#the substance sue

[fuzziiwuzzii]

⚠️gore⚠️

ABSOLUTELY SICKENING 💫

[nebuleer]

have you ever dreamed of a better version of yourself?

[kabukiyuki]

[lunedits]

sue - the substance (2024)

[skinntyy]

Remember, you are one 💉

[unreal]

"They're all gonna laugh at you." / "They are going to love you."

De Palma, B. (1976) Carrie / Fargeat, C. (2024) The Substance

[f1e4bag]

donchano pump it up!! you got to pump it up!!

wdym sue is the prime antagonist?? bro she’s just a girl cmon now

[abstracted-noodles-27]

Don't you know...

[cncity]

drew my fav 2024 horror girls so far

[creelarke]

one thing I don’t understand about the substance is why elisabeth keeps letting sue take from her. I mean it’s clear that just because sue is the better version of her and “they are one” doesn’t mean she is her when she clearly has a mind of her own. so elisabeth created her but she’s more like “her daughter” (while at the same time she’s not actually her daughter) than she is “her”. like at first I thought it was elisabeth’s mind in sue’s body, so that it was still elisabeth just in a younger body / younger version of herself. but like… that’s not the case because sue can think and while sue is elisabeth, she’s also her own person and elisabeth does not control her.

I would have terminated the first moment I found out how this worked if I were elisabeth lol like why would you want to sacrifice this much for “something else” who was created from your dna when that something isn’t even technically your child but a weird creation from a shady drug that used your dna. what do you gain from that?

[funhouse-mirror-barbie]

I’ve seen a lot of people talk about how the repeated “YOU ARE ONE” in The Substance is inaccurate or feels misleading because Sue and Elisabeth are “obviously” different entities. (Film discussion with spoilers below)

I think that you can explore that interpretation if you’d like, but I can’t help but seeing this take as one that is MAJORLY missing one of the key points of the film—that everything Elisabeth is doing, she is doing to herself.

Sue IS Elisabeth. Elisabeth is Sue. Everytime she chooses to take more and more stabilizer fluid, everytime she ignores the rule to switch every seven days without exception, that is Elisabeth, choosing to spend more time as “Sue”. It’s Elisabeth knowingly disregarding her body and brutalizing herself in order to stay “Beautiful”.

She is actively deciding not to follow her own advice, not to “take care of [herself]”. Elisabeth HATES herself, whether she’s being Sue or not.

We see this in the way she hides away BOTH of her bodies in the dark room behind her bathroom. There is no differentiation in the way she treats her “Elisabeth” body over her “Sue” body—she leaves both bodies on the bathroom tile, drags them around on the ground, and then finally creates a hidden dark room to hide both away in when not in use.

It’s not until Elisabeth returns to her original body that she regrets her actions. She’s in a self-destructive/self-hating spiral.

Sue is, quite heart-breakingly, the externalization of what Elisabeth believes she must be in order to have value, of Elisabeth’s intensely internalized body dysmorphia. That’s why Elisabeth changes her mind about stopping the experience—she truly believes it when she says that Sue is “the only part of [her] worth loving”

The Elisabeth/Sue dichotomy represents the ways we willingly destroy our bodies to make ourselves “lovable” and fit into extreme beauty standards. That’s why Elisabeth cannot bring herself to fully stop “The Experience”, and why she, as Sue, brutalizes her original body to the point of killing herself.

That is quite literally one of THE main points of the movie. That Elisabeth, that women, that ANYONE is susceptible to this sort of extreme self-harm and brutalization due to the impossible beauty standards set by the beauty industry, the media, and society.

I have seen COUNTLESS tiktoks and “get ready with me” vids showcasing ALL of the seemingly hundreds of products people use to keep themselves “wrinkle-free”, to make their eyes stand out, to make their lips more luscious and full.

I’m not saying people can’t have a skin care routine they like or have fun with makeup, but I do think we should seriously consider the reasons behind why so many people believe they have to do these things in order to be accepted by others. Is it really a choice if you believe you MUST do something to be accepted? To be loved and have value?

That’s the real tragedy to “The Substance”. Elisabeth chooses to continue taking the substance, to continue the experience, because she fully believes she has no other choice. But she does. She is completely free to stop the experience anytime she wants. But in her mind, the only way she can be loved is as Sue. And so she can’t stop.

Elisabeth is also actively complicit in this message, being a part of the beauty industry herself. Her whole place in life, her position of privilege, her very identity, is predicated on the fact that she teaches other women how make themselves more “perfect” via her aerobics program.

She does the exact same thing as “Sue” when she stars in the new program. Elisabeth becoming Sue for “Pump it Up” can be seen as commentary on celebrities who make their fortune off of their “diet and exercise secrets” while using their money to look the way they do.

Elisabeth isn’t naturally “Sue”. She used the substance to become Sue, and is now telling people via “Pump It Up” that they can look like her with her exercise program, but this is a lie. Sue, and Elisabeth by extension, only looks the way she does because of the substance, not because of any amount of exercise or aerobics. Elisabeth was only able to get her job back by becoming Sue.

I think that’s why it’s so important to understand that “The Voice” Elisabeth talks to is right. There is no “she.” Sue is not another independent person. Sue is Elisabeth.

But when you visualize the actions we take to make ourselves “beautiful” as an external entity, it makes it easier to see the brutality in our actions, to see how ridiculous the things we do to ourselves are.

I think that’s why people have such a hard time grasping that Elisabeth and Sue are the same person, that they’re both Elisabeth, because it seems so absurd that anyone would ever treat their own body with such derision, cruelty, and brutality. So people come to the conclusion that Sue and Elisabeth MUST be separated people, because why on earth would Elisabeth do that to herself???

But the truth is that so so many of us, so many people across the whole world do what Elisabeth does to herself every single day in the pursuit of acceptance and beauty. We don’t even question it.

The Substance is a really interesting film in that it’s so on-the-nose and so upsetting in different places that I think some people choose not to think deeper about it. It’s a really uncomfortable, really furious film, and because so many of its themes are so in your face for the whole movie, I can see why people don’t want to dwell much further on its message. I believe it’s important to do this with film, though.

Even if it’s NOT that deep (I’m well aware I often make things deeper than they were intended to be) and even if a film has a lot of flaws, I don’t think it’s ever a bad thing to consider media carefully.

[marine-indie-gal]

Y'all just won't believe the Body Horrors that I've witnessed Last Night.

The Substance (c) Coralie Fargeat

[pmilkshake]

Oops

[squ1dn3yr0se]

HAVE YOU EVER DREAMT OF A BETTER VERSION OF YOURSELF?

[userstuf]

★ THE SUBSTANCE USERS ★

• thsubs

• substqnc

• suefvs

• sparklies

• substznce

fav/reblog if u save or use ♥︎ dont repost it

[one-of-thewalkingdead]

So now that the substance is on Mubi and will be released sometime in the coming months for streaming, can we please see an uptick in the fanfic, at least some oneshots?