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.
