coin is not valuable anymore. Do I empathize with them? No, but it still sucks.

CJW: I understand what you mean, and it’s something I was thinking about on rewatch - she started as an actor and became host of an aerobics TV show, so it definitely seems counter-intuitive to start with the aerobics show instead of trying to reboot her acting career. But obviously this isn’t real life - this is a fucked-up fairy tale about the value of beauty, and the parallel is a simple way to demonstrate it.

MJW: Coming from an industry where looks are prioritized, and having lost that income when my level of perceived attractiveness fell below the fucked up expectations, I empathised with Elisabeth a lot. Women can become ‘invisible’ at a certain age, and we see Elisabeth retreat into that in her lonely apartment, looking out over the world that she no longer feels a part of. Was she always so isolated? Or did she let the lack of attention that the world gives to women of a certain age sequester her?

DCH: “What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty and above all it eats creativity. It eats quality and shits out quantity.” It’s hard not to think of that Burroughs quote any time Dennis Quaid’s character Harvey is on the screen. The piggish media mogul is a gaping, gluttonous maw cramming itself full.

CJW: This scene is so fascinating. Not just for how utterly disgusting Harvey is, but how cowardly he is too. Earlier, when he doesn’t realise that Elisabeth is in a stall in the Men’s room, he’s talking all kinds of shit about her, her fertility, her age, etc, but when he’s in front of her, he can’t even bring himself to fire her, he instead talks around it. And he can’t even regurgitate his bullshit about fertility and has to flee to the safety of a strong, male, executive handshake.

DCH: As a designer I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a brief moment to talk about the in-universe product and marketing design of The Substance itself. Just look at this video:

Fuck me but I’d probably get suckered by that too. Crisp blacks and whites, bold font (created irl for the movie), amazing voice over work.

ACT 2: Sue

CJW: Despondent at being discarded and feeling like her life is empty, Elisabeth eventually folds and orders The Substance. Instead of a simple home delivery, she goes to a dodgy looking spot and is forced to crawl beneath a broken roller door to get to her package - seemingly a deliberate bit of degradation forced on desperate people.

After injecting The Substance, Sue (Margaret Qualley) is formed from Elisabeth’s body, literally emerging through a massive gash the length of Elisabeth’s spine.

After revelling in her new body, she buys a new outfit to audition for her old job as her new self, gaining the job and the attention of Harvey with her perfect body and massive, beaming smile. But Sue is too taken by her new life, and what starts with a small transgression against Elisabeth leads to utter disregard for the rules of The Substance and Elisabeth’s autonomy.

Sue stashes Elisabeth in the ‘other self’ pantry she built by hand, and leaves her there for months while she builds her career, parties, and plans for her forthcoming big break - hosting the network’s New Year’s Eve special.

Sue eventually has to hand the reins back to Elisabeth when there is literally no “stabilizer fluid” left (ie. no spinal fluid left in Elisabeth’s body). Elisabeth has been hidden under a bathrobe, and it’s up to you to decide if Sue did that for purely aesthetic reasons, or because she didn’t want to have to face what she was doing to Elisabeth. Elisabeth is bald, gnarled, ancient-looking, and riddled with arthritis.

She decides to terminate the experience, but loses heart halfway through, leaving them both awake and Sue incredibly pissed off. They fight, Sue wins, Elisabeth dies.

But Sue forgets that They Are One, and during rehearsals for her big show she starts to rapidly decay. She rushes home and, desperate for some kind of solution, she injects some of the leftover Substance…

LZ: After Elisabeth becomes Sue, she only uses her knowledge of how the media machine works to get back in and inflate her ego with false, temporary things. She already cracked the game and she's playing it like a pro, but nevertheless playing it and keeping the game on. If it wasn't her, it would be someone else, and the merry-go-round just keeps going round and round. 

It's infuriating to see a woman reproducing and refining the tools that enslave her getting praised, and that's exactly what she wants, no matter what. It reminds me of a very bad book (that I read just a few excerpts because otherwise I would kill myself) that said that Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton were the epitome of feminism because they cracked the game with their sex tapes and used it to get famous and build their empires. Wow, just wow! But props to the director, who is a woman, and had the stomach to do those crotch-focused scenes with Sue’s aerobics show choreography.

MJW: The closeup shots of Qualley’s ‘flawless’ ass were so plentiful and lingering, giving the ‘audience’ what it wants: YOUTH! PERKY TITS! FIRM ASSES, etc. Sue isn’t anything to the producers of her show except a moveable doll with perfect skin.

LZ: On another topic, it was interesting to see that, for a long while, her rejuvenation gave her only self-pleasure, in a very obviously narcissistic way: admiring herself in the mirror, enjoying the power and influence she had over others due to her beauty (e.g. the scene with the neighbor), but never really enjoying life. This only happens when she decides to go party and then goes full hedonic mode, which ends up with her not following the rules/instructions of the Substance.

That was the most interesting part to me, to be honest. When Elisabeth realizes that she needs to carry on and find a way to enjoy herself while she's Elisabeth, because she ended up in that vortex of self-pity and isolation, only waiting for the one-week period to end, so she could live. 

And then we have the most heart-breaking part in the movie, in my opinion: when she meets her former school colleague and decides to give him a chance, to go out with him. Except that this doesn't happen and the sole reason is herself: looking herself in the mirror and finding flaws where they don't exist, despairing, trying to fix herself up, and only getting worse and worse – basically what all celebrities do with all the cosmetic procedures, then getting botched, etc, but also a metaphor to how mental illnesses at their peak lead to mindless self-destruction. The “cool” part is that Sue is a bitch and she talks and sees Elisabeth as scum, so proving that whoever is on the top is enjoying being there and only pity and despise those who are not. It's not like Sue has learned her lesson and now is trying to make it different, no, she is just enjoying the ride and running over whoever is slower in front of her.

It was in this act that we also saw Elisabeth binging TV shows and food, first using cooking as a therapeutic hobby, and then just compulsively eating. As a former eating disorder patient (now in remission), this part hit hard and it only added more to the self-hatred, self-destruction, and lack of hope because it doesn't matter if you try to love yourself more, do stuff to feel better, the reality is that huge outdoor billboard with the young, beautiful girl being put on top of everything and there is nothing you can do about it. I have faced this question many times during my treatment: the culture won't change, and the media won't change, it had a brief respite with all the body positivity thing, but now we are fully back into heroin chic with Ozempic and the miraculous cosmetic procedures that Lindsay Lohan and Demi Moore have gotten. It's about shielding yourself, being strong enough to not fall prey to these things, all the while being bombarded by criticism that comes from others, but mostly from yourself.

MJW: In the real world, just like in the world of The Substance, you’re fucked if you do, and fucked if you don’t. Take The Substance, get the procedures, inject the ozempic and you’re judged for it, or your perfect self takes over your life. Don’t do it, and lose the work, lose the attention, fade away. It’s a game that everybody loses in the end. So why play? 

The addiction metaphor came in two facets for me – firstly, the way that addiction stealthily comes for all the best parts of a person (creating Sue! Exciting! New!), but draining the life out of the host and borrowing the verve (or the dopamine) so that there’s a building deficit left over. Secondly, I gotta say that all the injection imagery had me jonesing just a little. 

LZ: Also, I think the colors in the movie are very interesting. It's all super colorful and bright, there are clear references to The Shining in the studio carpet and bathroom, but for me, the cherry on top of everything was Elisabeth's go-for yellow coat, red gloves, blue pants, and, oof, all the rainbow at once. For someone trying to be discreet, she was basically a flashlight in the darkness, and that was a pretty smart take.

DCH: Well spotted. Fargeat clothed Elisabeth in primary colours to make her seem like a superhero. Sue’s palette and style is obviously supposed to evoke Kubrik’s Lolita.

CJW: One thing I like about this middle act is the way that the line between reality and fantasy begins to blur, demonstrated in a way that also blurs the line between Elisabeth and Sue. It’s a metaphor for the foundational rule of The Substance: Remember You Are One - but because of Elisabeth’s (and therefore Sue’s) inability to let go of stardom, they constantly forget this fact, leading to…

ACT 3: Monstro Elisasue

CJW: Sue’s attempt to rejuvenate herself with The Substance backfires and a new being is born. Literalising the phrase “You Are One” Monstro Elisasue contains a monstrous flesh recombination of the two women.

But Sue/Elisabeth won’t let this opportunity go to rest, so she gets herself all dolled up for the big event (holy shit, I laugh at that sequence every time), and makes her way back to the set, where she stumbles onto the stage. When she reaches the spotlight the audience turns on her. She insists that it’s still her, but they don’t care. They never cared about her, they just cared that something beautiful was on display for them.

Audience members attack her, triggering an eruption of blood. A dying Elisasue flees, turning into a puddle of disgusting flesh on the sidewalk… 

MJW: When she takes the face of Elisabeth Sparkle’s portrait and glues it over her own monstrous face… it’s hilarious, but so fucking sad. Like, was Elisabeth’s aged face so monstrous in the first place? 

DCH: Oh my god that third act pivot. I can’t think of any other film that had such a tonal shift. From the high drama of the first two acts to the pure, unadulterated splatterpunk grindhouse camp of the third act. 

This is confident filmmaking. To be able to pull that off with such verve and skill is extraordinary. I’ll watch anything by Coralie Fargeat.

In case you’re a big nerd like me and were curious about the fine details of the blood pirouette scene then here's some detail from Wikipedia:

The special effects team utilized around 21,000 litres[note 7] of fake blood and a fire hose.[98] The shots of the audience being sprayed with blood in the climax were achieved in one take.[97] Kračun was surprised by the amount of blood remarking, "Coralie said at one point, 'I want to have fire engines full of blood spraying the audience,' and I thought, 'Oh, maybe that's just a French way of saying there's going to be a lot of blood,' but no, she really wanted a hose full of blood in the audience, in the theater, and it was going to be a lot of blood!"[35] 

I’m pretty sure that means it used more fake blood than genre classics like Peter Jackson’s BrainDead which at one point in time was (I think) the record holder for that sort of thing. I’ve been told the recent Evil Dead movie holds the current record fwiw.

There’s a lot to unpack in this scene beyond the technical details. A lot of the punch of the film (but with this scene in particular) comes from a bold decision to eschew CGI and to use prosthetics and in-camera practical effects instead. It homages The Elephant Man and Carrie and Society simultaneously once again underscoring central themes of the film.

LZ: The last act was just pure catharsis of self-destruction. I loved it, it made me feel physical pain all the time I saw Elisabeth's body crumbling and then Sue attacking her mercilessly, while she is her. Yes, we do that to ourselves. Every time we force ourselves to vomit, every time we refuse to eat, every time we overexercise, count calories, measure ourselves, try smaller clothes, check on the mirror, go under painful procedures, pick thinspirations or whatever, it's our Sue wreaking Elisabeth. 

The fact that she still goes to the NYE's TV special, with her ear and teeth falling, and fucking smiling to the executive while literally dying… it's being a woman 101 and it is SO FUCKING painful to watch. The bloody ciranda, to me, was even funny and made me dislike the movie a bit because it was trashy compared to how horrific actual suffering is portrayed in much subtler ways. I guess it was all for the shock value, yes, the literal message of someone turning into a monster trying to be whatever other people want them to be and then exploding and bleeding all over… ugh. 

And then the face blob going to die/explode over her walk of fame star, the passage of time and you are just dirt being stepped on, scrubbed away. It reminded me a lot of what Edgar Morin wrote in The Stars about celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley: the saying that Elvis didn't die is less about the actual human being and more the product that he was turned into, and that's possibly the only way he could become immortal, and only sort of. 

When chasing fame and celebrity, are we pursuing immortality? Are we running away from our primal fear of death by negating our humanity, and therefore, what makes us mortals? Trying to be forever young is denying the passage of time, even if that only pushes us further into our expiration date? Yes, Elisabeth was doing all of that, but the body is an actual thing, and it has its limits which, when pushed too far, will explode in blood and guts. I love body horror and mostly pregnancy horror because of that, the inescapable reality of the body, of biology, of materiality despite our tendency to lean towards what's immaterial and intangible.

CJW: Easily one of my favourite movies of the year. We were howling with laughter by the end of it and enjoying it a lot more than the older people in the cinema. Some people just don’t understand kino…

I hope you enjoyed the movie and our little chat about it. Hope you found time to relax over the holidays and wish you all the best in the coming year. Fuck only knows what it will entail, but we have each other and those close to us. Remember that.