THE SUBSTANCE

Content warning for spoilers:

I saw The Substance today for a third time and had quite an experience. When I first watched this, I was utterly consumed by it, I sobbed at the end. I was simultaneously horrified by the utter devastation on screen but also by the laughter of the people around me, I couldn’t fathom laughing at that moment, it was so bad that when credits began rolling, my friend had to ask me if I was okay because I couldn’t control my sobs. I connected so much with Elisabeth, which is why I find it so important for women to watch this film. 

It’s a violent movie, one of the most devastatingly violent ones I've ever seen, not just because of the physical violence that is depicted but what makes it so devastating is that the cause for most of the violence is systemic violence; misogyny and self-hatred. I wrote a blog post not too long ago, talking about my own experience with having to deal with the standards that are put on women and how the way women are socialized conditions us to turn all that violence we experience from society onto ourselves, here is an excerpt from the said blog post “I would get so mad at them for saying these things and so hurt, sometimes thinking of all the good things they had given me to try and counter the bad wasn’t enough. I, at times, would think to become anorexic, so they could get the skinny girl they always wanted but not in the way they would have wanted me to get there, but despite attempts, I was never able to sustain it. It's so sad, isn't it? They hurt me, so I tried to hurt them by hurting myself.”

This is exactly what Elisasbeth does, even though she’s seemingly perfect to most of us; which I find is an important trait because it serves to show no one, literally, no one is immune to getting trapped in this self-hating violent cycle, even though she’s essentially “perfect” she still is forced or pushed to want to have a better or a more perfect version of herself in order to, in a way, not “expire” and the film does a great job because it uses Sue as the perfect tool for juxtaposition between how Elisabeth and her younger self are treated and how much society values women as long as they can sexualize them, and when they can’t, then you’re essentially subhuman and a literal nuisance. 

It creates this augmented reality that serves it perfectly to weaponize the male gaze against its audience in a satirical way and the whole film is shot as if the lens itself is misogynistic, it focuses on everything that is constantly used to sexualize a woman like her breasts and her posterior, and yet at the same time, it feels like the biggest and best fuck you to misogyny. You wanted boobs in the middle of her face? Fine, then let’s have her literally regurgitate one! Fuck you!

One thing I’ve talked with several people about that goes back to the self-hating never ending cycle, is how most of the time (for me at least) you exist in the present, we tend to only find things we dislike about ourselves and end up being miserable in the present and then when time goes by, and you look back at yourself you think, what was I thinking? I was really pretty (or something to that effect) and then you go back to criticizing your present self and again after time goes by and you look at photos of yourself back then, yet again you’ll go, what was I thinking? I found this to be reflected in this and that cycle will only get worse and you’ll keep sabotaging yourself like Elisabeth did when she began to binge eat to fuck up Sue’s relationship with her own body, or like when Sue wouldn’t switch for so long, she aged Elisabeth and the more Elisabeth aged, the less Sue wanted to switch, and the less Sue wanted to switch, the more Elisabeth aged! And as they progressed like this, Elisabeth began hating Sue, and Sue her, but they were literally both one-self, so it's like you really want to be that better version because you hate yourself but you hate that version too! The whole film is a snowball of violence that only gets bigger and bigger and Elisabeth probably thought to herself, what the fuck was I thinking? 

As funny as I found it the second time I watched it because I sat in a theater full of unsuspecting spectators, it was still utterly devastating because of how violent it is and my hope is that this film will make people reflect on their actions perhaps as perpetrators of said systematic violence for some, but most of all as victims, if you’ve ever been of such violence, to break the cycle. You never know how many self-hating spirals your discussion of other people’s bodies or certain words you used may have caused…  and one of my main takeaways is, that if you want to change or better yourself, do it from a place of love, hate will only eat away at you. 

One of the most political things a woman nowadays can do, first of all is simply exist, but to exist as a confident, self-loving woman? You have no idea the power you carry! 

With love, Carmen Eugenia. 

The (formerly) depressed artist.

I was watching a movie called Where’d You Go Bernadette which is about an architect who after a big artistic failure quit making art. The film touches on basically, the potential for an artist to become a menace to society when they aren’t making art. I, however, believe the opposite is true. The character “Bernadette” has a line which is “I just need you to know how hard it is for me sometimes… The banality of life” if I remember correctly. It made me cry and I remembered a diary entry I wrote which is the following (an excerpt): 

7 August 2023 at 0:04. 

“Feels like a rock on my chest and a cage around my heart, which I’m too terrified to set free—a caged bird, terrified of being shot down by those closest to them for being different. Meanwhile, I’m adrift, my voice constantly getting lost in the vast sea of banality”

Looking back now and thinking about how I was feeling then, I now see I was depressed or was at least showing the beginning of what I soon came to realize was depression. It, however, only hit me until a few months after I came back from studying film in Mexico City and realized that after two months of being back in my hometown, I hadn’t picked up any of my cameras once; a terrifying realization. 

You see, after my father passed away, photography—street photography, in particular, became a conduit for my self-expression and a need rather than just a hobby, that’s when I fell utterly in love with it. So imagine my shock and dismay when I suddenly realized, I was going through a hard time (like I was when my father passed) but had no interest in what I thought was my outlet. So, on to therapy, I went. 

After a long therapy session where I was made to pretend a cushion was a person I had to unload my feelings onto and finally being told what was wrong with me, I left therapy feeling lighter because I now knew why I was feeling the way I was feeling. At the time, my room was full of clutter, I would barely want to get out of bed, had no interest in seeing anyone, let alone talking to anyone and photography had fallen to the wayside as I came to realize. 

A few weeks after that therapy session I saw a glimmer of hope about which I wrote in my diary: 

“I was in the shower, going through the motions when I noticed these beautiful rays of sunshine that were peaking through the palm tree outside and into the warm bathroom. They were so incandescently beautiful I immediately stopped what I was doing, to stare at them and how the water vapor went through the light and created what resembled a sort of rain of stars, a galaxy, spinning, ever so alive. I put my hand through the light and the motion made all these specs move so fast, I let out a breath in awe and I saw it react to my presence again. I suddenly looked at my hand moving through the light and the specks of vapor and I realized, I am alive. I burst into tears at that moment, for I had never been so ever present in so long.”

I’m writing this a few months after said therapy session and subsequent diary entry and I now have more clarity than ever before on what I was going through– my self-esteem had never been so low before in my life. I’ve always struggled with self-image, never really feeling satisfied with the way I looked, and with that sentiment always being echoed or confirmed rather, by the people in my life and their comments about my body, I never really ever thought I could ever come to like, let alone love myself which is why I think I overcompensated with trying to be good, people please in every way I can because my body can’t. I would get so mad at them for saying these things and so hurt, sometimes thinking of all the good things they had given me to try and counter the bad wasn’t enough. I, at times, would think to become anorexic, so they could get the skinny girl they always wanted but not in the way they would have wanted me to get there, but despite attempts, I was never able to sustain it. It's so sad, isn't it? They hurt me, so I tried to hurt them by hurting myself.

Living in Mexico City was so incredible and yet so horrible all at once. I was growing as an artist, learning from people whose films I’d seen at the theater, but emotionally, I was going through hell. And, after coming back here I realized I had gotten stranged from myself and my emotions so as to try and not lose it or avoid getting more hurt. A week or so after the latter diary entry something happened in my brain and ideas began flowing again and so “Resurgencias” was born. I had never delved as deep as I have in portraiture as I have with this project but the idea came and I, being the artist I am had to be loyal to it. You know that Taylor Swift lyric (of course I had to bring her up) “hell was the journey but it brought me heaven”? Perhaps not heaven, but right now, I can tell I’m finally on my way up more committed than ever to stop being a menace to myself and instead be a menace to society. 

“Your role as an artist is not to be polite, it’s to provoke” - Cate Blanchett. 

The Creative Way of Being

I lost my dad as many of the people, in my life know, almost two years ago. I already liked doing photography before he passed because it felt really nice and rewarding to be good at something I liked doing. I had always loved film and I knew that photography could potentially lead me to film. However, when my dad got sick, it felt almost as if I were drowning. My life’s force felt like it was slipping through my fingers slowly, little by little each day growing more and more tired to the point of being on the verge of collapse. All this was and isn’t something I’ve ever talked about before with anyone and I don’t mean this to say that I was thinking of ending things but I was simply, too tired and I thought my body would eventually just, give in. And in a way, it did, because I eventually stopped trying to be in control and stopped trying to swim against the current of life and instead I just let it take me away. 

I thought I would drown, but instead, I found what became my eventual liferaft and the thing my life would revolve around and that is art. Art became a means to express myself, like this (through writing) or photography and hopefully film soon. I found my life’s purpose through art and after months of thinking, reflecting, and getting as deep as I could to the depths of my being I found a purpose for my art, a clear intent, and my voice. For some time now, I’ve had what I thought were two very important questions regarding art: "What is art?” and “Does art find you or do you find art?”. My initial conclusion based on my experience was that art will find you eventually,  but in reading about it I found a quote that says “The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.” I haven’t heard something more true. 

This doesn’t happen to everyone even though all of us are more than capable of creating art, but when you eventually find yourself in that state suddenly, art becomes your mean of expression, the way you look into the deepest, hidden parts of yourself and that’s when art becomes a necessity, a way of being. In a way, it's a mutual meeting because art has always been there, you just hadn’t found yourself in that state of being, and once you find yourself there, whether you consider yourself an artist or not, you find yourself not wanting, but needing to create art because art is a life force, its really, whatever you want it to be but it will drive you like a current, and creating will become a sort of happy accident, an act that isn’t under your conscious control but under the control of something much deeper inside you and art is the only way to access it. And once you access it and once you find yourself in that state, there’s no going back. 

Tár

(Spoilers ahead)

I had already seen Tár twice before getting to watch it at a movie theater and I only got to watch it because serendipitously, I got to be in Mexico City at the same time of its release. Even though I really barely had time to watch it as soon as I found out it had been released I made a point to make time to see it and somehow convince someone to go with me and this is where it started to get interesting for me.

I asked a family member and my mom if they wanted to come with me, my mom didn’t even ask what the movie was about before saying yes but my aunt did. When I pitched it to her I said “it's about a famous composer who gets in big trouble” I held back on explaining themes because to me Tár is a discovery I wouldn’t dare take away from anyone and I also expressed that my description in spite of my love for the film, still didn’t do it justice at all. When we got to the movie theater the commercials before the film started and I was surprised because the announcers pitched it as “a famous composer who seeks comfort and solace from the love of her adopted daughter” which somehow is not wrong but it also really is? I pointed this out to my aunt; how different both descriptions are from one another, so much so, anyone would probably think they’re two different films. 

The constant questioning and trying to define it became so annoying at some point I just stopped trying because I simply couldn’t... That was until I got to watch it at the movie theater. The film then revealed itself to me in a way I had no idea it could, given the number of times I had already seen it. I came to the realization that Tár is a question and somehow a living organism. 

It’s a question because first of all, you really have no idea what is true and what’s not and this film has a knack for making arguments and somehow showing you both sides of a very complex situtation and then throwing a question at you through its main character and its constant contradictions and unreliable psyche as well as taking you through Lydia’s life and explaining her identity and the fakeness of it though different metaphors. The brilliantly constructed Tár at some point begins transforming into a bizarre but thrilling drama that is somehow funny and horrifying.

The most alive part of Tár to me lies in several things, first of all, the storytelling and how the film every single time you watch it you notice it's having an argument with itself while throwing questions at you, a different one each time you watch it knowing you still will not for the life of you, be able to find an answer and whatever interpretation you get from it might diverge a lot form mine for example, but it will probably still be true because that’s when you realize that this is a film of many truths that is somehow so revealing yet it manages to remain hidden. But the absolute most revealing and alive aspect of the film is the use of sound, the way sound gets woven into different metaphors in the film is utterly masterful it coexists and compliments the rhythmic part of the film in an incredibly perfect way. It moves the story forward, it is used as a way to show who Lydia really is and how she’s being haunted.

Now after having read the script and analyzing it, I came to this interpretation: 

At some point at the beginning of the film, Lydia says that Malher’s 5th is a mystery because he barely left anything that could remotely explain what the song was about or what the background of it is, and to me, Tár is it. Tár is Todd Field’s interpretation and exploration of the meaning and intent or “kavanah” behind Mahler’s 5th. 

I won’t even go into the performances because, after all this, I really don’t think I have to. This movie lifted off the page as soon as it started and it shall remain a steady presence in everyone this movie has managed to touch. 

All this, to me, is Tár.