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balkanradfem · 3 months ago

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Did anyone watch the horror movie 'The Substance'? I've seen it because someone recommended it to me, and I saw one of the three directors was female, but now I just have few thousands words of criticism and upset about it. Click if you want to read it. Tw for themes of women abused in tv industry and the fear of aging out of their jobs.

So, the substance is about a woman aging out of her role in television where she runs a fitness program, and she is distraught to realize she's going to get replaced. Sadly she blames her own aging process about it! She gets in an accident, and then a male nurse gives her an usb showcasing 'the substance', a serum that makes a younger version of you come out of your body.

She takes it, and her body opens up to let out a younger version, a different acctress, come out and look at herself in the mirror. I was already upset by this point about the depiction of a woman losing her job for aging and hating herself, and not the industry and the males in it, but now I was in disbelief. It was funny that they wanted me to believe another woman exited from her back and didn't break her spine in the process, whatever, but now she was in a new body, and immediately went 'yas slay look how hot I am' Excuse me what?

I thought, at least one part of the horror would be feeling off and alien if forced to switch consciousness to another body, a body that is unfamiliar, that you didn't grow with, it would be traumatizing. No matter how much more 'socially likeable' a new body was, I can't imagine looking at my own hands and legs and having them look completely different, and being okay about it. It would cause a crisis in anyone, your identity would be in shambles. You couldn't get used to it, you'd have trouble looking at the mirror at all, and would forget it and constantly be reminded of it when seeing glimpses of your own hands, and it would shock and disturb you every time. How would you talk to your friends and family now? How would you deal with people you loved who couldn't recognize you? It would be mentally scarring.

If she had one single friend to talk about this, the entire premise would fall apart because it would become obvious that this is stupid and shouldn't be done.

Watching on it turned out they cut this woman out from any social context of her life. She had no friends, no family, not even any acquaintances. The only person who ever talked to her was one(1) single ex classmate, and other than that, she seemed to have zero people in her life who even knew she existed. But there's nobody like that. Yes, you can be socially isolated, but hardly to the point where nobody in the world knows you exist. If you go outside people memorize you. She didn't have anyone who knew her. She was supposed to be a popular figure on tv. But she didn't exist. This woman had no past, no existence in anyone's world, no connections to other people whatsoever. It made her less of a believable character to me. Nobody can exist completely out of social context of their life. We didn't get an explanation of why she has no family, or friends or acquaintances, or past loves, or anything like that. It was almost like she was now so irrelevant due to her age that the world just cut her out, which is scary but also ridiculous, she looked young!!

Another glaring flaw in the movie was that... the older woman in the movie was so clearly more attractive than the younger. They tried to shoot her face in harsh lightning and highlight whatever they thought was wrong with her body, but she just looked excellent under any kind of standards. What do you mean this teenager is 'hotter' than the original protagonist. She looks 17, she looks like she shouldn't be allowed outside after dark. The idea of her being filmed by older males gave me nausea, get that child away from them. I had to skip most of the scenes with her because it looked like child pornography. They had her wearing breast prostetics to make her look adult and put her in clothing no woman alive would find appealing or comfortable to wear, it was painful, uncomfortable and horrifying.

The entire existence of the younger woman was dehumanizing. She didn't eat. She didn't watch tv. She didn't do anything human. She was a male idea of a 'hot young girl', who only existed to look like what males think is appealing, dance on stage, and get male approval. That's it, we never see her exhausted, sad, commiserating how difficult it is to be around males who objectify you all day, we never see her complain about sexualizing and so obviously ignored sexual harassment she was put trough – the movie acted like sexual harassment didn't exist. Males around her appeared to only care about how much money she could make them and even though that was disgusting too, I don't believe for a second that a woman in that scenario doesn't get extensively sexually harassed. But the movie skipped over that. Like it just didn't matter. She doesn't have mental health issues because she's an attractive female child on television. She isn't human to them.

The younger woman had to switch bodies with her original counterpart weekly, and at first I found these little moments soothing, because the older woman was clearly showing signs of pain, hunger, exhaustion, irritation, depression. I thought 'oh, there's the humanity I was missing!' and was just happy to see her eat something. But then, to my horror, these little moments of humanity were ... demonized. The fact that she was eating was a flaw and a failure in the movie. She was depicted as addicted to food, jealous, bitter, angry and like giving in to any human urge for entertainment and rest was her 'wasting her life'. I was chilled by this notion, because I realized that's how males see female needs in real life. A waste.

Another thing I found upsetting was the amount of completely naked scenes the acctresses had to go trough, because I can't imagine anyone feeling okay and comfortable with being filmed like that. It felt invasive and uncomfortable for me to see. I knew it was done like this for male satisfaction, it wasn't catered to me. It disturbs me to think they felt comfortable looking at that. Female discomfort is a source of pleasure to them.

The movie progresses in the protagonist taking more and more time being in the younger body, resulting in the older body deterioration. She ends up feeling like she's two people, which is logical at least; you would feel like you're someone else if you're a different body, it at least displayed that little bit of 'you are your body' consequences. The male nurse who gave her the substance starts stalking her, and talking to her in public, and I found this part interesting. The male tried to get her to relate to him, said things like '7 days is long' and 'has she started eating at you already', and to me it became obvious that the male nurse knew exactly what this was going to do to her, and did it anyway. Because he felt lonely and wanted a female companion who also switches bodies. He picked her out and victimized her because he wanted company who also suffered and struggled with the same problem, he spread the misery for his own benefit. I thought we were going to look at that? I thought we would unpack that for a second? Male selfishness and bringing misery into female's life for their selfish purposes? But movie said no and we never see him again.

The younger version seems to forget she ever had any more age, and recklessly parties and does public events not caring that her counterpart is getting destroyed, until at the end, they both end up in some kind of monstrous shape, which okay, the extra teeth were fun, add extra teeth on women yes. But she is ultimately killed when appearing in on a social event looking like that. The ending just shows her dreaming about being famous and cheered on by the crowd, and it looks almost like the movie thinks her endless greed for glory and fame did this to her. Like this is her own fault, she destroyed the body she had in pursuit of eternal approval and gratification of a cheering crowd. I was looking at this like, who was this made for? Nothing about this clicks, is this for people obsessed with their own fame? Is this just a made up idea of what the world looks like for women who are trying to be famous? Because it wasn't clicking with any reality I was aware of.

We've listened to women going trough fame and popularity, and we know what these stories entail. First half of it is being introduced to it too young, forced into it by their parents or guardians, being overworked, missing on childhoods and schooling and family time, not getting enough sleep or rest, being pushed into substance abuse just to get trough the day. And then, endless sexualizing, endless situations where they're in the presence of predators and unprotected. The industry ruthlessly rejecting their personality and forcing them to mold into whatever the public wants, or the producer wants, having their identity crashing with the public opinion of them. Lack of privacy, lack of safety being outside, getting harassed and crowded on the street, not being allowed to live a normal life. Having body issues due to being forced to focus on how you look, because you're under constant scrutiny and now your job depends on how your body looks like, developing mental disorders due to lack of control over your life, and due to control you have to have over your every action. Having your opinions and wants dismissed because your word doesn't count in the industry when you're a woman, being forced to hide what people have done to you in private, often suffering sexual abuse and being forced to keep quiet if you want to keep your job. Breakdowns, suicidal thoughts, both fearing to lose relevancy and wanting out of the industry for your mental health, but it's all you've known and you don't know how to function otherwise. Getting jaded, realizing your own value drops with age, learning to despise everyone who took advantage of you and dropped you the second you weren't making them enough money. Being sick and tired of males talking down to you and dismissing your humanity. Not knowing where to turn for understanding and safety, because the charade has to keep on going in order for the industry to go on.

This is what I would expect a woman in the industry to have learned after being put trough all that, and instead the main character was so void of any backstory, any real experiences, any thoughts or criticism about it, any anger or bitterness about the abuse she'd have suffered in there, and was sorely upset about her lack of job security and that she was no longer looking like a commercial. She would have learned from this, that this is an inherently insecure job industry, it's not worth being in it, but she doesn't seem to learn this. She isn't even angry they hired someone else without telling her. All of her anger was directed towards herself. And the movie was not challenging it. It was saying 'yes, it is your own fault, both for aging, and for wanting not to age. Look what you did.'

And by the end of the movie, she was just the same as the beginning, still just longing for the fame and cheers. She is a character who is not allowed to learn from her experiences, in fact seems to have no experiences, even of the things that happened to her in the movie. She cared for nothing but male validation. She only seemed to care about the younger body for the sake of this validation. Even at the very end when she was killed by the same males who she gave everything to impress for, she wasn't mad at them. She just wanted more validation from them.

And I'm watching this thinking, this must be whats inside of a male brain. He did that because thats how he would act in this situation. Males are incapable of learning from experience, so they assume women are too. Males think that having a body of a young female in their posession would resolve all of their needs and desires, so they think for a woman that would work too, in fact that she would destroy herself to get there. The creepy male fantasy of what a woman would do. It was done to validate their dumb opinions.

One thing I was surprised with was the road not taken in this movie, because it had a lot of potential symbolism! The younger woman exiting the woman's body, was reminiscent of birth. When I noticed it's a different acctress, I thought maybe we were making a parallel of mothers and daughters. Because it's a thing that happens sometimes; women with daughters will look at the daughter and feel she is a prettier, younger version of themselves. It reminds them of their own potential when they were just children, before their lives got decided by marriage and male ownership. And when daughters start receiving male attention, due to the flock of predators always creeping by, mothers will sometimes forget that this is a child bonded and dependant on them, who is now in danger, and instead get jealous, and want that attention for themselves. They'll try to vicariously live trough their daughters, get themselves into the spotlight, or win attention of the males attracted to the child. It's a horrifying event each time, I was reminded by it while watching the movie, seeing how angry the woman was at the younger counterpart for partying, being on tv, being in the spotlight that was now unreachable for her. But the movie ignored this cruel reality as well.

The movie's conclusion is just 'this is somehow the woman's fault', while trying to be a movie about the pressure of the tv industry on women to not age. The pressure is real and experienced by all women, so the movie could have been about analyzing the source of it, showing us the other side of it, how dehumanizing and cruel the males are benefiting from this, how it makes absolutely no sense to cater to them or to care about what they think of female age and appearance. It could have been about male selfishness, greed, pedophilia and predatory nature, it could have pointed us in the horrifying direction of women sacrificing so much of their health and life only for males to have financial benefit and sexual gratification from it. It could have depicted how hard work of women is unappreciated and only rewarded with further abuse.

Instead it focused on pulling women inside out to make horror of their bodies, and depicted teenagers as the ultimate goals for anyone. I think that's where I experienced the most horror, seeing the younger version being dehumanized and depicted as a sexual dream, her every private action looking like a commercial, making her into a reduced non-human robot that only acts the way males think women should. And the woman who actually looked like an adult, was not allowed to learn, criticize, or long for anything except male validation, another fantasy that is as far removed from reality as possible.

#the substance #feminist analysis #radfem analysis #movies and tv #holywood #failed movie #explored male fantasies instead of female realities #took agency and critical thinking away from women and put it in male hands #gross movie

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