THE SUBSTANCE, THE SURREAL POLITICS OF BEAUTY
Cinema Writer/Film Critic Efe TEKSOY; horror, science fiction and drama film “THE SUBSTANCE”, for America’s Los Angeles-based Internet Newspaper @alaturkanews.
THE AGE OF BEAUTY
The Substance, which had its world premiere in the main competition of the 77th Cannes Film Festival on May 19, 2024, where it won the Best Screenplay award, is a satirical body horror film written and directed by Coralie Fargeat. Coralie Fargeat, who wrote her script on feminist themes, took her main inspiration from Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. In addition, we see that she was inspired by Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The Substance movie follows in the footsteps of J. G. Ballard, one of the most important representatives of the “New Wave” movement in literature, which opposes the worship of technology, and David Cronenberg, who is known as the maestro of the “Body-Horror” genre in cinema. It brings to the screen how today’s modern scientific technology can activate the psychopathology that lies within ourselves and the terrible relationship between the body and the perception of beauty, with a political metaphor under the name of human exploitation. The production, in which grotesque, violence and brutality elements come to the fore, adopts a critical attitude towards the cruel and glittering world of the age. In addition to touching on striking extremes about sexual roles and identities, it also brings the social and personal relationships of the 21st century to the big screen in an ironic language and creates its own genre, following in the footsteps of body-horror genre directors. For this reason, it is worth saying that it does not appeal to every audience.
Stars; Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Hugo Diego Garcia, Oscar Lesage, Alexandra Papoulias Barton and Christian Erickson.
ETHICS OF HAPPINESS
The movie The Substance paradoxically shows us that consumption and entertainment patterns can reach frightening and terrifying levels. So much so that it conveys to us the message that the form of beauty can go beyond aesthetic patterns and have devastating effects on the female body. The Substance is a production that criticizes the social pressure on the female body with feminist narrative elements. French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, a feminist thinker, makes a scientific examination of the oppression of women in her 1949 work titled ‘The Second Sex’ (Le Deuxième Sexe), in which she laid the foundations of modern feminism. She re-reads contemporary ideas such as existentialism, phenomenology, and structural anthropology, as well as philosophical classics such as Hegel and Marx, on the gender plane.
COMMODIFICATION OF BEAUTY
Beauvoir; “We can understand how the hierarchy between the sexes is established only by reconsidering the data of prehistory and ethnography in the light of existential philosophy.” The philosopher added: “Because humanity questions itself in its existence, that is, because it prefers the reasons for living to life itself, the man has put himself as the master in front of the woman; The man’s plan is not to repeat himself over time, but to dominate the moment and establish the future.” She emphasizes that man’s activity prevails over the blurred forces of life and enslaves women. In the film, we see the effects that philosopher Simone de Beauvoir mentioned in her book, through the characters of Elisabeth Sparkle-Sue.
BEHIND THE SCENES
While the film gives social messages, it also makes many references to popular culture and cinema history.
-Elisabeth Sparkle’s character giving an aerobics class was inspired by Oscar-winning legendary actress Jane Fonda’s transition from being a successful actress to her second career starring in exercise tapes called “Jane Fonda’s Workout”.
-The large panoramic window symbolizing Elisabeth’s past and later Sue’s rebirth and future was created by choosing a Rosco SoftDrop backdrop that evokes a Hitchcockian quality.
-The Monster Elisabeth scene was inspired by French sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle and David Cronenberg’s The Fly.
-Elisabeth’s bathroom, secret room and also corridor scenes were inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s films The Shining (1980) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
EFE TEKSOY
REFERENCES AND SOURCES
BEAUVOIR, Simone de, The Secon Sex (İkinci Cinsiyet), Gülnur Acar Savran, translate, Koc Universitesi Yayinlari press, 2016