The Substance (2024) is an excellent body horror sci-fi film directed by Coralie Fargeat. It follows ageing actress Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), who uses a magical black market drug called the Substance to transform into a younger version of herself, Sue (Margaret Qualley). As her quest for youth spirals out of control, the film explores societal beauty standards, fear of ageing, and the destructive pursuit of perfection. The film is stylistically innovative and uses spotless and heavily lighted sets and props to give the look of a TV show. Even her home looks like a TV set design, and the prominent, huge window seems like a big TV screen. Her mind seems always psychologically trapped inside a TV show, even at home. Other aspects, including the practical effects, costume design, and makeup, are meticulously done. All these help in creating grotesquely fascinating and gripping body horror scenes with the young body coming out of and eventually fighting with her gradually ageing monstrous body.
The female body is treated as a commodity by the producer (Dennis Quaid) of the fitness show where Elizabeth works. He wants them ‘young and hot.’ In a suggestive shot utilising close-ups and slow motion, he is seen eating shrimp in a gluttonous and disgusting manner while talking about female stars and ogling female bodies. To him, the female body is just a product (much like food) that he is selling. He values them purely on the number of eyeballs and money they can get him. What is more psychologically disturbing is how Elisabeth internalises these misogynist and objectifying values and starts to view her own self-worth based on them. In other words, she has been successfully interpellated into accepting her own physical commodification.
This becomes most obvious when she is given another choice in the character of an old acquaintance, Fred, who likes her and still finds her quite beautiful at her age. Even when presented with the choice of pursuing a possibly happy but less glamorous life with someone who actually appreciates her for who she really is, she still chooses to go straight back to that very show and the producer who had thrown her out. There is a fascinatingly disturbing scene with her doing makeup while looking at a mirror as she is about to leave to meet Fred; she is almost about to leave, but the comparison to the perfect image of Sue in the poster prevents her from leaving. Unrealistic and perfect beauty standards render her unable to appreciate her own image and beauty. Beauty is a perishable market commodity and quickly exhausted, while the entertainment industry simply finds and replaces the old product with something newer.
This is especially relevant to today’s times when perfect (and artificial) ideals of human bodies are projected constantly on social media like Instagram. This commodification of the female body is most conspicuously present in the entertainment industry, like Bollywood. Item songs are visual spectacles of the female body as an object, an item. Though male beauty standards also exist, it is compounded many times for the female actress. This causes strange and problematic phenomena such as male actors romancing actresses half their age. Female stars in general have a shorter age span, and in the film too, Elisabeth has reached the expiry date of that age span.
Though ageing is a universal and natural process, it can also mistakenly be seen as a form of disability, and just like we apathetically Other the disabled as abnormal, old age is also othered and treated as abnormal, as an aberration, or as a monstrosity. The film represents this othering through splitting Elisabeth into two selves that despise each other. The two selves unite again at the end in the form of a deformed ‘monstrous’ body. The mere image of her body turns the audience to disgust and horror; they immediately want to shoot and kill her. Symbolically, this represents how we Other, deny, suppress, hate, and desire to destroy different types of bodies, defects, disabilities, and even the natural process of old age. The climax, where the two selves of Elisabeth and Sue are mutilating and destroying each other, is surreal and horrifying. But possible readings can also be to signify the real changes and mutilations that people sometimes do to their bodies in the form of cosmetic surgeries or the mental injuries that body shaming can cause. Ageing is a natural and universal phenomenon, and though bioscience and biotechnology might enable us to live longer lives in the future and even enhance or modify our bodies, The Substance cautions against its limitations and the possible threats and dangers that it might bring.
The film has great casting, with Demi Moore being perfectly cast for the role of the ageing actress and giving an amazing performance. Margaret Qualley perfectly suits and performs the role of the young, attractive, and vivacious actress. I highly recommend this film as a perfect example of a body horror film that is thoroughly engaging and also explores serious issues of the fear of ageing, unrealistic beauty standards, and the commodification of female bodies. This film shows the potential of the sci-fi genre to creatively and intellectually explore and caution against the potential dangers of emerging biotechnologies such as genome editing and cloning, that bring as many risks as possibilities.
Edited by Eva Maria Johnson
Design by Lakshmi
Article 19 