December 28, 2024 • 46 mins
Coralie Fargeat's film The Substance has made quite a splash and drummed up a lot of conversation. Anney and Samantha peel back the layers of ageism, consumption, quick fixes, misogyny, self-hatred, and desperation.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Anny and Samantha. I'm ope this stuff
I've never told you. Production Byheartradio and welcome to a
special New Year's edition of Spoiled Saturdays. Content warning before
(00:26):
we begin, disordered eating, agism, sexism, general grossness. I guess,
but yeah, this is a New Year's movie, New Year,
New you. That's what I say. Spoilers, definitely spoilers. Thanks
to your listeners for suggesting this movie. Thanks to Christina
who kind of suggested it after our death becomes her episode.
(00:49):
I really really recommend that you go into this movie
knowing as little as possible at being said, I'm not
going to sugarcoat it is really gross. It does not
hold back, but it's it's a bonkers it's wild ride.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
It's a wild ride traumatized honestly, Like I literally had
to sit back for a second and then turn off
a familiar show and sit there, even though I'm like
an hour past my typical bedtime, and I was like,
I have to watch something else before I go to bed.
I can't.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
I can't do this.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
So that took a good hour of detoxing.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yes, detoxing. Yes, it's funny, because everybody was telling me
I needed to see it, and they were like, I
can't even explain to you. It's so wild, and I
kind of like, I've seen so much that's I'm sure
I've seen it. Nope, I couldn't predict that one. So
(01:45):
I love it. I'm so excited to talk about it. Okay,
So here's the plot. The Substance is a twenty twenty
four sci fi horror satire film, directed, written, and produced
by Coralie Farja and starring to me more Margaret quality
and in this quaid. It was a co production between
the US, the UK, and France. Since it debuted, it
(02:06):
has been a critical and commercial success and has generated
a lot of conversation. Also has a lot of really
cool practical effects, and I suggest looking up how they
did them if you're interested, because it's really cool. The
movie opens on celebrity Elizabeth Sparkles Demi Moore getting a
star on the Hollywood Walk of Fan Then we see
(02:28):
the progression of time as it goes from being as star,
people take pictures with that was kept clean to one
that no one recognizes, and people spill food on, and
eventually it corracts on her fiftieth birthday, Elizabeth is filming
for her long running aerobic show, when she accidentally overhears
that she is being fired because of her age and
(02:50):
is going to be replaced by someone younger and more beautiful.
After being formally let go, she crashes her car while
driving back to her apartment when she sees a billboard
of her self already being taken down at the hospital.
A young orderly slips her a flash drive that he
says changed his life on. It is an ad for
(03:10):
something called the Substance, a black market product that promises
a better, younger, prettier version of yourself. So Elizabeth is
kind of thinking about all this and sort of decides
not to do it. She runs into a man her
age from her class from homeroom, and he asked her
if they can go get drinks sometime. Elizabeth somewhat reluctantly
(03:33):
agrees to get his number, which he scribbles on a
piece of paper that he then promptly drops in the
mud and hands it to her. Anyway, she decides, after
a few drinks to order the Substance, which is a
real secretive process that involves her going by a number,
(03:55):
going to a secret location where no one is there.
It's like the door doesn't even open all the way.
There's a lot of block boxes, and that's how she
gets the kit. It's kind of a complicated process, but
essentially here it is. There's a single use activator, daily
syringes for stabilizer fluid from the spine, and an ivy
(04:18):
of nutrients for both the matrix, the original self and
the other self, which is necessary because once Elizabeth uses
the activator, she collapses on the floor and a younger
version of herself emerges from a slit in her back.
She then, the younger version, has to hook up the
nutrients to her older self the matrix, and inject some
(04:40):
stabilizer fluid drawn from Elizabeth to keep her from deteriorating herself.
She also has to sew up the back. The way
the system works is that they have to switch every
seven days, no exception. It's made very clear that they
are the same person. The balance must be respected. There
is no she and you. You are the same. The younger version,
(05:03):
Quali calls herself Sue. Sue goes to audition for Elizabeth's
old role on the Aerobic Show, which is now called
Pump It Up, and she gets it after a very
sexy audition. Harvey's played by Quaid, and yes, that name
was intentional. Harvey, the producer who let Elizabeth go, is
(05:23):
thrilled about her and even agrees to make her odd
scheduling situation work. Sue's image replaces Elizabeth on billboards, notably
one's visible from Elizabeth's apartment. Sue becomes a huge success.
While about to have sex with someone, Sue starts to
feel dizzy and realizes it is time to switch back,
(05:46):
but she doesn't want to, so she breaks the rules
and takes more stabilizer fluid from an unconscious Elizabeth. The
next day, when Elizabeth wakes up, one of her fingers
is completely dead like a corpse's. Angry, Elizabeth calls the
number she'd used to order the substance and tells them
what happened. They remind her there is no her and you,
(06:07):
that they are the same, and asks if she wants
to quit. She refuses, and in this conversation, Elizabeth keeps
saying like she needs to respect the balance. She has
to respect the balance. Sue constructs the sort of secret room,
and the bathroom tells Elizabeth's unconscious body so she can
have people over even though she is really successful. She
(06:29):
starts to have worries about her own body becoming with shapen,
even having a pretty nightmarish hallucination where chicken bone comes
out of her skin. But she is offered the network's
coveted New Year's Eve special, watch by millions of people.
She agrees. As Sue grows more successful and parties, Elizabeth
(06:50):
becomes a self hating hermit who bings. She hate watches
interviews with Sue where Sue insults her she cooks for
the cookbook, Harvey gave her like whole turkeys, just food
everywhere she doesn't clean up. This is very spiteful on
her part, where she's like, you gonna wake up and
(07:11):
see this mess. Sue is furious when they switch and
and she sees the mess, and she decides she will
not switch back. Takes a bunch of stabilizer fluid. A
few months later, right before the New Year's Eve show,
Sue runs out of her supply of this fluid and
(07:32):
can no longer extract anymore from Elizabeth. The supplier tells
her the only way to get more fluid is to
switch back, so that Elizabeth can replenish the supply. Furious
but very Desperate, Sue switches back. Elizabeth is now pretty
much a walking corpse. Her bones are breaking, she is
(07:53):
hunched over, she has lost her hair. Outraged, Elizabeth calls
up the supplier demand that they put an end to
the whole thing. She wants it to stop. The supplier
impresses upon her that there is no going back if
she decides to do this, but Elizabeth insists, ordering a
serum to terminate Sue. Elizabeth injects Sue with about half
(08:14):
the serum before she stops. Realizing she doesn't want to
let go of the admiration and attention that Sue is getting.
She doesn't know how to live without her. Sue wakes
up the termination fluid leaves them both conscious and realizes
that Elizabeth tried to kill her and attacks her. After
a vicious fight, Sue kills Elizabeth and goes to film
(08:37):
the New Year's Eve special. However, she doesn't have any
more stabilizer fluid and Elizabeth is dead, so her body
starts to deteriorate very quickly. Desperate, she tries to create
a newer, better version of herself by using the Activator,
the single use activator, despite the warning, this leads to
(08:58):
the creation of Montrosso Eliza Sue, a monstrous amalgamation of
Elizabeth Sue and the new version. She kind of looks
like the rat King from the Last of Us two.
To be honest and sorry about it anyway, she puts
on Eliza Zue Monstrosso. Eliza Sue puts on the very
(09:20):
Cinderella looking dress, puts on a cutout mask of Elizabeth's
face when she was younger, and takes the stage. The
mask soon falls to the audience's horror, and she sort
of gives birth to a breast on live broadcast. People
are freaking out. A man tries to cut her hand,
her head off, people are calling her monster, and another
(09:43):
even more grotesque head sprouts in that place. Her arm
falls off. Blood is spewing everywhere, covering everyone, including Harvey
and the execs. He introduced Sue to like twenty one
thousand liters blood. I think that's the number that they used. Yep,
(10:04):
everyone is screaming. Eliza Seu flees the studio, but eventually explodes,
leaving a face that inches along the pavement until it
reaches Elizabeth Star on the Walk of Fame. She imagines
being famous and hearing the cheers of the crowd as
she melts into a puddle of blood that is cleaned
(10:26):
up the next day.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, in that opening scene someone drops ketchup and burger
and so it's in the same pattern, so you know
that that's how they open and close it. Essentially, I'm traumatized.
So that's all I have to say about this.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
I get it. It was very heavy handed. I get it.
I still traumatized.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
I was like, damn because like the way they made
sure to make the pretty sexy pictures versus the horrific
end pictures, like they want you to know what they're doing,
the director and the writer, and yes, point made, but damn,
I'm trauma.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Does Yeah, I love it. I love how bonkers it was.
And every time I've shown it to somebody, they've been like,
oh wow, I did not know it was gonna go
this hard, And it really really went hard.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Yeah, like we're not being cute in the mirror.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
We're gonna be disgusting and grotesque, like like what you
think of me?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
So here we go.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Yes, and we're gonna talk about that too, because the
director has got a lot of good quotes about that,
including about how the ways some people are describing this
movie versus other body horror movies that men have done,
and the differences in that, which I think is really interesting.
And by the way, this director, we have talked about
her before. She also directed Revenge, which we talked about
(11:59):
in our Rape Revenge movies, and was inspired to write
this movie after dealing with internalized negative feelings about her
body aging and being forgotten as she grew older. The
character of Elizabeth is also in part inspired by Jane Fonda, who,
if you don't know, transitioned from being an actress to
an aerobic show and it's really interesting to read. I
(12:23):
believe her. The director and Demi Moore met six times
to discuss this role because Demi Moore was like, I
don't know, I don't know, but they eventually were like,
really came together and created this really working together. So
I think that's great. Obviously, when we talk about themes,
(12:52):
one of the big ones agism and sexism, how we
treat women, and in this movie, particularly women in Hollywood, disposable, expendable.
Literally at one point, when Elizabeth's getting fired, it's a
really grossene. Right, Dennis Quaid's character Harvey is eating all
(13:14):
of this shrimp, and he just says it just stops
at fifty. And Elizabeth asks what stucks and he's like,
and he doesn't have an answer, but he's firing her
because she's fifty and they always want this younger, better version.
In quotes something to someone to be washed away and
(13:37):
forgotten as you age, like you're wiped away from your
Hollywood star, no matter how much they've done, our sacrifice,
because she'd won awards, she'd been working for them forever,
and how much pain they might have put their bodies
through to meet these standards. And it's really upsetting because
she had given so much of herself. It was her birth.
(14:00):
They when they fired her, and they give her such
a bland gift that says you were great.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Right, actually barely talked to her box like mo.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, and it's the happy French cookbook that we'll talk
about later.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
I love the same way he says I love my wife,
and that he does such a random statement. I'll like,
where did that come from?
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Okay? He was gross. And I read a really cool
article before this talking about how this movie is kind
of a really dark fairy tale because you have your
quote chrone your young maid. But he would be the devil.
He's got like the snake skin boots. He's got that
like kind of really creepy smile in the way he's
(14:45):
always consuming something. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Interestingly, the actor Dennis Quait himself like really went out
to bat and spoke for the very thing that he represented,
like he was painting for Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
And I find that ironic.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
I'm like, so you understand what this film is, right,
you know they're like implicating here what.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
And that role was originally going to be played by
Rayleioda but he died.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
Yeah, I'm kind of glad I didn't see him.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
He would have been great.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
But I'm really glad that's not the last memories of
him I have.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yeah, yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
That's fair. But then it's also very clear when we
look at the difference between how people at the studio
treat Elizabeth versus how they treat Sue, it is stark.
They can't wait to get rid of Elizabeth. They're angry
she's been here as long as she has. But Sue,
(16:02):
they're like, oh, yes, you need seven days off every
other week. We can do it, We will work around it.
You're the best, You're so amazing. Have our New Year's
Eve show, please, So it makes it very stark in
that way, and I do think it's interesting. We'll talk
about this more later too. But when Elizabeth's doing her
workout show, she's saying things like, you got to get
(16:25):
that beach bud, you don't want to be a jellyfish
on the beach, like all this stuff. So she's really
internalized all of this as well. And then when Sue
goes to the audition for the show, right before she
goes in someone else auditions, and the two men who
are casting kind of snidely are like, too bad, her
(16:48):
breast an in the right place.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
They're implying that her nose, she would look better if
her breast was on her face instead of her nose.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah, like criticizing her nose. Yeah, yes, which comes back
to the end for sure, for sure. And then there's
kind of a constant refrain about pretty girls should always smile,
which a lot of us have heard, but also towards
the end becomes very grotesque because Sue is losing her
(17:18):
teeth and cannot give a full smile. Yeah, yeah, trauma past,
It's gross. I'm not gonna deny it. I love it.
Here's a quote from av Club in a scene that
merely hints at the revulsion to come leering at network
(17:40):
executive Harvey. Dennis Quaid has a mouthful of shrimp when
he informs Elizabeth that she's being put out to pasture.
The themes in the Substance are mostly expressed visually, and
the casting of the film's male characters is a vicious
comment in itself. The movie is populated by mediocre looking
men passing judgment on women who are frankly way out
of their league. Yep.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Yeah. The neighbor was a stark reminder of like what
he really thought he was owed. He'd be like, yes,
I'm going to take that salads as a yes, we'll
see you tonight.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
Yes, yes, Yeah. He's not cute in any least way. No,
And then with Elizabeth he was like, stop being annoying.
But with Sue, he's like, oh, you're never annoying. Please
come up a drink with me, I'll help you.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
You.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
I love your show, it's so good. Yep. And then
there there's also just the constant reminder of how Sue
being young is better in terms of the billboards that
(18:48):
you see the ripping down of Elizabeth and quickly replacing
it with Sue's mirrors. There's a lot of mirrors. This
maybe actually doesn't have a lot of dialogue, and that
was done purposely, but there's a lot of like looking
into mirrors and having when Elizabeth it's her turn, and
always having Sue kind of watching over her through her
(19:10):
like wide apartment windows, and not being able to forget
that she was fired and Sue was hired, and Sue
is the one that people appreciate. And a door now
and it used to be her, and in fact she breaks.
She has a poster, a framed poster of her when
she was younger, and she throws one of her awards
(19:32):
at it and cracks the eye of it. So even
her younger self is hanging over her. And then how
we view age and I think this is very over
the top done in a fun way with how the
(19:52):
makeup effects of what happens to do me more. They
even have stages. There's one that's like Crone Gollum and
then lots of Sue. That's what they called it. What
I was watching, I was like, this is like a corpse,
Like she looks like the way her finger in the beginning,
it's like bone and decayed skin, which I learned a
(20:14):
new term have exploitation, which is what it sounds like,
but using older women as the villain or something really
scary or something disgusting. And this movie really leaned into that,
really really leaned into it. And it's I really recommend
(20:37):
reading how they did the special effects of it, because
it's fascinating. But it took a lot. It took a
long time to apply, it took a lot to act
in it. And me more is apparently really determined, like
we're going to get this right. Even if I have
to deal with this. We don't want to disrespect the makeup,
So if we have to take it off and do
it again, we'll do it again. And then the saying
(21:00):
of Tony Moore was also very purposeful because she has
kind of gone through this and she's had a lot
of quote since then. I think she was very unsure
and I get it that this movie would be exercise
or not. But now that it is, she's had a
lot of comments about what she thinks about it. But
(21:22):
from av Club, here's another quote. The complexities of making
a living based on one's looks and the emptiness that
is left when that life is no longer possible provides
a rich text for More, whose it girl days in
the mid eighties also led to a long career as
a famous movie star. But More is sixty two and
is surely aware of her changing status within the industry.
(21:42):
Going back to their other quote, though, I do think
it's interesting that, I mean, she aged very well, but
still she's being kicked out because she's fifty.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Right. There's so much because agism has always played her,
whether it's the character she plays with so yeah, in
decent repose. That was absolutely the beginning part of the
beginning of her career, all those sexy movies ghosts, like
she was known as the it girl in the eighties
(22:10):
and nineties, and so her going into that and then
getting older, but like every age they would feature her
as like looking amazing at thirty, looking amazing at forty.
They really did that, And then Ashton Kutcher came along
after Bruce Willis. There's so much conversation about her aging
and whether or not she's aging gracefully or what she's doing,
(22:32):
and her stepping in and out of about like limelight,
whether she was dating someone who was or marrying someone's
significantly younger, playing these characters, not playing these characters, being
a mother, you know, like these she kind of represents
that conversation, like to me, more is an icon in
itself because of that, And now she's in this age
(22:53):
and time where things are being fixed, whether it's ozimbic,
whether it's plastic surgery, and so everybody's watching her because
she's always been kind of that representation. Oddly without being
said that she's that representation, So this perfectly made sense.
Like the only other person that may like even come
(23:16):
close to this, I don't know, baby, I don't even
think Nicole Kinman was that, but that was not something
that was a part of her conversation either. Even though
it is, it isn't like she was always in that
forefront in that conversation.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Oddly, Yeah, I hadn't thought about that part. But yeah,
she definitely definitely has been and this was an episode
where it could have been many, many parts. But she
does have a lot of good quotes if you want
to look them up, where she was talking about how
she feels now that this movie has come out and
(23:50):
resonated with people, and how it's made her think about
some of the way she's been treated or thinks she's
seen in her own life. And also interestingly, I love this.
Several women have written about how this movie made them
feel better about aging.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
I mean, you definitely do hold on to a moment.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
I say this as I've made episodes of like I'm
aging and I need help, like where I'm like, maybe
it's not so bad, I shouldn't do things.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
Yeah, because in the end she wanted to go back
to that face, you know what I mean, Like it
kind of was that kind of conversation like I wasn't
so bad that I shouldn't have done this because this
wasn't worth it.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
But yeah, it kind of has that crash out of
like maybe it's not worth it because the price you
have to pay, whether it's having to take out fillers
or like melting fillers out of your face because you
realize it's actually not doing you well, or having breast
and plants and not that there is anything wrong with
these things, but like the repercussions sometimes the health uh
like crisis that have to have happened with some people
(24:54):
afterwards because there's not enough information or they got they
went to the wrong place. Yeah, you know, that's definitely
a conversation, and I think that kind of comes back
to her trying to put her old face back on.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Yeah, And I think that to me, one of the
saddest parts of the movie, if not the saddest part,
is when she does agree to go on that get
the drinks with the guy yeah, who is perfectly nice,
perfectly average, but perfectly nice, And she puts on makeup.
She looks great, and then she keeps seeing her reflection
(25:25):
or she sees Sue, and she just keeps taking off
her lipstick and applying it and putting on more makeup
and then taking it off and like just viciously scrubbing
it off. And it's so sad. So you're like, just
go you look great, just you can do this. But
she can't make it out the door and she never goes,
and it's a very very sad part. And in the end,
(25:48):
Sue kills Elizabeth, who at that point does almost pretty
much personified death. So age comes for you all, does
it serious? Gonna goel too? But Yeah, going back to
what you were saying. Another theme in this is the
(26:09):
quote best self, which in this case is the younger,
better version. This kind of perfectionism. I read I'm not
sure if this is true, but I read that Margaret
Quality wore prosthetics to make everything like more symmetrical and perfect.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Well, I would assume this is without any research, that
they had to make our look absolutely perfect, and we
know that's not the case. So whether it's airbrush, whether
it's edited, like they had to make her even though
she's beautiful as is, there's something there's always cellul like,
there's always a little birthmark, there's always these things. So
(26:52):
I'm sure that she had to do extra. She had
to do extra, whether it was taping up of things.
Obviously she had to get like first thing I thought
was like, oh, she definitely went got wax like like
everything everything, And we know people are hairy, come on,
her mother was a hairy woman like Annie McDowell, who
(27:12):
was also a another nineties icon, was was not She's
naturally dark hair, so that that just happens, you know,
So for her not have any hair, I'm like, yeah,
she definitely, yes.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Yes, And that I mean that is the thing of
we've talked before about, you know, constantly beingmbarded with those
images of this is perfect, this is what I have
to do that's howkeed look. And if you don't fit that,
how do you fix it? How what can they sell
you to quote fix it? And this is when we
(27:49):
come to the conversation of quick fixes. This is literally
a black market drug that she has to go to
a strange location to pick up. There's no one there.
They I ever referred to her by her name, only
her number. You have to drain your spinal fluid, you
have to sew up your back, you have to be
(28:11):
unconscious for a week like that. That's kind of the
desperation she felt, especially as somebody who that was her career,
and that was how she had so long to find
herself and so long found meaning, that's how desperate she was.
She was like, Okay, I'll try this. And by the way,
(28:34):
this the substance video she watched, is very like tech bro.
It's a dude narrating it. Every time she talks to him,
he's like, I told you to respect the balance. Like
it's very it has that vibe of like a tech bro.
We can make money off of these women. However, there
(28:56):
are men that do it.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
You run into I wonder now that I think about it,
is it the orderly dude.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yeah, you had the same scar. Okay, okay, yes. You
run into his older version and he's like, has she
started trading you yet? Has she started stealing the time,
So even for him, the person who recommended it to her,
(29:24):
he was like, Oh, no, I shouldn't you shouldn't have
done this. I shouldn't have shouldn't have done this. Here
is another quote from av club. These combined with an
aesthetic of syringes and latex clubs best described as medspas chic,
evoking miracle cures like ozembic and botox that encourage people,
mostly women, let's be real to pump themselves full of
(29:45):
barely regulated substances whose side effects won't be clear for
a few more decades, so they can make themselves more
palatable to patriarchal beauty standards. None of this will prevent
the lumpy men who rule the world from throwing you
away when you don't give them a boner anymore. As
Elizabeth Sparkle rudely discovers early on in the film, Elizabeth
(30:06):
is extremely famous, Billboard famous, Walk of Fame famous, and
has been for decades. You'd think this would give her
the slightest bit of leverage when it comes to renegotiating
her contract as the host of the aerobics program that
broadcast her tight body and sparkling smile into millions of
American homes every week. You'd be wrong. And that's another
thing is she doesn't it's these men who decide she's done.
(30:30):
She doesn't decide that. They're just decide it. And it's
because of her age. And I do think you know
the title of the substance when you're talking about so
we don't even know what it is and we don't
know how it works, but she was willing to give
it a try. I didn't want to put in here
(30:51):
after things go terribly awry. The Eliza Sue prosthetic took
six hours to apply. Quality said it made her very claustrophobic.
But it's really cool. I just can't recommend enough to
look up how they made it and how they did
it and the blood and everything. Oh my gosh. But
Farjah said of that, the only gaze that matters is
(31:14):
her own. It's the reconciliation between all of the parts.
The moment she reveals what inside her guts, but we
are told to hide, be ashamed of everything is out.
The butt is on the head, and the boobs are everywhere,
and all those parts have been bedicized about are kind
of exploded. And she is finally and she finally has
some tenderness for herself. And that's true, and a lot
(31:35):
of sums looking in the mirror, but she's putting on
her earrings, at her dress and combing her hair. It's
like the nicest she's looked at herself in the mirror.
And I mean, of course it's really sad ultimately, but
when she presents herself to her audience, she's like, it's me.
I'm still the same person. I don't understand why you're
(31:56):
reacting this way as if I'm a monster. I hadn't really.
I'm glad I read that quote because I was just
kind of like, oh, she's putting on earrings.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Yeah, I was like, she's trying to be presentable.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
She's going But it could also I do also wonder
like it's partially in a conversation of like, no matter
how much suffering you're going through, you still have to
dress up and present yourself like women constantly would do
so well. Women may like talking about women who have
babies and are pregnant. They get themselves nice. They do
their nails, they get their toes done, so when they're
looking at it, it looks nice.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Like these things that they.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Do, whether it's for others or themselves, it is literally
a thing like I have to be.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Presentable, no matter the disastrous situation I'm in, or if
I'm just bleeding.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Out of every orfice then non orphus things that shouldn't
be bleeding.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
She did try to make herself resentable. She did, like
even the mask she put the smile on with the
lipstick YU.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
So yeah, I'm not being an ode to the joker
to be honest that though she was literally crashing.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Out here we go. Yeah, well, I love how like
nobody noticed it too. I think that's really telling that
nobody noticed something was a miss until.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
That was the part that I'm like, he let her in.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Yeah what uh huh, like they put her on the
on screen.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
There were so many well, there's so many things I
had questions about because I'm like, this doesn't work this way.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
I know that's.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Absurd, but my question on one of the parts was
like wait auh. At one point she was you know
the fluid that which is the food.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
For yours for your part fluid.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
This if you are where did she get that food?
Because she was almost suffocating. You get it from the
only has seven day supply.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
You can get refilled without doing the The problem is
she ran out of stable stabilizer fluid. But it's like
a subscription. She just kept getting it. Okay, yeah, I'll
give you.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
And I was like, she's just suffocating, but she doesn't
have food, like that's why she's a nosebleeding.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Well, that does bring us to my next point. Consumption.
That's a big theme in this a lot of food
and eating in this movie. I've already talked about Dennis
Quaid in the Shrimp, very gross, very visceral. You can
hear him eating him with the cigarette like it zooms in.
(34:41):
You can hear it very viscerally as well. This is
also how we see some female rage because I'm both
extremes of eating and not eating. Because previously Elizabeth had
been pretty shut off from being fired, like any anger
about it or anything visible. But when she starts to
(35:07):
see Sue is taking her time or again they are one,
but to her it feels like Sue is taking her time.
That's when she's watching the she's watching Sue being interviewed
and making fun of her and being like, oh, that
she's out of my generation. She's more like my mom's
age or whatever, my mom generation. And that's when Elizabeth
(35:28):
gets out the French cookbook and starts to make everything
in there, a lot of meats like blood sausage, and
it's very rage filled, it's very bitter, and she does
do it to get back at Sue, because when Sue
comes Toue it's just a mess. It's an absolute mess.
(35:52):
Food everywhere, dishes everywhere, it's really nasty. But she kind
of starts, she stops giving a She also like starts
yelling at the guy across the hall, like slams the
door open. She's just not not into it anymore. A
lot of people were relating to that to get related
to the pandemic, like this, what's resonating with me? But
(36:15):
also when we talk about consumption, I would say we've
discussed this before, but a lot of the way camera
shots have typically been used to film women, it's very
like objectifying of body parts, very pornographic, and so it's
like you're consuming just this part, are just this part,
(36:41):
and the director has talked about that and and that
kind of goes back to why she wanted to make
the objectified parts explode or become gross because she gives
birth to a boob from her forehead. So that was
(37:03):
a very interesting interviews she's done about this movie. But
also self loathing is a big theme because they both
they're the same person. It says again, all all throughout
the movie, respect the balance, you are one. But they
(37:23):
hate each other. And we've discussed before the self comparison
trap of always comparing yourself to your younger self or
even like future worries about your older self. Sue literally
dry heaves at the thought of switching back and calls
her Elizabeth, her sick mother. They do more than once
(37:47):
try to kill each other, but in the end it's Elizabeth.
Elizabeth can't do it, but Sue can, and Sue does.
Sue kills her, but Elizabeth can't give up Sue because
she loves her too much, or she loves the idea
of being young and worshiped and having an audience love
her too much and it's too powerful for her to
(38:11):
let go. And she does say things like when she's Eliza,
Sue like why you love me, it's me, is still me,
Like she just wants that love, that adoration, and is
willing to make all these sacrifices and go through all
(38:31):
this pain for those who are watching, who would throw
her away in a second to succeed. I also think
there's a theme of addiction in here, being kind of
addicted to that that feeling, and maybe even to the
idea of eventually like being younger when you could. And
(38:57):
then there are a lot of this. As I said,
there's not a lot a dialogue in this movie, So
a lot of this is how you're seeing yourself when
people are seeing you, and it's reflected through mirrors or images,
the never ending hallway at the company, the studio that
(39:19):
feels very much like the shining Alissa Wilcomson of The
New York Times wrote in the end, that's what the
Substance does best, not just remind us about the observed
standards for female beauty and the destructive power of celebrity,
but turn the mirror back on us. The sharpest critique
isn't about bodies, but about the way we've trained ourselves
to look at those bodies and the effect that has
(39:41):
on our own. The movie is appropriately enough a mirror,
and our discomfort reveals our own hidden biases and fears
about ourselves, being older, being famous, being seen, being loved,
being usurped by someone younger and hotter. It's all here.
Nothing like a mirror to remind you what lurks beneath.
A career spent in front of cameras, first as a
(40:03):
celebrated actress and then as a celebrity fitness instructor on
a show called Sparkle. Your life with Elizabeth abruptly ends
when an executive decides she's too old to be worthy
of being seen. He gets to decide if anyone wants
to look at her, and if he turns the cameras away,
does she even exist? Who?
Speaker 2 (40:22):
So?
Speaker 1 (40:23):
A lot a lot to be said about this movie.
These are just a few of my thoughts. But before
we close out this episode, I did want to touch
on some irl news stories because it has generated a
lot of conversation and a lot of headlines. One is
I'm only going to touch on this very briefly because
I thought it was funny, but Kim Kardashian criticized this movie,
(40:45):
Oh really very very funny because people are like interesting
and one of my favorite comebacks was it's like AI
criticizing Terminator.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
I think she'll learned to appreciate this movie soon enough.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
I feel bad, like I it was just funny because
it seems so out of touch. Like I'm not saying
they're not standards, I'm not saying anything like that. It
was just so out of touch.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
I wonder though, what she baited, maybe because like, why
would Kimardi. I've not heard her talk about movies ever,
so this is interesting that that's a that's even a thing.
So what did they go after her? Being like, you're
the representation, You're who they're talking about. So she's all
in mac gonna be like what No, Like, I can't
imagine she even watched this movie.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
I feel like she had her review and most of
the things I read were I don't know where it
came from, but most of the things I read it
didn't feel like she had been baited by them. They
were just kind of like, oh oh.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
Yeah, interesting.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
I saw a headline recently about a couple of months ago,
and I wanted to talk about it about how they
felt like getting older meant they were disappearing, like they
were no longer seen and what that meant, the freedom
and the costs. And I saw that.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
I think it was before the movie.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
So people are talking about how aging has seen that,
and I was like, huh, because again, part of my
conversation is like, I obviously we're all growing older, but
we were getting to a specific age where I'm like,
I'm technically at midlife. So what does that look like?
And have I disappeared and what does it disappearing mean?
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Yeah? Yeah, Like I said, a lot of people wrote,
especially around the pandemic, and we've talked about this a lot,
how our body's changed during the pandemic in ways that
we might not like given standards that we we've are
surrounded by in society. And people are saying, you know,
(42:46):
I found this. I really related to this, whether they
are saying, oh, it made me feel better about aging,
and some people were just like it was nice to
see something about it. So yeah, I think that is
a conversation that's really happening right now. We should come
back and talk about that. Another thing that happened that
got a lot of headlines was Farjop pulled this film
(43:10):
from Poland's Camera Image Film Festival after quote highly misogynistic
comments from the festival's founder, Merricks Fuadovitz published He published
an essay titled Time for Solidarity in Cinematography World, and
this essay was his response to a petition issued by
the organization Women in Cinematography in which they were calling
(43:32):
for the event to do more around supporting women in
the industry. And the founder's response was not great because
he said, quote, it raises a question. Can the pursuit
of change exclude what is good? Can we sacrifice works
and artists with outstanding artistic achievements solely to make room
for mediocre film production? So he's basically saying women cinematographers
(43:58):
are mediocre, they shouldn't for them. So she pulled the
film and it was a whole thing. The backlash is
pretty intense and immediate, and the founder claims he was misinterpreted.
He said he'd been working with that organization WIC and
posted a diversity and inclusion proposal, though WIC claimed they
(44:20):
wrote it and he only posted it after everyone got
mad at him, which sounds about right too me right, But.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
What I did?
Speaker 3 (44:29):
Oh no, just kidding, I just claimed it.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Yeah, but this movie has gotten a lot of awards buzz,
so we'll see what happens. I did want to end
with this quote from Farjah. I needed the substance to
be bloody, to be excessive, to have a real strong
message that it's time for a change, for a real change,
and the change cannot be delicate. It cannot be gentle,
(44:52):
it cannot be small. It needs to be massive, it
needs to be everywhere, and it needs to be now.
So she really but when we're saying she didn't pull
hold back, she did not hold back. So yeah, I
highly recommend it. It is very gross, but traumatized.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
I'm tryna leave it at that.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
Yes, I mean when we say it's body are it's
mm hm traumatized. Well, thanks for going on this journey
and thanks to everybody who recommended it.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
If you have any recommendations, we would love to hear from.
You can emails a Stephanie momsteffant heeartmedia dot com. You
can find us on Twitter and blue Sky at mom
Stuff podcast or on Instagram and TikTok a stuff I
Never told you for us on YouTube. We have a
tea public store and we have a book you can
get wherever you get your books. Thanks, It's always too
our super producer Christina, executive producer, My and R. Contruder Joey,
(45:51):
thank you and thanks to you for listening. Steffan never
told you his direction by heart Radio. For more podcasts
from My Heart Radio, you can check out the heart
Radio app, Apple podcast or Regula send to your favorite
shows
Hey, this is Anny and Samantha. I'm ope this stuff
I've never told you. Production Byheartradio and welcome to a
special New Year's edition of Spoiled Saturdays. Content warning before
(00:26):
we begin, disordered eating, agism, sexism, general grossness. I guess,
but yeah, this is a New Year's movie, New Year,
New you. That's what I say. Spoilers, definitely spoilers. Thanks
to your listeners for suggesting this movie. Thanks to Christina
who kind of suggested it after our death becomes her episode.
(00:49):
I really really recommend that you go into this movie
knowing as little as possible at being said, I'm not
going to sugarcoat it is really gross. It does not
hold back, but it's it's a bonkers it's wild ride.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
It's a wild ride traumatized honestly, Like I literally had
to sit back for a second and then turn off
a familiar show and sit there, even though I'm like
an hour past my typical bedtime, and I was like,
I have to watch something else before I go to bed.
I can't.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
I can't do this.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
So that took a good hour of detoxing.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yes, detoxing. Yes, it's funny, because everybody was telling me
I needed to see it, and they were like, I
can't even explain to you. It's so wild, and I
kind of like, I've seen so much that's I'm sure
I've seen it. Nope, I couldn't predict that one. So
(01:45):
I love it. I'm so excited to talk about it. Okay,
So here's the plot. The Substance is a twenty twenty
four sci fi horror satire film, directed, written, and produced
by Coralie Farja and starring to me more Margaret quality
and in this quaid. It was a co production between
the US, the UK, and France. Since it debuted, it
(02:06):
has been a critical and commercial success and has generated
a lot of conversation. Also has a lot of really
cool practical effects, and I suggest looking up how they
did them if you're interested, because it's really cool. The
movie opens on celebrity Elizabeth Sparkles Demi Moore getting a
star on the Hollywood Walk of Fan Then we see
(02:28):
the progression of time as it goes from being as star,
people take pictures with that was kept clean to one
that no one recognizes, and people spill food on, and
eventually it corracts on her fiftieth birthday, Elizabeth is filming
for her long running aerobic show, when she accidentally overhears
that she is being fired because of her age and
(02:50):
is going to be replaced by someone younger and more beautiful.
After being formally let go, she crashes her car while
driving back to her apartment when she sees a billboard
of her self already being taken down at the hospital.
A young orderly slips her a flash drive that he
says changed his life on. It is an ad for
(03:10):
something called the Substance, a black market product that promises
a better, younger, prettier version of yourself. So Elizabeth is
kind of thinking about all this and sort of decides
not to do it. She runs into a man her
age from her class from homeroom, and he asked her
if they can go get drinks sometime. Elizabeth somewhat reluctantly
(03:33):
agrees to get his number, which he scribbles on a
piece of paper that he then promptly drops in the
mud and hands it to her. Anyway, she decides, after
a few drinks to order the Substance, which is a
real secretive process that involves her going by a number,
(03:55):
going to a secret location where no one is there.
It's like the door doesn't even open all the way.
There's a lot of block boxes, and that's how she
gets the kit. It's kind of a complicated process, but
essentially here it is. There's a single use activator, daily
syringes for stabilizer fluid from the spine, and an ivy
(04:18):
of nutrients for both the matrix, the original self and
the other self, which is necessary because once Elizabeth uses
the activator, she collapses on the floor and a younger
version of herself emerges from a slit in her back.
She then, the younger version, has to hook up the
nutrients to her older self the matrix, and inject some
(04:40):
stabilizer fluid drawn from Elizabeth to keep her from deteriorating herself.
She also has to sew up the back. The way
the system works is that they have to switch every
seven days, no exception. It's made very clear that they
are the same person. The balance must be respected. There
is no she and you. You are the same. The younger version,
(05:03):
Quali calls herself Sue. Sue goes to audition for Elizabeth's
old role on the Aerobic Show, which is now called
Pump It Up, and she gets it after a very
sexy audition. Harvey's played by Quaid, and yes, that name
was intentional. Harvey, the producer who let Elizabeth go, is
(05:23):
thrilled about her and even agrees to make her odd
scheduling situation work. Sue's image replaces Elizabeth on billboards, notably
one's visible from Elizabeth's apartment. Sue becomes a huge success.
While about to have sex with someone, Sue starts to
feel dizzy and realizes it is time to switch back,
(05:46):
but she doesn't want to, so she breaks the rules
and takes more stabilizer fluid from an unconscious Elizabeth. The
next day, when Elizabeth wakes up, one of her fingers
is completely dead like a corpse's. Angry, Elizabeth calls the
number she'd used to order the substance and tells them
what happened. They remind her there is no her and you,
(06:07):
that they are the same, and asks if she wants
to quit. She refuses, and in this conversation, Elizabeth keeps
saying like she needs to respect the balance. She has
to respect the balance. Sue constructs the sort of secret room,
and the bathroom tells Elizabeth's unconscious body so she can
have people over even though she is really successful. She
(06:29):
starts to have worries about her own body becoming with shapen,
even having a pretty nightmarish hallucination where chicken bone comes
out of her skin. But she is offered the network's
coveted New Year's Eve special, watch by millions of people.
She agrees. As Sue grows more successful and parties, Elizabeth
(06:50):
becomes a self hating hermit who bings. She hate watches
interviews with Sue where Sue insults her she cooks for
the cookbook, Harvey gave her like whole turkeys, just food
everywhere she doesn't clean up. This is very spiteful on
her part, where she's like, you gonna wake up and
(07:11):
see this mess. Sue is furious when they switch and
and she sees the mess, and she decides she will
not switch back. Takes a bunch of stabilizer fluid. A
few months later, right before the New Year's Eve show,
Sue runs out of her supply of this fluid and
(07:32):
can no longer extract anymore from Elizabeth. The supplier tells
her the only way to get more fluid is to
switch back, so that Elizabeth can replenish the supply. Furious
but very Desperate, Sue switches back. Elizabeth is now pretty
much a walking corpse. Her bones are breaking, she is
(07:53):
hunched over, she has lost her hair. Outraged, Elizabeth calls
up the supplier demand that they put an end to
the whole thing. She wants it to stop. The supplier
impresses upon her that there is no going back if
she decides to do this, but Elizabeth insists, ordering a
serum to terminate Sue. Elizabeth injects Sue with about half
(08:14):
the serum before she stops. Realizing she doesn't want to
let go of the admiration and attention that Sue is getting.
She doesn't know how to live without her. Sue wakes
up the termination fluid leaves them both conscious and realizes
that Elizabeth tried to kill her and attacks her. After
a vicious fight, Sue kills Elizabeth and goes to film
(08:37):
the New Year's Eve special. However, she doesn't have any
more stabilizer fluid and Elizabeth is dead, so her body
starts to deteriorate very quickly. Desperate, she tries to create
a newer, better version of herself by using the Activator,
the single use activator, despite the warning, this leads to
(08:58):
the creation of Montrosso Eliza Sue, a monstrous amalgamation of
Elizabeth Sue and the new version. She kind of looks
like the rat King from the Last of Us two.
To be honest and sorry about it anyway, she puts
on Eliza Zue Monstrosso. Eliza Sue puts on the very
(09:20):
Cinderella looking dress, puts on a cutout mask of Elizabeth's
face when she was younger, and takes the stage. The
mask soon falls to the audience's horror, and she sort
of gives birth to a breast on live broadcast. People
are freaking out. A man tries to cut her hand,
her head off, people are calling her monster, and another
(09:43):
even more grotesque head sprouts in that place. Her arm
falls off. Blood is spewing everywhere, covering everyone, including Harvey
and the execs. He introduced Sue to like twenty one
thousand liters blood. I think that's the number that they used. Yep,
(10:04):
everyone is screaming. Eliza Seu flees the studio, but eventually explodes,
leaving a face that inches along the pavement until it
reaches Elizabeth Star on the Walk of Fame. She imagines
being famous and hearing the cheers of the crowd as
she melts into a puddle of blood that is cleaned
(10:26):
up the next day.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, in that opening scene someone drops ketchup and burger
and so it's in the same pattern, so you know
that that's how they open and close it. Essentially, I'm traumatized.
So that's all I have to say about this.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
I get it. It was very heavy handed. I get it.
I still traumatized.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
I was like, damn because like the way they made
sure to make the pretty sexy pictures versus the horrific
end pictures, like they want you to know what they're doing,
the director and the writer, and yes, point made, but damn,
I'm trauma.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Does Yeah, I love it. I love how bonkers it was.
And every time I've shown it to somebody, they've been like,
oh wow, I did not know it was gonna go
this hard, And it really really went hard.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Yeah, like we're not being cute in the mirror.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
We're gonna be disgusting and grotesque, like like what you
think of me?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
So here we go.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Yes, and we're gonna talk about that too, because the
director has got a lot of good quotes about that,
including about how the ways some people are describing this
movie versus other body horror movies that men have done,
and the differences in that, which I think is really interesting.
And by the way, this director, we have talked about
her before. She also directed Revenge, which we talked about
(11:59):
in our Rape Revenge movies, and was inspired to write
this movie after dealing with internalized negative feelings about her
body aging and being forgotten as she grew older. The
character of Elizabeth is also in part inspired by Jane Fonda, who,
if you don't know, transitioned from being an actress to
an aerobic show and it's really interesting to read. I
(12:23):
believe her. The director and Demi Moore met six times
to discuss this role because Demi Moore was like, I
don't know, I don't know, but they eventually were like,
really came together and created this really working together. So
I think that's great. Obviously, when we talk about themes,
(12:52):
one of the big ones agism and sexism, how we
treat women, and in this movie, particularly women in Hollywood, disposable, expendable.
Literally at one point, when Elizabeth's getting fired, it's a
really grossene. Right, Dennis Quaid's character Harvey is eating all
(13:14):
of this shrimp, and he just says it just stops
at fifty. And Elizabeth asks what stucks and he's like,
and he doesn't have an answer, but he's firing her
because she's fifty and they always want this younger, better version.
In quotes something to someone to be washed away and
(13:37):
forgotten as you age, like you're wiped away from your
Hollywood star, no matter how much they've done, our sacrifice,
because she'd won awards, she'd been working for them forever,
and how much pain they might have put their bodies
through to meet these standards. And it's really upsetting because
she had given so much of herself. It was her birth.
(14:00):
They when they fired her, and they give her such
a bland gift that says you were great.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Right, actually barely talked to her box like mo.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, and it's the happy French cookbook that we'll talk
about later.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
I love the same way he says I love my wife,
and that he does such a random statement. I'll like,
where did that come from?
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Okay? He was gross. And I read a really cool
article before this talking about how this movie is kind
of a really dark fairy tale because you have your
quote chrone your young maid. But he would be the devil.
He's got like the snake skin boots. He's got that
like kind of really creepy smile in the way he's
(14:45):
always consuming something. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Interestingly, the actor Dennis Quait himself like really went out
to bat and spoke for the very thing that he represented,
like he was painting for Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
And I find that ironic.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
I'm like, so you understand what this film is, right,
you know they're like implicating here what.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
And that role was originally going to be played by
Rayleioda but he died.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
Yeah, I'm kind of glad I didn't see him.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
He would have been great.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
But I'm really glad that's not the last memories of
him I have.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yeah, yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
That's fair. But then it's also very clear when we
look at the difference between how people at the studio
treat Elizabeth versus how they treat Sue, it is stark.
They can't wait to get rid of Elizabeth. They're angry
she's been here as long as she has. But Sue,
(16:02):
they're like, oh, yes, you need seven days off every
other week. We can do it, We will work around it.
You're the best, You're so amazing. Have our New Year's
Eve show, please, So it makes it very stark in
that way, and I do think it's interesting. We'll talk
about this more later too. But when Elizabeth's doing her
workout show, she's saying things like, you got to get
(16:25):
that beach bud, you don't want to be a jellyfish
on the beach, like all this stuff. So she's really
internalized all of this as well. And then when Sue
goes to the audition for the show, right before she
goes in someone else auditions, and the two men who
are casting kind of snidely are like, too bad, her
(16:48):
breast an in the right place.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
They're implying that her nose, she would look better if
her breast was on her face instead of her nose.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah, like criticizing her nose. Yeah, yes, which comes back
to the end for sure, for sure. And then there's
kind of a constant refrain about pretty girls should always smile,
which a lot of us have heard, but also towards
the end becomes very grotesque because Sue is losing her
(17:18):
teeth and cannot give a full smile. Yeah, yeah, trauma past,
It's gross. I'm not gonna deny it. I love it.
Here's a quote from av Club in a scene that
merely hints at the revulsion to come leering at network
(17:40):
executive Harvey. Dennis Quaid has a mouthful of shrimp when
he informs Elizabeth that she's being put out to pasture.
The themes in the Substance are mostly expressed visually, and
the casting of the film's male characters is a vicious
comment in itself. The movie is populated by mediocre looking
men passing judgment on women who are frankly way out
of their league. Yep.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Yeah. The neighbor was a stark reminder of like what
he really thought he was owed. He'd be like, yes,
I'm going to take that salads as a yes, we'll
see you tonight.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
Yes, yes, Yeah. He's not cute in any least way. No,
And then with Elizabeth he was like, stop being annoying.
But with Sue, he's like, oh, you're never annoying. Please
come up a drink with me, I'll help you.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
You.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
I love your show, it's so good. Yep. And then
there there's also just the constant reminder of how Sue
being young is better in terms of the billboards that
(18:48):
you see the ripping down of Elizabeth and quickly replacing
it with Sue's mirrors. There's a lot of mirrors. This
maybe actually doesn't have a lot of dialogue, and that
was done purposely, but there's a lot of like looking
into mirrors and having when Elizabeth it's her turn, and
always having Sue kind of watching over her through her
(19:10):
like wide apartment windows, and not being able to forget
that she was fired and Sue was hired, and Sue
is the one that people appreciate. And a door now
and it used to be her, and in fact she breaks.
She has a poster, a framed poster of her when
she was younger, and she throws one of her awards
(19:32):
at it and cracks the eye of it. So even
her younger self is hanging over her. And then how
we view age and I think this is very over
the top done in a fun way with how the
(19:52):
makeup effects of what happens to do me more. They
even have stages. There's one that's like Crone Gollum and
then lots of Sue. That's what they called it. What
I was watching, I was like, this is like a corpse,
Like she looks like the way her finger in the beginning,
it's like bone and decayed skin, which I learned a
(20:14):
new term have exploitation, which is what it sounds like,
but using older women as the villain or something really
scary or something disgusting. And this movie really leaned into that,
really really leaned into it. And it's I really recommend
(20:37):
reading how they did the special effects of it, because
it's fascinating. But it took a lot. It took a
long time to apply, it took a lot to act
in it. And me more is apparently really determined, like
we're going to get this right. Even if I have
to deal with this. We don't want to disrespect the makeup,
So if we have to take it off and do
it again, we'll do it again. And then the saying
(21:00):
of Tony Moore was also very purposeful because she has
kind of gone through this and she's had a lot
of quote since then. I think she was very unsure
and I get it that this movie would be exercise
or not. But now that it is, she's had a
lot of comments about what she thinks about it. But
(21:22):
from av Club, here's another quote. The complexities of making
a living based on one's looks and the emptiness that
is left when that life is no longer possible provides
a rich text for More, whose it girl days in
the mid eighties also led to a long career as
a famous movie star. But More is sixty two and
is surely aware of her changing status within the industry.
(21:42):
Going back to their other quote, though, I do think
it's interesting that, I mean, she aged very well, but
still she's being kicked out because she's fifty.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Right. There's so much because agism has always played her,
whether it's the character she plays with so yeah, in
decent repose. That was absolutely the beginning part of the
beginning of her career, all those sexy movies ghosts, like
she was known as the it girl in the eighties
(22:10):
and nineties, and so her going into that and then
getting older, but like every age they would feature her
as like looking amazing at thirty, looking amazing at forty.
They really did that, And then Ashton Kutcher came along
after Bruce Willis. There's so much conversation about her aging
and whether or not she's aging gracefully or what she's doing,
(22:32):
and her stepping in and out of about like limelight,
whether she was dating someone who was or marrying someone's
significantly younger, playing these characters, not playing these characters, being
a mother, you know, like these she kind of represents
that conversation, like to me, more is an icon in
itself because of that, And now she's in this age
(22:53):
and time where things are being fixed, whether it's ozimbic,
whether it's plastic surgery, and so everybody's watching her because
she's always been kind of that representation. Oddly without being
said that she's that representation, So this perfectly made sense.
Like the only other person that may like even come
(23:16):
close to this, I don't know, baby, I don't even
think Nicole Kinman was that, but that was not something
that was a part of her conversation either. Even though
it is, it isn't like she was always in that
forefront in that conversation.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Oddly, Yeah, I hadn't thought about that part. But yeah,
she definitely definitely has been and this was an episode
where it could have been many, many parts. But she
does have a lot of good quotes if you want
to look them up, where she was talking about how
she feels now that this movie has come out and
(23:50):
resonated with people, and how it's made her think about
some of the way she's been treated or thinks she's
seen in her own life. And also interestingly, I love this.
Several women have written about how this movie made them
feel better about aging.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
I mean, you definitely do hold on to a moment.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
I say this as I've made episodes of like I'm
aging and I need help, like where I'm like, maybe
it's not so bad, I shouldn't do things.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
Yeah, because in the end she wanted to go back
to that face, you know what I mean, Like it
kind of was that kind of conversation like I wasn't
so bad that I shouldn't have done this because this
wasn't worth it.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
But yeah, it kind of has that crash out of
like maybe it's not worth it because the price you
have to pay, whether it's having to take out fillers
or like melting fillers out of your face because you
realize it's actually not doing you well, or having breast
and plants and not that there is anything wrong with
these things, but like the repercussions sometimes the health uh
like crisis that have to have happened with some people
(24:54):
afterwards because there's not enough information or they got they
went to the wrong place. Yeah, you know, that's definitely
a conversation, and I think that kind of comes back
to her trying to put her old face back on.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Yeah, And I think that to me, one of the
saddest parts of the movie, if not the saddest part,
is when she does agree to go on that get
the drinks with the guy yeah, who is perfectly nice,
perfectly average, but perfectly nice, And she puts on makeup.
She looks great, and then she keeps seeing her reflection
(25:25):
or she sees Sue, and she just keeps taking off
her lipstick and applying it and putting on more makeup
and then taking it off and like just viciously scrubbing
it off. And it's so sad. So you're like, just
go you look great, just you can do this. But
she can't make it out the door and she never goes,
and it's a very very sad part. And in the end,
(25:48):
Sue kills Elizabeth, who at that point does almost pretty
much personified death. So age comes for you all, does
it serious? Gonna goel too? But Yeah, going back to
what you were saying. Another theme in this is the
(26:09):
quote best self, which in this case is the younger,
better version. This kind of perfectionism. I read I'm not
sure if this is true, but I read that Margaret
Quality wore prosthetics to make everything like more symmetrical and perfect.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Well, I would assume this is without any research, that
they had to make our look absolutely perfect, and we
know that's not the case. So whether it's airbrush, whether
it's edited, like they had to make her even though
she's beautiful as is, there's something there's always cellul like,
there's always a little birthmark, there's always these things. So
(26:52):
I'm sure that she had to do extra. She had
to do extra, whether it was taping up of things.
Obviously she had to get like first thing I thought
was like, oh, she definitely went got wax like like
everything everything, And we know people are hairy, come on,
her mother was a hairy woman like Annie McDowell, who
(27:12):
was also a another nineties icon, was was not She's
naturally dark hair, so that that just happens, you know,
So for her not have any hair, I'm like, yeah,
she definitely, yes.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Yes, And that I mean that is the thing of
we've talked before about, you know, constantly beingmbarded with those
images of this is perfect, this is what I have
to do that's howkeed look. And if you don't fit that,
how do you fix it? How what can they sell
you to quote fix it? And this is when we
(27:49):
come to the conversation of quick fixes. This is literally
a black market drug that she has to go to
a strange location to pick up. There's no one there.
They I ever referred to her by her name, only
her number. You have to drain your spinal fluid, you
have to sew up your back, you have to be
(28:11):
unconscious for a week like that. That's kind of the
desperation she felt, especially as somebody who that was her career,
and that was how she had so long to find
herself and so long found meaning, that's how desperate she was.
She was like, Okay, I'll try this. And by the way,
(28:34):
this the substance video she watched, is very like tech bro.
It's a dude narrating it. Every time she talks to him,
he's like, I told you to respect the balance. Like
it's very it has that vibe of like a tech bro.
We can make money off of these women. However, there
(28:56):
are men that do it.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
You run into I wonder now that I think about it,
is it the orderly dude.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yeah, you had the same scar. Okay, okay, yes. You
run into his older version and he's like, has she
started trading you yet? Has she started stealing the time,
So even for him, the person who recommended it to her,
(29:24):
he was like, Oh, no, I shouldn't you shouldn't have
done this. I shouldn't have shouldn't have done this. Here
is another quote from av club. These combined with an
aesthetic of syringes and latex clubs best described as medspas chic,
evoking miracle cures like ozembic and botox that encourage people,
mostly women, let's be real to pump themselves full of
(29:45):
barely regulated substances whose side effects won't be clear for
a few more decades, so they can make themselves more
palatable to patriarchal beauty standards. None of this will prevent
the lumpy men who rule the world from throwing you
away when you don't give them a boner anymore. As
Elizabeth Sparkle rudely discovers early on in the film, Elizabeth
(30:06):
is extremely famous, Billboard famous, Walk of Fame famous, and
has been for decades. You'd think this would give her
the slightest bit of leverage when it comes to renegotiating
her contract as the host of the aerobics program that
broadcast her tight body and sparkling smile into millions of
American homes every week. You'd be wrong. And that's another
thing is she doesn't it's these men who decide she's done.
(30:30):
She doesn't decide that. They're just decide it. And it's
because of her age. And I do think you know
the title of the substance when you're talking about so
we don't even know what it is and we don't
know how it works, but she was willing to give
it a try. I didn't want to put in here
(30:51):
after things go terribly awry. The Eliza Sue prosthetic took
six hours to apply. Quality said it made her very claustrophobic.
But it's really cool. I just can't recommend enough to
look up how they made it and how they did
it and the blood and everything. Oh my gosh. But
Farjah said of that, the only gaze that matters is
(31:14):
her own. It's the reconciliation between all of the parts.
The moment she reveals what inside her guts, but we
are told to hide, be ashamed of everything is out.
The butt is on the head, and the boobs are everywhere,
and all those parts have been bedicized about are kind
of exploded. And she is finally and she finally has
some tenderness for herself. And that's true, and a lot
(31:35):
of sums looking in the mirror, but she's putting on
her earrings, at her dress and combing her hair. It's
like the nicest she's looked at herself in the mirror.
And I mean, of course it's really sad ultimately, but
when she presents herself to her audience, she's like, it's me.
I'm still the same person. I don't understand why you're
(31:56):
reacting this way as if I'm a monster. I hadn't really.
I'm glad I read that quote because I was just
kind of like, oh, she's putting on earrings.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Yeah, I was like, she's trying to be presentable.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
She's going But it could also I do also wonder
like it's partially in a conversation of like, no matter
how much suffering you're going through, you still have to
dress up and present yourself like women constantly would do
so well. Women may like talking about women who have
babies and are pregnant. They get themselves nice. They do
their nails, they get their toes done, so when they're
looking at it, it looks nice.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Like these things that they.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Do, whether it's for others or themselves, it is literally
a thing like I have to be.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Presentable, no matter the disastrous situation I'm in, or if
I'm just bleeding.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Out of every orfice then non orphus things that shouldn't
be bleeding.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
She did try to make herself resentable. She did, like
even the mask she put the smile on with the
lipstick YU.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
So yeah, I'm not being an ode to the joker
to be honest that though she was literally crashing.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Out here we go. Yeah, well, I love how like
nobody noticed it too. I think that's really telling that
nobody noticed something was a miss until.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
That was the part that I'm like, he let her in.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Yeah what uh huh, like they put her on the
on screen.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
There were so many well, there's so many things I
had questions about because I'm like, this doesn't work this way.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
I know that's.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Absurd, but my question on one of the parts was
like wait auh. At one point she was you know
the fluid that which is the food.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
For yours for your part fluid.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
This if you are where did she get that food?
Because she was almost suffocating. You get it from the
only has seven day supply.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
You can get refilled without doing the The problem is
she ran out of stable stabilizer fluid. But it's like
a subscription. She just kept getting it. Okay, yeah, I'll
give you.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
And I was like, she's just suffocating, but she doesn't
have food, like that's why she's a nosebleeding.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Well, that does bring us to my next point. Consumption.
That's a big theme in this a lot of food
and eating in this movie. I've already talked about Dennis
Quaid in the Shrimp, very gross, very visceral. You can
hear him eating him with the cigarette like it zooms in.
(34:41):
You can hear it very viscerally as well. This is
also how we see some female rage because I'm both
extremes of eating and not eating. Because previously Elizabeth had
been pretty shut off from being fired, like any anger
about it or anything visible. But when she starts to
(35:07):
see Sue is taking her time or again they are one,
but to her it feels like Sue is taking her time.
That's when she's watching the she's watching Sue being interviewed
and making fun of her and being like, oh, that
she's out of my generation. She's more like my mom's
age or whatever, my mom generation. And that's when Elizabeth
(35:28):
gets out the French cookbook and starts to make everything
in there, a lot of meats like blood sausage, and
it's very rage filled, it's very bitter, and she does
do it to get back at Sue, because when Sue
comes Toue it's just a mess. It's an absolute mess.
(35:52):
Food everywhere, dishes everywhere, it's really nasty. But she kind
of starts, she stops giving a She also like starts
yelling at the guy across the hall, like slams the
door open. She's just not not into it anymore. A
lot of people were relating to that to get related
to the pandemic, like this, what's resonating with me? But
(36:15):
also when we talk about consumption, I would say we've
discussed this before, but a lot of the way camera
shots have typically been used to film women, it's very
like objectifying of body parts, very pornographic, and so it's
like you're consuming just this part, are just this part,
(36:41):
and the director has talked about that and and that
kind of goes back to why she wanted to make
the objectified parts explode or become gross because she gives
birth to a boob from her forehead. So that was
(37:03):
a very interesting interviews she's done about this movie. But
also self loathing is a big theme because they both
they're the same person. It says again, all all throughout
the movie, respect the balance, you are one. But they
(37:23):
hate each other. And we've discussed before the self comparison
trap of always comparing yourself to your younger self or
even like future worries about your older self. Sue literally
dry heaves at the thought of switching back and calls
her Elizabeth, her sick mother. They do more than once
(37:47):
try to kill each other, but in the end it's Elizabeth.
Elizabeth can't do it, but Sue can, and Sue does.
Sue kills her, but Elizabeth can't give up Sue because
she loves her too much, or she loves the idea
of being young and worshiped and having an audience love
her too much and it's too powerful for her to
(38:11):
let go. And she does say things like when she's Eliza,
Sue like why you love me, it's me, is still me,
Like she just wants that love, that adoration, and is
willing to make all these sacrifices and go through all
(38:31):
this pain for those who are watching, who would throw
her away in a second to succeed. I also think
there's a theme of addiction in here, being kind of
addicted to that that feeling, and maybe even to the
idea of eventually like being younger when you could. And
(38:57):
then there are a lot of this. As I said,
there's not a lot a dialogue in this movie, So
a lot of this is how you're seeing yourself when
people are seeing you, and it's reflected through mirrors or images,
the never ending hallway at the company, the studio that
(39:19):
feels very much like the shining Alissa Wilcomson of The
New York Times wrote in the end, that's what the
Substance does best, not just remind us about the observed
standards for female beauty and the destructive power of celebrity,
but turn the mirror back on us. The sharpest critique
isn't about bodies, but about the way we've trained ourselves
to look at those bodies and the effect that has
(39:41):
on our own. The movie is appropriately enough a mirror,
and our discomfort reveals our own hidden biases and fears
about ourselves, being older, being famous, being seen, being loved,
being usurped by someone younger and hotter. It's all here.
Nothing like a mirror to remind you what lurks beneath.
A career spent in front of cameras, first as a
(40:03):
celebrated actress and then as a celebrity fitness instructor on
a show called Sparkle. Your life with Elizabeth abruptly ends
when an executive decides she's too old to be worthy
of being seen. He gets to decide if anyone wants
to look at her, and if he turns the cameras away,
does she even exist? Who?
Speaker 2 (40:22):
So?
Speaker 1 (40:23):
A lot a lot to be said about this movie.
These are just a few of my thoughts. But before
we close out this episode, I did want to touch
on some irl news stories because it has generated a
lot of conversation and a lot of headlines. One is
I'm only going to touch on this very briefly because
I thought it was funny, but Kim Kardashian criticized this movie,
(40:45):
Oh really very very funny because people are like interesting
and one of my favorite comebacks was it's like AI
criticizing Terminator.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
I think she'll learned to appreciate this movie soon enough.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
I feel bad, like I it was just funny because
it seems so out of touch. Like I'm not saying
they're not standards, I'm not saying anything like that. It
was just so out of touch.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
I wonder though, what she baited, maybe because like, why
would Kimardi. I've not heard her talk about movies ever,
so this is interesting that that's a that's even a thing.
So what did they go after her? Being like, you're
the representation, You're who they're talking about. So she's all
in mac gonna be like what No, Like, I can't
imagine she even watched this movie.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
I feel like she had her review and most of
the things I read were I don't know where it
came from, but most of the things I read it
didn't feel like she had been baited by them. They
were just kind of like, oh oh.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
Yeah, interesting.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
I saw a headline recently about a couple of months ago,
and I wanted to talk about it about how they
felt like getting older meant they were disappearing, like they
were no longer seen and what that meant, the freedom
and the costs. And I saw that.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
I think it was before the movie.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
So people are talking about how aging has seen that,
and I was like, huh, because again, part of my
conversation is like, I obviously we're all growing older, but
we were getting to a specific age where I'm like,
I'm technically at midlife. So what does that look like?
And have I disappeared and what does it disappearing mean?
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Yeah? Yeah, Like I said, a lot of people wrote,
especially around the pandemic, and we've talked about this a lot,
how our body's changed during the pandemic in ways that
we might not like given standards that we we've are
surrounded by in society. And people are saying, you know,
(42:46):
I found this. I really related to this, whether they
are saying, oh, it made me feel better about aging,
and some people were just like it was nice to
see something about it. So yeah, I think that is
a conversation that's really happening right now. We should come
back and talk about that. Another thing that happened that
got a lot of headlines was Farjop pulled this film
(43:10):
from Poland's Camera Image Film Festival after quote highly misogynistic
comments from the festival's founder, Merricks Fuadovitz published He published
an essay titled Time for Solidarity in Cinematography World, and
this essay was his response to a petition issued by
the organization Women in Cinematography in which they were calling
(43:32):
for the event to do more around supporting women in
the industry. And the founder's response was not great because
he said, quote, it raises a question. Can the pursuit
of change exclude what is good? Can we sacrifice works
and artists with outstanding artistic achievements solely to make room
for mediocre film production? So he's basically saying women cinematographers
(43:58):
are mediocre, they shouldn't for them. So she pulled the
film and it was a whole thing. The backlash is
pretty intense and immediate, and the founder claims he was misinterpreted.
He said he'd been working with that organization WIC and
posted a diversity and inclusion proposal, though WIC claimed they
(44:20):
wrote it and he only posted it after everyone got
mad at him, which sounds about right too me right, But.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
What I did?
Speaker 3 (44:29):
Oh no, just kidding, I just claimed it.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Yeah, but this movie has gotten a lot of awards buzz,
so we'll see what happens. I did want to end
with this quote from Farjah. I needed the substance to
be bloody, to be excessive, to have a real strong
message that it's time for a change, for a real change,
and the change cannot be delicate. It cannot be gentle,
(44:52):
it cannot be small. It needs to be massive, it
needs to be everywhere, and it needs to be now.
So she really but when we're saying she didn't pull
hold back, she did not hold back. So yeah, I
highly recommend it. It is very gross, but traumatized.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
I'm tryna leave it at that.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
Yes, I mean when we say it's body are it's
mm hm traumatized. Well, thanks for going on this journey
and thanks to everybody who recommended it.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
If you have any recommendations, we would love to hear from.
You can emails a Stephanie momsteffant heeartmedia dot com. You
can find us on Twitter and blue Sky at mom
Stuff podcast or on Instagram and TikTok a stuff I
Never told you for us on YouTube. We have a
tea public store and we have a book you can
get wherever you get your books. Thanks, It's always too
our super producer Christina, executive producer, My and R. Contruder Joey,
(45:51):
thank you and thanks to you for listening. Steffan never
told you his direction by heart Radio. For more podcasts
from My Heart Radio, you can check out the heart
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