OSCARS WATCH 2025 – The Substance: Youth, Body, Women, Success (Part One)
/This post is part of a series of critical responses to the films nominated for Best Picture at the 97th Academy Awards.
The Substance posters (IMDB). Left: white capital letters against a black background. “Have you ever dreamt a better version of yourself?”
The Substance posters (IMDB). Right: a woman with back stitches is lying down on her side in a white bathroom. In capital letters, “Absolutely f***ing insane”.
In this in-conversation piece, Do Own (Donna) Kim, Utsav Gandhi, and Gabrielle Roitman exchange critical, intercultural, and personal readings of The Substance (2024). After briefly introducing the film, Donna opens the conversation with the “love yourself :(“ South Korean (henceforth Korean) Internet meme. Then, Gabrielle and Utsav expand on her reading by exploring other connections, from American pop culture to immigrant experiences and queer bodies. “Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself? Younger. More beautiful. More perfect….The one and only thing not to forget: you are one. You can’t escape from yourself.” (excerpt from “The Substance” product introduction video) Is “love yourself” the solution? Can we? How? We welcome you to join our conversation.
Donna:
The Substance (2024), written and directed by Coralie Fargeat, centers on a 50-year-old fading star Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) and her “better version” Sue (Margaret Qualley)—her “younger, more beautiful, more perfect” self unlocked by the black market drug, “The Substance” (but “not to forget: [Elisabeth/Sue] are one [and she] can’t escape from [her]self”). Despite being an R-rated, less mainstream “body horror” genre film, The Substance has been a global critical and commercial success. Accolades include wins and nominations for various prestigious awards, such as Cannes Film Festival (Best Screenplay), Golden Globes (Best Performance – Musical or Comedy; Moore’s first major acting award in her 45-year career), and the upcoming Oscars (5 nominations). In Korea, it has been touted as one of the most successful foreign indie·art films in the past year. According to the Korean Film Council, it is approaching 500,000 audiences (February 19, 2025). This ranks it within the top 30 most popular foreign indie·art films in the country’s history, which is an impressive feat as the list also includes major films like Avatar (2009) and Titanic (1997).
VIDEO: The Substance official trailer (YouTube).
When thinking about The Substance and its reception, my mind keeps returning to the “love yourself :(“ meme. It can look something like this: “OMG embrace your natural beauty😭 Love yourself❤️🙏”. This is a comment-based meme you can easily find on the Korean Internet, often coupled with sarcastic statements about plastic surgery, skin tone, or body shape written in an intentionally English-to-Korean translation-like tone. It parodies the common “love yourself” type of foreigner reactions to Korea’s beauty cultures, particularly toward Korean women. Globally, Korea is known as one of the plastic surgery capitals in the world, if not the capital (cf., National Evidence-based Healthcare Collaborating Agency (2014); International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (2023)). Korean skincare and makeup, characterized by their naturalistically youthful, “dewy” aesthetics, have even gained their own name: K-beauty. A rising local and tourist attraction is “personal color analysis” image consulting, where you can get expert evaluation of the colors that best boost your appearance and some matching style recommendations. Perhaps it is to no one’s surprise that a country with such a thriving beauty industry suffers from lookist cultural norms, particularly harsher toward women (or heaven forbid, older(-looking) women (!)). As a Korean woman myself, I can unfortunately speak from experience. I recall being twelve or so when I shamefully dropped my head to look down at my no-kids-size-fit-me-anymore chubby belly and legs upon a friend’s perhaps innocuous “Why are you wearing ajumma pants?” Ajumma in Korean translates to middle-aged or married women, and I was literally wearing my mom’s pants—a perfectly fine light bluish-grey pair, normally worn by the coolest person I know on the earth. Yet, I was deeply ashamed. Ajumma did not simply mean a middle-aged married woman, which my mom technically was. What I heard was that I looked uncool, outdated, unappealing, unfeminine, uncouth, and all other things associated with the “unattractive older women” stereotype.
A little twist here is that while this exchange was in Korean, it did not happen in Korea. This was in Canada, and my friend was a Korean Canadian gyopo who spoke English more fluently than Korean, if I remember correctly. Despite the country’s infamy, Koreans in Korea are not the only people who suffer from such gendered, ageist norms: the above-linked report by the “International” Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery indeed reported internationally, and K-beauty is a term that helps make certain goods, services, and content appealing to the overseas consumers, to whom an image consulting Korean tour package may also seem alluring. The intersection of age and gender has been studied in various global media and communication contexts. Maria Edström’s 2018 study of the Swedish media buzz across three decades (1994, 2004, 2014) found that older women are still particularly invisible. Even in the “executive” category where older people were relatively more represented, women still appeared younger than men (not to mention that the category itself generally followed hegemonic masculinity aesthetics). In the “beauty” category, 90% of the persons were women and none were over 60, and youth was depicted as an essential quality. Annenberg Inclusion Initiative’s study (Smith et al., 2024) of a total of 1,700 top-grossing films in North America from 2007 to 2023 also found a persisting comparative lack of adult (over 40) women to men on screen (1 to 3). The study specified the limited role-wise opportunities for older women. Films with female-identified leads and co-leads over 45 years old amounted to a mere 4.8%, and 1.2% when only counting women of color over 45 (cf., girls & women: 31.2%; girls & women of color: 7.2%). Moreover, women tended to appear more in a caregiving role than men (46.7% versus 38.6%). Behind-the-scene composition is part of this picture: women made up only 6.5% out of 1,900 directors, 13% out of 4,930 writers, and 22.1% out of 17,446 producers. These studies not only show the global pervasiveness of the gendered, ageist pressure but also help us understand the interconnection between what we see, what we come to expect, and how opportunities and imaginations get confined.
Elisabeth and Sue (IMDB). Up: Elisabeth is blowing a kiss in her show “Sparkle Your Life”. Down: Sue is making the same pose in her replacement show “Pump it Up”.
My mind returns to the “love yourself :(“ meme because The Substance, including its success, shares the collective sarcastic exasperation expressed by the meme. Its satire suggests that the tropey urges to simply love oneself are patronizing, unhelpful, and even harmful on several levels, which can be boiled down to “you just don’t know how it is.” On one hand, it points out how accompanying exotifying misdescriptions (e.g., “I heard everyone must get work done there”) and prejudiced misunderstandings (e.g., “they just don’t want to look Korean”) hijack the phenomenon from Koreans’ everyday experiences. The suggested antidote—i.e., love yourself—additionally simplifies the complex cultural processes into a simple single-issue matter of looks that can be resolved with an individual-level positive outlook. On the other, the intercultural “mirrorings” of other countries’ beauty standards (e.g., curves, tan) call attention to the ironic transnational presence and deep-rootedness of similarly operating norms. That is, the urges to “love yourself” in the absence of a concerted critical societal interrogation of “can” and “how” may only serve as exacerbating dismissals. The situation is infuriating because it’s not just about looks (but it kind of is too), and it’s not just about the individual and what they can do about themself (but it kind of seems to be). It is maddening because what stands between the person and loving themself is not just knowing, but being able to survive existing as their loving self. ‘What in the world (and where) are we supposed to do?!’
Similarly, The Substance lets out a comically deep sigh. The horrendous story of Elisabeth Sparkle’s self-abuse and fall revolves around her body(ies). Thus, as the “love yourself :(“ trope goes, it may seem that much of it could have been prevented with some good old realization and self-acceptance, especially as the film takes progressively absurdist, “absolutely f***ing insane” (poster caption) turns. However, like how the mesmerizing glittery snowglobe reminds Elisabeth, The Substance’s transfixing spectacles constantly prod us with the not-so-simple question: what made Elisabeth sparkle—or perhaps what made “Elisabeth Sparkle”? According to Fred, a high school acquaintance she ran into, Elisabeth has “not changed a bit” and is “still the most beautiful girl in the whole wide world.” We don’t get to know what this means. We only get to know Elisabeth Sparkle as a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. We learn about Elisabeth’s talents and hard work: her beauty, her fitness, her charisma, her wit, her knowledge, her drive, and her life-long regimen.
Sue’s immediate rise only further proves that Elisabeth’s stardom was from who she has been. She is a seasoned accomplice. She expertly wields Sue’s drop-dead gorgeousness, including through her “innocent” and lovely big smiles despite her disgust toward White Men in Power™, personified through the evidently disgusting television executive “Harvey” and his various extensions (e.g., younger male casting directors) and iterations (e.g., fellow Old White Men in Suit caricatures) (further readings: Andreasen (2022); Durham (2021)). As Sue, she makes perfect-for-late-night-show saucy remarks to distance herself from “old” Elisabeth’s irrelevance, associating Elisabeth with Sue’s mom’s—older women’s—generation. We learn about the “love” that has surrounded Elisabeth. She currently lives alone in a big, expensive penthouse, and seemingly has no close personal relationships. Other than the hired cleaner who remains obscured in the background, we do not see anyone in pre-Substance Elisabeth’s apartment. After getting fired on her 50th birthday, she drinks angrily at an exquisite bar, elegantly dressed but alone. We subsequently see her throwing up and struggling from a hangover by herself at her home. The only posts Elizabeth seems to have received since her forced retirement are a generic rose bouquet with a generic note from her former job (the exact kind she receives later as Sue before Sue’s big break/Elisabeth’s true grand retirement), bills, and food delivery fliers (sushi of course). As Sue, she gets visitors: invited lovers (the first leaves a cute sticky note message in her apartment) and an uninvited admirer who covet and seek her, whose tenderness quickly switches to disregard, hostility, and even fear at non-Sue-bodied Elisabeth. The contrasting treatment she experiences at her job similarly depicts the love that had surrounded her in her professional life, culminating in the “tunnel vision” scene toward the end. Now monstrously merged, all “Elisasue” sees through the single eyehole of her mask are the flashes of an adoring crowd cheering her as she walks down the long hallway toward her final stage: “There she is, so beautiful!” “We love you!”
Elisabeth is more than her looks, but it had been presumably what enabled Elisabeth to sparkle/be Sparkle in her daily and professional life. If we can guess from watching the movie, she knows this even better from living and building her life as Elisabeth. ‘What in the world (and where) is she supposed to do now?!’ We must witness all the absurdity, discomfort, and pain. We are also to witness the youthful glow of Sue. Both the gore and beauty shots are prolonged and descriptive. They resist cleaner, faster outcome-oriented retelling of Elizabeth’s achievements and abuse and ground her story in the texture and rhythm of her everyday life—the details that cumulated to experiences and then to life, the moments that she had to (re)live in their time. This invites the audiences to fill in the jumps, gaps, and inclarities in the movie with the details and moments they have lived, and fill in those in their own narratives with Elizabeth’s life. A powerful example would be the scene where Elizabeth does and re-does her styling while preparing for her date with Fred, who probably would have been struck by her in any look. I remember being physically frozen for a moment at her first bathroom mirror reflection. I found her and her styling to be so breathtakingly beautiful. I loved the satisfied little smile that she had. She is just about to leave but sees the giant billboard sign of Sue across her window. She hurries back to the bathroom. She applies more makeup and fixes her hair. She is now running out of time but is unable to leave, haunted by Sue. Each time she returns, she covers herself with more products and items, and each time, she sparkles less. I got sad because I caught myself thinking “she looks older now,” a thought that I have hurled at myself in front of mirrors before. She ends up smearing her red makeup all over her face as she cries and angrily tries to erase her face. She messes up her hair. She stays at home.
Elisabeth’s date preparation scene (YouTube). Elisabeth looks unhappily at her mirror reflection.
The Substance’s increasing absurdity reflects the baffling complexity of our collective exasperation. As the film reminds us, we “are one” and we “can’t escape from [our]self”. Elisabeth becomes a witch, an attempted self-murder, and a monster. According to Cohen’s (1996) seven monster theses, monsters ask us why we have created them. ‘What in the world are we supposed to do to survive existing as our loving selves?’ The bloody metal concert-esque ending scene to Anna von Hausswolff’s “Ugly and Vengeful” felt like a good cathartic scream. All, not just Elisabeth, are now smeared and drenched in red. The audiences—both the characters and us (see “mirroring-effect” in art-horror (Carroll, 1990))—cannot just selectively gaze on their own accord, but must now witness every detail and moment of the disfigured, entwined, and regenerating “beautiful creation” “that had been shaped for success” (Harvey’s quote). The Substance does not answer the question for Elisabeth. Once her New Year’s Eve show is over, she gets further deformed as she grunts and staggers to her star on the Walk of Fame, eventually drying up without a speck of dust left behind. Truly, “how-to” is a complex societal challenge. Consider my anecdote: What does loving yourself look like for an otherwise happy and confident twelve-year-old who, according to the limiting common retail sizes, only has a single pair of apparently “ajumma” pants that she can fit into? How should she navigate her loving relationship with herself and her mom (the actual owner of the pants who technically is a middle-aged married woman) from this incredible social threat, especially now with her already ajumma-associated socio-physical self?
What is comically exasperating is that somehow the key may be in loving yourself. In Korean female comedian Kang Yumi’s (who has been fan-nicknamed “cultural anthropologist” for her sharp social commentaries) The Substance-inspired absurdist parody of Korea’s gendered ageism Yumistance, just-turned-42—43 in Korean age—“ajumma” Yumi repeats returning to even younger versions of herself only to discover that she has forever been mandated to “jagi gwanli” (manage the self) to stay competitive as an already “too old” aging woman. She abuses the substance (here a high-end beef gogi gift set for New Year’s that sponsored her YouTube video, so she simply grills and eats the sponsored meat over and over again) until she becomes unborn: she finally escapes, but by disappearing from the world! Yumi wakes up from the nightmare and learns that the gogi gift set left at her doorstep is from her mom to make sure her daughter is eating well. Yumi narrates as she grills the gogi: “Whatever the matter, mindset is the most important thing. It is natural for people to age. If one cannot accept it, whatever the age, happiness remains practically the same [gogiseo gogi, a wordplay on geogiseo geogi (literal: “from there to there”; idiomatic: “it’s about the same”) that literally translates to “from meat to meat”]. Please let me age healthily.” Loving yourself is possible and powerful. But we cannot do so whichever “meat suit” we embody if it gets subsumed under the myriad means to competitively jagi gwanli. We must be let age and live healthily. Monstrous concerts can help the inner screams become unignorable chants.
Yumistance (YouTube). Yumi unhappily stares at her bedroom mirror reflection.
Stay tuned for Part Two.
Biographies
Do Own (Donna) Kim is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago's Department of Communication. Donna studies everyday, playful digital cultures and mediated social interactions. She is particularly interested in norms, hybridity, and what being human/artificial means in emerging technological contexts. She has written about topics like video games, virtual influencers, mobile technologies, and Korean digital feminism. Her work can be found in journals such as New Media &Society, Communication Monographs, International Journal of Communication, Lateral, and Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction. Donna received her Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. You can find her on doowndonnakim.com or @doowndonnakim.bsky.social.
Gabrielle Roitman is a second year master’s student in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois Chicago, where she studies social media, culture, and identity. She is interested in the intersection of the emerging influencer industry with more established creative industries such as film and the performing arts. You can follow her at @gtroitman.bsky.social
Utsav Gandhi is a first-year Ph.D. student in Communications and Media Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago, where he is broadly interested in business models and regulation of social media, news media, and generative AI. Originally from Mumbai, India, Gandhi was previously a pre-doctoral Research Professional at the University of Chicago’s Stigler Center. You can follow him on the Fediverse at @utsavpgandhi.bsky.social or on Letterboxd at utsavpg (for his amateur movie reviews and activity).
