Sunday Scaries: There’s Been a… Slight Misuse… of the Satire

The more it sits with me, the more I like The Substance, Coralie Fargeat’s brazen, in-your-face, gruesome satire of… well, a lot of things. Some of which works and some which doesn’t, but the messy reflection of the writer/director’s own sense of aggrievement at the result of unfair patriarchal standards – including how those standards affected her own psychology – is ultimately a thrilling experience, not only watching it in its deranged glory in the moment, but also to think about and debate its flawed-but-interesting social commentary. Here is my piping hot take (as a cisgender heterosexual white man, the most qualified to interpret the messages of this movie!): this is a brilliant commentary on self-destructive intergenerational warfare between women nested alongside an awkward attempted satire of beauty standards and the commodification of women’s bodies in late-stage capitalism.

One of the most common criticisms I have seen levied against this movie is picking apart the mechanics of the eponymous anti-aging medical treatments and how the logic of those mechanics do not make a whole lot of sense. After all, the reminder from the providers of this miracle drug lecture Elisabeth that she and Sue are “one person” but the events of the movie don’t really support this warning. Rather than a Dr.-Jekyll-and-Mr.-Hyde transformation situation, Sue literally emerges from inside Elisabeth’s body as a new person. Elisabeth basically goes through an expensive, painful process that puts her own body through enormous stress just to create a younger version of herself with a separate personality and consciousness that Elisabeth immediately distrusts.

Now… what does that sound like to you? The relationship between Elisabeth and Sue, and its parallels to the dark sides of modern parenthood, to me, is the movie’s most powerful thematic insight. To illustrate just how hard-hitting this particular social commentary hit, out-of-touch reactionary pundit Judith Woods hated this element of the film, insisting that it bears absolutely no resemblance to how wealthy older women treat younger women trying to gain a foothold on the future. But is it “logical” to become a parent these days? Worldwide demographic trends pretty overwhelmingly point to an unprecedented number of women answering “No.” Can you name a woman who shaped a generation of young people turning around to disparage and undermine those young people as they grew up with different sensibilities than her? Because I sure can. How many women enthusiastically welcome a daughter into this world, only to later resent her daughter’s youthful beauty and opportunities as mom ages? A lot more than I think we are willing to admit. This is an important conversation to have (and for women to lead, to be clear), because these intergenerational conflicts are arguably a contributor to women’s rights and safety experiencing a significant backslide in recent years. Patriarchy doesn’t need to work hard to maintain itself if it can just hand women the whip.

Having said that, other aspects of socio-political commentary are a little less… clear to me. For such “a fearless takedown of absurd beauty standards,” The Substance sure communicates an unusual number of reactionary attitudes within the framework of an entertainment industry this movie is supposedly so viciously laying out. Like how, in writing and framing, Fargeat seems so much angrier at her protagonist for failing to follow instructions than at the mysterious company for creating the Substance. It certainly would not have been a stretch to depict the Substance as not working at all as intended, instead of working perfectly as long as you follow the instructions to the letter. Or depicting Sue as somehow able to achieve fame as a nearly-identical kind of fitness celebrity through the exact same medium controlled by the exact same establishments appealing to the exact same audience demands Elisabeth did several decades ago. Or how the climax of this supposed statement against sexist ageism tries to evoke disgust at the sight of a wrinkled old crone. Or the frequency of leering shots at Margaret Qualley’s (admittedly spectacular) butt in a movie supposedly tearing apart a mass media ecosystem primarily focused on the libidinous desires of cishet men. Or the way that Dennis Quaid’s villainous executive is coded more as a flaming queen than a lecherous chauvinist.

Despite his name literally being “Harvey!”

I can’t put my finger on why, exactly, but it also feels weird that this supposed takedown of unreasonable and ageist beauty standards cast a sexagenarian as a protagonist who just turned 50. Why Demi Moore and not someone closer to Elisabeth’s age like, say, Rebecca Romijn or Jennifer Garner? Probably because most audiences wouldn’t register them as older women with fading looks at all (granted, neither does Moore, but she at least registers as slightly aging now that she’s approaching the time in her life most average people start thinking about retirement). Doesn’t that suggest the real horror of contemporary beauty standards isn’t that they’re unattainable… but that now they are?

In the real world, Sue would never have wasted her time and effort on an aerobics show run by a television network. Who the hell watches television these days? Sue would instead be one of literally thousands of “lifestyle” influencers – all with bodies and complexions formerly exclusive to only the most elite supermodels of the 1980s – posting Get Ready With Me Instagram reels where she casually humblebrags about how she can effortlessly juggle cooking breakfast for her kids, running the morning meeting of the lucrative athleisurewear company she owns, and getting her glutes-and-hamstrings workout done all before 9:00 AM. It’s no longer enough for women to be beautiful and ageless (because the avenues to achieve ageless beauty have become available to most of us). Nowadays, women have to be supermoms, girlbosses, wildcats in bed, world-class powerlifters, and wise-beyond-their-years purveyors of achieving true happiness to their millions of impressionable followers.

Heck, since she had no problem with performing hypersexualized dancing routines as the star of Elisabeth’s old show, she probably would have been more eager to utilize OnlyFans to become a millionaire within a year or two. Why bother developing genuine romantic connections with the opposite sex when you can become a millionaire faking those connections for a monthly subscription fee paid by lonely, resentful men with toxic attitudes about women?

But the frustratingly unrecognizable character turns aren’t just confined to Sue. In the real world, Elisabeth wouldn’t become a self-pitying recluse in response to young Sue’s newfound fame and admiration. She’d become an alt-right crank spreading anti-vaccine misinformation, regularly appearing on Fox News panel shows to rant about much she hates societal out-groups and taxes. By the way, remember when I mentioned Judith Woods hating on this movie earlier? Surprise, surprise: she is also a spiteful anti-trans bigot who whips her readers into a frenzy over low-stakes culture war nonsense.

It is a little strange that Greta Gerwig’s Cannes jury decided to recognize The Substance’s screenplay, of all things, because that’s the one thing about this movie that needed more time in the oven (at a minimum, a two-way tie between Qualley and Moore for the Prix d’interprétation féminine would have been far more justifiable than the four-way tie between the ladies of Emilia Pérez). The rage against modern capitalism, the entertainment industry, cultural hypocrisies, and patriarchy are totally legitimate recriminations to levy… but here, none of them hit as hard as the plea for women from different generations to stop hating and sabotaging each other in a system that benefits from such in-fighting. But maybe that’s the point? Fargeat doesn’t know how to untangle a world run by men who reduce women to sexual commodities from the world where those undermined women become their own worst enemies. But she knows they exist in tandem. You cannot reckon with one separate from the other. Exploring that in a messy script may be inevitable, and the real goal is to just get the conversation going while everyone else seemingly wants to delude themselves into thinking Feminism Has Gone Too Far™.

Even setting aside the film’s amazing lead performances (hint hint at my upcoming rankings of the Best Performances in Horror for 2024 piece coming soon, and yes, I do fundamentally disagree with Joey’s choice for Best “Supporting” Actress), audacious makeup work, and Fargeat cleverly using garish visual excess to actually reinforce the themes of the movie instead of falling into the common trap of excess-for-excess’-sake, we are about to enter a pop culture era when narrative art will be under enormous pressure to pull their punches, say nothing that rocks the boat, and coddle the feelings of oversensitive podcast bros who get triggered by, like, the sight of a black woman in a mainstream movie. For something like The Substance to swing for the fences like this and only have a few thematic quibbles to call out as a result of that swing (instead of the embarrassing stereotyping and tedious narrative faceplants of some other movies I could name) is something we will need to treasure more than ever.