OSCARS WATCH 2025 – The Substance: Youth, Body, Women, Success (Part Two)
/This post is part of a series of critical responses to the films nominated for Best Picture at the 97th Academy Awards.
In this in-conversation piece, Do Own (Donna) Kim, Utsav Gandhi, and Gabrielle Roitman exchange critical, intercultural, and personal readings of The Substance (2024). In Part One, Donna opens the conversation with the “love yourself :(“ South Korean (henceforth Korean) Internet meme. In Part Two, 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:
What do you think? Is “love yourself” the solution? (Can we? How?) I’m curious about what came to your mind while watching The Substance.
Gabrielle:
Generations of Americans have come into contact with the “This is your brain on drugs” PSA. The Substance’s opening and continual return to a similar shot of an egg invokes this cultural staple. The 2024 film suggests, ‘this is your brain on internalized misogyny’ in the form of the literal drug that Demi Moore’s Elisabeth takes, known in the movie as The Substance.
“This is your brain on drugs” (Up: NYTimes; Down: @trythesubstance Instagram). The Substance’s egg imagery invokes the cultural staple.
The Substance is now a Best Picture Academy Award-nominated, campy, patriarchy-addressing film, like Barbie before it in 2023. Notably, both films take place in different but highly satirized Hollywoods and employ strong visual references and practical effects that celebrate the medium of film. Importantly, though, American audiences have generally interpreted both movies as if they are meant to encapsulate womanhood.
By this standard, these movies, which address issues related to feminist ideas, will inevitably fail. Womanhood is vast and varied and obviously cannot be summarized in a tight 2 hours. However, the team behind Barbie never set out to define womanhood. That movie, in an interesting turn of phrase, is self-aware. The Substance is, too.
With reproductive rights on the line in a way they have not been since 1973 and politicians overly interested in policing the boundaries of womanhood, it can feel like media (more broadly) have a job to perform, to provide guidance for living in patriarchy. I wonder, though, if it’s fair to expect a simple how-to guide from cultural products that have taken years of work and luck to get to the point where we can consume them on our variously sized screens.
The Substance can be boiled down to its commentary on beauty standards and how they harm our selves. Critiques of the movie often put forward that it did not do enough. Enough of what? Enough for advancing feminism in the mid-2020s? And in our current political moment, I understand the urge to want more, but a movie is not a leader. It cannot change anything about our political wellbeing in and of itself.
“And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault” (America Ferrera’s monologue in Barbie), gif from Tumblr
I return again to Barbie – a doll, like a movie, is an inanimate object; it can take on feminist and misogynistic projections, but it can never take action. Because it is not a living participant in our society. But people are.
In the pivotal bathroom mirror makeup scene, when it becomes clear Elisabeth will spiral inwards toward her demise, she becomes paralyzed by the threat of perfection. The clever visual cue of the devil on her shoulder in the form of Sue’s billboard looms large as a reminder that there will always be something better. Elisabeth covers up more and more each time she goes outside and continues to keep herself stuck in her apartment. She gives up her willingness to interact with the world because she believes she is no longer perfect and consumable.
When a movie centers on a female experience, is it nothing but a vessel to spoonfeed The Audience a lesson? The Substance provides metaphors depicting “your brain on internalized misogyny,” but is it perfect? Does it need to be?
Elisabeth Sparkle’s Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (official Instagram).
Utsav:
I’m generally interested in why audiences place this burden of expectations and interpretations on what is ultimately just a two-hour trip to the movies. There may be some complex structural factors at play here of where we see and identify role models in society. Or perhaps it is the long-standing chokehold that the film industry has on audiences as an audio-visual medium with broad exposure and inroads into society (especially with the rise of streaming platforms and the ubiquity of short-form movie clips on YouTube and social media).
“This Barbie has a Nobel Prize in physics” (official website).
However, there is also a thread here about how movies are marketed. The case of Barbie is more understandable – a first-time major motion picture based on what is well-ingrained intellectual property, popular movie stars/director combo, a blitzkrieg marketing campaign promoting a variety of “unique” Barbies (such as physicist Barbie), and of course the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon that ultimately helped both films. I wonder if there was anything similar in the marketing for The Substance that may have set up these expectations and interpretations from the public. What do you think, Gabrielle?
Gabrielle:
Like you said, there are definitely societal factors at play with the reverence we give movies and how we think about their impact to change culture. With fear stemming from failures in political leadership, many people are also looking for someone/thing to show the way forward or to scapegoat what’s gone wrong so we can wise up and avoid these pitfalls in our continued fight. The marketing side also surely plays a role in how much time we think about these films. When we’re continually exposed to hyperbole either from marketing campaigns or from social media posts that gain traction, it can build expectations about how life-changing a movie will really be.
Interestingly, some of the critiques I’ve read of The Substance bemoan its lack of tackling social media’s role in our struggles with self-loathing and beauty standards. I did not have this issue. Elisabeth’s purchasing of The Substance from a faceless entity and the packaging it arrived in felt eerily similar to TikTok Shop ads promising products that will change your life. Additionally, the movie hones in on the specificity of self-loathing as it exists in our own heads and bodies. When we buy products that will supposedly smooth our skin or cut bloating, we’re dreaming of a better, upgraded self, with our flaws fixed.
A movie cannot address all of our thoughts and feelings about body image, patriarchy, what it is to be a woman. I think it’s reductive to think that all of that could be addressed in one movie. What it can do is capture a snapshot of a cultural phenomenon. The reaction to these so-called “flashy feminist” movies in a way demonstrates an argument they try to make. The Substance as a drug does not effect a change that “fixes” anything for Elisabeth, but it reflects the culture in which she exists.
Utsav:
Yes, super insightful thoughts! I agree that I also did not have an issue about the lack of social media’s role. I attributed that to the movie not having a timestamp for when it is based–it is pretty timeless in that sense. The New Year's Eve production at the end actually makes it seem like it could be the 1970s! On that final note, the production also reminded me of another subtly feminist movie I watched recently, also set in the showbiz of 1970s Los Angeles, Anna Kendrick’s Woman of the Hour (on Netflix). No reverse aging or bold pink feminism in that one, but gritty, real-life psychological horror about patriarchal violence – except that it flips the usual narrative by focusing on the women, not on the perpetrator.
“It changed my life” (official Instagram).
Donna:
Living through our bodies is a shared yet differently experienced pan-human phenomenon (see Kim (2025) on gay bodily experiences in Seoul, Korea). What can be some other ways to read Elisabeth and Sue’s relationship?
Utsav:
“She left. I’m the new tenant.”
Think of an immigrant’s journey over time. We leave a place behind and enter a new one, slowly attempting to redefine home and understand our position in our new environment. Even if some immigrants might materially leave everything behind, much colloquial (sometimes literal) “baggage” gets moved across. However, possessions aren’t the only items in flux as this journey continues. So are various aspects of identity. In the 1950s, linguist Einar Haugen coined the term “code-switch” to describe people’s propensity to transition between languages, accents, and self-presentation in the face of changing societal norms and expectations. These expectations can vary across contexts, but as an immigrant I have felt them more strongly while navigating everyday conversations or attempting to make acquaintances in my new country. I, too, have engaged in a fair bit of code-switching over my fifteen years of being an immigrant, such as “rolling my R’s” or “enunciating my V’s and my W’s” whilst speaking to Americans. However, I have always seen my code-switching as an exercise in assimilation – not in replacement or substitution. I think it bears repeating, especially in today’s politically fraught times and populist uprising against immigrants, that I have never heard an immigrant talk about “replacing” someone by taking over their spot at a place of work or residence, even if they attempt to blend in. On the contrary, in The Substance, Sue is brazen about being “the new tenant” after replacing Elisabeth.
Sue announces that Elisabeth has left (TikTok).
There are other allegories between the immigrant experience and Elisabeth/Sue’s story in the movie. When Elisabeth tries to control and wrestle back access she has left to The Substance as a function of how much extra is being consumed by Sue, Elisabeth gets told on the phone, “What has been used on one side is lost on the other. There is no going back.” There is a clear parallel here to immigrants losing time due to leaving their community or loved ones behind for a new home. What is also “lost” are the immigrant’s talents, successes, growth, and individual development, which are in limited supply and can’t be used to service their previous community (or the idea popularly known as “brain drain.”) Time is relentless, and choices and decisions can seem irreversible – in economic terms, I also conceptualize them as “sunk cost.”
“There is no "she" and "you." You both are one,” both Sue and Elisabeth get told at different times as they try to extricate themselves from their alter-egos. Again, this feels like a parallel with an immigrant's changing sense of self and identity. Immigrants contain multitudes, but they are also, in many ways, blends of their old and new selves. As the movie’s tagline says: “You can’t escape from yourself.”
Elisabeth becomes Sue for the first time (Official Instagram).
Apart from the feminist, neoliberal, and immigrant lenses discussed above, the movie has also been described in detail as an allegory for queer and transgender experience – writer Emily Cameron in Gay Times points out that “an injectable that brings to life a gorgeous version of you that you are happier with is extremely familiar for trans people.”
Gabrielle:
Could you speak more about the ideas surrounding time as a finite resource when moving between places? It is interesting that many people will only know the “you” where you are from and others the “you” where you are now. Internally, though, you have to contend with both “yous.” Do you think this will always exist as some form of loss? Or is there an inner peace regarding this double existence for immigrants that Elisabeth/Sue was never able to exemplify?
Utsav:
Yes, of course. That is actually a deeply moving and poignant question; thank you. The inner peace feels more like a decision, not a “given.” You must move beyond the “grass is greener on the other side” mentality and be at peace with where you are, the product of choices within and outside your control. You’re right: Elisabeth/Sue couldn’t exemplify that what they were going through was directly a product of their own decisions. They even seemed to have lost track of their larger goal (to maintain fame and adulation with their audience and fanbase). Instead, they got swept into a vicious circle of immediate gameswomanship – or trying to rescue themselves from their alter egos. They never seemed to simultaneously contend with their “yous,” perhaps because they were two entirely different physical bodies.
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).
