This article contains spoilers for The Substance.
If you’ve been on the internet over the past few weeks, it’s been near impossible to avoid talk of The Substance, the best-known example of the “feminist body horror” revival which also includes Nightbitch and Shell. From tales of Demi Moore’s career best performance, to its scathing critique of the beauty industry and society’s attitudes towards ageing women, the internet is awash with (mostly) praise for Coralie Fargeat’s second feature.
The film stars Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle, an Oscar-winning actress who turns 50 and is promptly fired from her TV aerobics instructor gig. Desperate, she signs up for blackmarket injections that create Sue: a younger version of her that she can live as for one week at a time, before switching back for the next seven days. But, predictably enough, like the Icarus of injectable beauty, this life of gorgeousness ultimately becomes too tempting and she slays too close to the sun. Sue can’t resist misusing the drug and stealing extra time – leading to a particularly gruesome downfall.
The obvious analogy for “the substance” is botox, as an anti-aging injectable. Which is the reading that I’m sure the botox-using portion of the audience will take away from it. Other audience members might read it as filler. Others still might read it as Ozempic. I think all of these are valid readings. But an injectable that brings to life a gorgeous version of you that you are happier with is extremely familiar for trans people.
Transing “the substance”
While it’s not approved in the UK, injectable oestrogen is prescribed all over the world and testosterone treatments are also predominantly administered via injections. So, watching The Substance as a trans person you immediately recognise the joy of looking in the mirror and having changed your body in a way that makes you happier. When Elisabeth inhabits her old body for a week and then reverts to her younger counterpart, Sue, you recognise the familiar swing from the debilitating self-doubt of dysphoria, to the confidence and joy of finally feeling good in your body.
Tangentially, there’s almost a very direct parallel with having an inconsistent supply of hormones. There is such euphoria in noticing the subtle changes hormones cause but equally – if you can’t access them for whatever reason – there’s a corresponding agony that comes from watching those changes slowly reverse, one that the film captures brilliantly in Elisabeth’s depression sequences. There’s even a surgical analogy – when Elisabeth wakes up stitched back together having just literally given birth to herself, I’m sure plenty of trans people would relate to the process of rebirth and self-actualisation through surgery.
And finally, before we move on to the problems with all of this, Sue, ultimately kills Elisabeth. The part of her that is bold, confident and thriving kills the part of her that is depressed, doubting and, by that point, decrepit. It feels like such a deliberate analogy for transition – choosing the life that makes you happy, not the one that makes you miserable. To be clear, this is a very trans narrative, one that fits with the heritage of trans-coded body horror (think: Videodrome), and one that I would love to love.
The abjection of Monstro Eliasue
But within this trans reading, how should we react to the eventual monsterification and subsequent murder-by-public-opinion of Elisabeth and Sue Sparkle?
To recap: by misusing the substance, Sue precipitates the physical deterioration of Elisabeth and eventually births the grotesque “Monstro Eliasue”. Even in monster form, this diva is still dedicated to the grind – despite her radically altered body, she turns up to host a live New Year’s Eve special. But, after removing an improvised Elisabeth Sparkle mask and revealing her true form, she’s literally torn apart by the audience.
For the director, Monstro Elisasue represents Elisabeth’s final moment of freedom. “Finally, it’s the moment where she’s free from her human body and appearance,” Fargeat has said. “She doesn’t have to care what people are going to think.” But I’m not so convinced. If she’s so free from what people think, why does she glue a picture of her old face to her new monstrous face? This does not feel like a proud moment of finally inhabiting one’s body. And if it is, what’s the moral of that story? That proudly presenting to the world as you are will inspire such a violent reaction that an angry mob will scream “kill the monster” at you?
Well, perhaps there is an unfortunate nugget of truth to that. We might be able to see this scene as a representation of how society views people, including trans people, who they perceive to have had “too much work done”. The audience’s reaction in this scene may represent a society that is needlessly violent towards bodies it perceives as monstrous. But we look to cinema to tell us something interesting, to hold a mirror. Suggesting that society violently hates women (both cis and trans) who undergo cosmetic procedures is hardly groundbreaking. Just bring up Madonna in front of a group of non-gays and that much will be screamingly obvious.
There’s also the fact that many critics have mentioned that these scenes make use of “hagsploitation”, a recurring horror trope where an older woman’s visceral corporeality is used to stoke up shock and repulsion. But does the film really subvert this trend? Instead, it feels like it just projects this trope onto people who “go too far” in their attempts to take control of their bodies. The major problem is that Monstro Elisasue isn’t just hideous – she’s presented as abject and subhuman, all flesh and no soul. As she lurches down an empty corridor and stands heaving for breath on stage, the shock value is achieved but her humanity is lost.
What happened to Monstro Eliasue’s soul?
Making the representative for women who take aesthetic control of their bodies into an R-rated Fooglie that vomits a boob from her face-vagina (yes, you read that right) erases any sympathy or understanding we might have for the pressures Elisabeth/Sue was under. We are left with only the deep discomfort of watching a character many of us identify with being abused and murdered. What’s perhaps most painful is that it’s a unanimous assault: no one defends her, no one.
Surely we want something to counter that. Surely we want an ending for Monstro Elisasue that isn’t bleak, grim and morbid, one where society’s condemnation doesn’t lead to her violent death. Maybe she becomes a reclusive filmmaker lauded for her portrayal of strong women who make their own decisions about their bodies while retaining their personhood? And in doing so becomes appreciated for her mind, artistic output and her comment on society?
Just a thought.
