THE SUBSTANCE. “PRETTY GIRLS” and an UGLY F$CKING WORLD

Among the many things this film has going for it, subtlety isn’t one of them. The substance makes no effort to conceal or disguise the cruel reality and moral bankruptcy of show business that it tackles. In fact, restraint is the last thing this film can be accused of when demonstrating the many ways the very industry can dehumanize a person that you need the style of a body horror film to fully capture the monstrous nature of such an industry. But even with The Substance’s surrealist body horror aesthetic, it becomes obvious that the film is about the superficial and often destructiveness that comes from the world of show business and how it glorifies its objectification of women in the most dehumanizing ways possible.

The Substance isn’t the first film of its kind to tackle the dark side of the Hollywood entertainment complex. It’s not the first one to show how low such a monster will go into turning a human being into the kind of product that generalizes them more into a brand or a caricature rather than an actual three dimensional human being. Several of the players in this industry also lack the appropriate level of humanity, so much so, that they themselves come off as caricatures of the same industry. Dennis Quaid’s bombastically loud and unapologetically fake movie producer Harvey lives up to this ideal, whether he is on a money grubbing tirade of anger, or an overly congratulatory demonstration of praise for whatever beautiful woman he plans to make into the kind of star that will bend over backwards and follow the company line he follows as if it were gospel. Regardless of the obviousness of his outright repulsive behavior, Harvey isn’t a character, so much as an embodiment of a much darker character that has actively defined the sensationalist spectacle that has pervaded American entertainment culture for decades. This pernicious character is known as “The Cult of The Self,” which was documented by the journalist Chris Hedges in his book “Empire Of Illusion,” which explores the moral nihilism of celebrity culture.

“The cult of self dominates our cultural landscape. This cult has within it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity, and self-importance; a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception, and manipulation, and the inability to feel remorse or guilt. This is, of course, the ethic promoted by corporations. It is the ethic of unfettered capitalism. It is the misguided belief that personal style and personal advancement, mistaken for individualism, are the same as democratic equality. In fact, personal style, defined by the commodities we buy or consume, has become a compensation for our loss of democratic equality. We have a right, in the cult of the self, to get whatever we desire. We can do anything, even belittle and destroy those around us, including our friends, to make money, to be happy, and to become famous. Once fame and wealth are achieved, they become their own justification, their own morality. How one gets there is irrelevant. Once you get there, those questions are no longer asked.”

Western society has been dominated by the cult of the self, which is often expressed in the sensationalist ideal of the Hollywood celebrity. It’s nothing new, and to say that has gotten even worse is an understatement of impeccable magnitude. For anyone who listens to Joe Rogan, plenty of podcast episodes have him pessimistically speak about how the aspirations of modern day teens and adolescents revolves around the desire to be an influencer or a YouTube star, which often involves some performative stunt like filming themselves opening packages from Amazon, eating excessive amounts of food in one take, or worse, just making an utter ass of themselves and welcoming the absurdity of it as if it were a genuine act of humility rather than a poisonous adage to that of a culture that has yet to have enough of the very stimulation that has enabled its near complete and utter desensitization. The context can matter. But when based purely on a notion of sheer spectacle, it only highlights the moral and intellectual depravity of a culture that is willing, if not eager to embrace the escapism of the fake self the world prefers over anything legitimately authentic. It is this same trade off of authenticity for the artificial display that ultimately results in Elisabeth’s demise, and in the most deformed sense possible.

When watching a body horror film such as The Substance, a suspension of disbelief is necessary to make the many sequences of a younger Elisabeth, or Sue (Margaret Qualley) as she chooses to call herself credible, despite the more figurative elements they embody. Even the monstrously deformed appearance that Sue takes on after abusing the very substance that returned her to her more youthful/perfect self carries a figurative essence as a means of conveying the horrific extreme that the cult of the self ultimately creates within a person who ties their identity more with their physical appearance and the superficial worship it instigates within them, as well as the hordes of people that flock to worship it, as if it were anything authentic or symbolic of actual merit or value. But the dark truth that The Substance tackles, is the utter lack of substance that lies at the cult of the self, as well as a culture that indulges in the many negative aspects pertaining to it. This is shown throughout the multiple montage sequences that showcase how much of Elisabeth is able to regain the glory of her youth as Sue. Whether its multiple talkshow appearances where she gives a serviceably acceptable celebrity backstory about the small unmapped midwest town she grew up in that under normal circumstances, nobody would give a shit about, or the repetitive display of the same cutesy charm that made her America’s latest sweet heart, the artificial worship that she garners proves how alive and but soul sucking the cult of the self is, and how despite tackling the body horror genre, The Substance showcases something darker and more crippling within American culture.

Both the beginning and end of The Substance show a Hollywood Walk Of Fame star slot. In fact, the film’s first and last shot have the slot in the frame. Both shots have it endure some form or another of desecration. The beginning has a multitude of pedestrians accidentally defame what was once considered monumental in its ability to elevate a name time would essentially favor less until it was completely out of the spotlight. The end shows Elisabeth breakdown and crumble when she is in her most deformed and tortured state, and the sight of her blood drenched face falling and shattering upon impact of the star and blending into is the perfect embodiment of what is The Substance.

We live in a culture that is dedicated to the elevation of personalities/personas as opposed to knowing who the actual person is. The rare instances where a celebrity persona shows their authentic selves either works to make them irrelevant given how it dismantles the person the public deluded themselves into thinking that they were, or it even succeeds in ridiculing and demonizing them for being too honest for the falseness modern audiences were whole heartily conditioned to accept. On the rare exceptions that a person’s authenticity is met with a positive reaction, it is further elevated to something that can be branded or commercialized into something that relates more to the market as opposed something of honest merit. Regardless of the person or the persona, the limitations of a culture that prefers artificial Gods will never accept authenticity. This can range from actors, musicians, or anyone who manages to garner the excitement/attention of a public that is susceptible to any form of stimulation that substitutes their capacity to think for themselves or contemplate anything of absolute substance (pun intended). Even without the body horror element, the environmental aspect of Coralie Fargeat’s examination of celebrity worship and the many toxic aspects it carries both for the celebrity and their audience is dauntingly accurate even under its exaggerated demonstration of a culture that is more than willing to subjugate itself to the whims of a synthesized reality that does nothing but keep the average person under the boot of a conformist mediocrity that still champions one’s personal success, so long as it is tolerable, rather than allowing themselves to recognize their own uniqueness.

When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everyone will respect you. ― Lao Tzu

Written by Andres Benatar