- Speaker #0
On this episode of Obsessions, Daria Protopopova takes us on a journey through cinema and self-discovery as she explores The Substance, a haunting, thought-provoking 2024 film by Coralie Farja, starring Demi Moore that has sparked conversations about beauty, aging, self-love, and the impossible standards women face. Daria is a writer and researcher specializing in British modernism, with particular focus on Virginia Woolf. She's the author of The Calavera, a collection of short stories in Russian that focuses on the experiences of migrant women in London and is said to be published in English soon. Daria is the founder of London Group of Multilingual Writers, an anti-war organization that supports refugee and migrant writers based in the UK and around the world. In her exploration of the substance, Daria connects themes of identity and societal pressure across generations and cultures. From Hollywood's obsession with perfection to post-Soviet ideals of femininity, and even creates parallels to classics like The Picture of Dorian Gray and Sex in the City. This is Daria's obsession. Let's begin.
- Speaker #1
This is The Substance.
- Speaker #2
This film has moved me so much and so much more than any other film that I've seen lately. The more I started thinking about it, the more I kind of got overwhelmed by the genius behind it.
- Speaker #1
Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself? Younger, more beautiful, more... perfect?
- Speaker #2
My perspective on this film is I'm a 42 year old woman born in the former USSR in 1982. I was born in Moscow but I've been living in the UK for the past 20 years. I have seemingly nothing in common with the problems described in the film. This movie is about a media personality whose entire life revolved around looking perfect on screen. and being available for filming at any time. She clearly focused just on her career, so she didn't even have time for family, friends, creating a family, starting a family. So the goal was not to be with her loved ones for Christmas. The goal for the main character, Elizabeth Sparkle, played by Demi Moore, was to be on primetime TV. That usually is precisely the time for ordinary people to... be sitting around the dinner table with friends and family. However, if you ignore the profession of Elizabeth and focus on the basics, her story is relevant to women, to all women around the world, from any culture or time period. Because the film is not just about this media personality. This film is about, largely, how women feel about themselves and how we're still being judged. based on our looks. They continue to be seen relevant even by themselves to life based on their fertility age. You will argue that, oh, fertility, what does this have to do with it? No one in the Western world is pressurized to have children anymore. But it's something about simple biology and how it controls our brains. Even if the woman is not planning to have children or her sexual partner is not interested in having kids, somehow around our mind, there is still a question, is she still fertile? In my opinion, if we are really honest with each other, it's both at the back of a woman's mind and at the back of a man's mind. It is far more exciting to have sex with a woman who can potentially get pregnant, isn't it? Okay, fertility aside, the film is definitely about the looks and how to come to terms with seeing yourself in the mirror, aging, with more and more wrinkles and more and more gray hair. People always ask for something new. It's inevitable. At 50, well, it stops. I got my first gray hair at 36. I still remember seeing it and thinking... This is the end. I can see death now. This is not the case of Demi Moore's character. Grey hair can be coloured in her industry, or even the wrinkles can be delayed or smoothed over. But that's where the film is genius, in my opinion. It raises so many questions. Okay, so when should you start getting worried about grey hair? Never? Or maybe when you fall in love, I don't know, and you want to impress somebody? You want to look your best self and best inevitably involves younger. If you think about choosing flowers, you would always go for fresher ones, even though sometimes a wilted rose looks beautiful. I'm more mysterious, you know what I'm saying. So the question is, when should you start getting worried about gray hair? How far should you go in order to delay wrinkles, for example? Is it enough to cover them with makeup or do you want to see yourself young? Like 20 years old young when you're standing in the bathroom naked without any makeup at the age of 50 plus, 60 plus, 70 plus. And who does... Respect to Demi Moore, she looks amazing in that naked bathroom scene. But that is also where the depth of the film is. The pressure of the standards created by the media and the pressure we put on ourselves results in the traumatic state of mind when even looking amazing like Demi Moore is not enough. Nothing will ever be enough unless we love ourselves. Yes, it is a cliche. But the most important rules in life usually are cliches. Love yourself and love others like you love yourself. Even being a perfect young Sue, Elizabeth's younger self is not enough. As you realize, or at least I thought that, when I saw a drop of blood coming from her nose. This, so to speak, perfect girl is ruined by this tiny drop of blood. She was suddenly not as perfect looking for me during that scene. We don't want to be reminded of her bodily fluids. This blood coming from her nose reminds us that she's human like the rest of us and that even she can get sick and even she will age and so the cycle will have to repeat itself, just like it happens in the film with the faces popping up. in a frenzy on that creature spewing blood at the end of the movie. In order to be perfect you need to be dead. A dead plastic doll preserved in a vacuum. Because even plastic can age and get yellow and old. So even being plastic is not enough. You need to be preserved sort of outside time, outside natural elements in a vacuum. Then you will stay perfect. No matter what the substance is, if you are still on this planet, you are subject to changes. So Elizabeth's sacrifices become kind of futile. And we're back to this message that the only non-futile thing is to love yourself and to love people around you. So going back to my post-Soviet perspective on the substance, first of all, I was reminded of the story of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. It was a popular story during the Soviet times because it helped the propaganda machine to show the Soviet audiences how the so-called West was rotting from the inside. Now, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Dorian Gray is largely forgotten. The post-Soviet society is going through all sorts of changes and the Russian government, with the beginning of the war, started a campaign to call women to reproduce. Now, even more pressingly than during the Soviet times, women in Russia are called to take care of their fertility and government discourages women from going to university and having children early instead, having children instead of education. This has little to do with this film, except the film reminded me that looking perfect has become a huge thing for post-Soviet Russian women. Modern Russian viewers, of course, both genders would definitely judge Demi Moore's looks and snatch a chance to sneer at her natural beautiful imperfections. Let's go. I'd like to urge both post-Soviet and international audiences to watch The Substance in combination with two things. One, an old Soviet film, An Office Affair, 1977. In Russian, that Film is called Sloujebnyi Roman. There is a main character, she's 36 and she's the director of some government office and she's not wearing any makeup. No one is pressuring her to have kids. She's not married, but no one is rushing her. For me and I know generations of other post-Soviet people, she still holds this kind of strong woman vibe. A career-oriented woman, not looks-oriented, not children-oriented, just career-oriented. She looks older than a modern 36, and the only pressure she gets is to look just a little bit more gentle, a little bit more feminine, not to wear only dark browns and greys, and to occasionally swap her orthopedic shoes for a playful pair of boots. You will say, you see, here is also pressure on a woman. And where does it stop? But I remember this film when watching a scene from The Substance. Demi Moore meets her old school friend and is getting ready for a date with him. This school friend fell in love with the woman as she was when they were at school together. But Novoseltsev from The Office Affair falls in love with his boss when she's still looking like she does normally without changing anything about herself. So the key is to love a woman the way she wanted to be or the way she found comfortable in her own self. And in An Office Affair, the heroine is kinder to herself than Demi Moore. Maybe partially because her job doesn't depend on her looks. She's a government clerk, essentially. But it is fascinating how many parallels you can find between a 1977 Soviet woman and a Hollywood superstar. The struggles of women are all the same. Same old, same old.
- Speaker #1
You can't escape from yourself.
- Speaker #2
Speaking of old, the Substance made me re-evaluate another story. That has become a classic by now. The HBO series Sex and the City, especially with the sequel. And just like that, where the main characters, it seems all have had the substance. And it's especially in contrast with what the substance is trying to say, in my opinion. How far those actresses are going to go to preserve the looks that we all remember from the 90s. With this in mind, in my opinion, the next big film should be a new film version of the original novel, Sex and the City, by Candice Bushnell. So raw, so down-to-earth, honest, and at the same time loving towards women of all ages. There is a scene in the original Sex and the City novel where Carrie... the real Carrie, not the slicked up, smoothed over Carrie, where the real Carrie is in a hot August New York and she's walking down the street and sees this woman. She suddenly imagines eating this woman. Yes, yes. Literally plunging her teeth into a woman's shoulder and eating her. This is the stuff that comes into our minds sometimes. Yes. Thank you, the substance, for bringing it to the surface and visualizing it on screen. Thank you for teaching us loving ourselves as we are. The substance made me feel better about my aging body and just like that made me question why I didn't get Botox and maybe even plastic surgery. You decide which has a better effect on the female psyche. The good news is that judging by the glorious reception of the substance worldwide, The world in general, and Hollywood in particular, is ready for the honest look at what life for a woman should be about. Loving yourself naked in the bathroom, not plastering yourself with makeup and pottering about on high heels trying to relive those 20-year-old me moments. I asked a friend, a male friend, to give me his ideas on the substance after he had watched it. And his first question was, is the Substance a fairy tale? That's an interesting thing to think about. Sue is a princess, maybe trapped by the civil witch. So visually, yes, Demi Moore's character becomes an old hag. And this is so clever because it's Sue who is doing this to her. We also realize the cleverest bit of this film is that Sue and Elizabeth are the same. I mean, it's obvious, yes, but we keep forgetting, I think, as viewers, that they are the same person, parts of the same personality. And that's the problem.
- Speaker #1
One single injection unlocks your DNA and will release another version of yourself.
- Speaker #2
That's the key of the problem. That's not a story about a good girl and a bad girl. It's a story of one girl torn within herself. So to me, it's not just a fairy tale, but it's a little bit like Victorian horror. like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, an exploration of a split personality. So why do women become split? One part of them is happy, one part of them is sad, and that sad part decides to destroy the happy part. So I was thinking about that, which part of our personality is Elizabeth portraying and which part of our personality is you portraying, or is it just the same personality that doesn't love herself enough? Another question my friend posed was, is the search for celebrity our new essence? Personally, I feel it's on decline. Of course, we still have TV shows and magazines with photographs of celebrities. We still have ceremonies like Oscars, BAFTAs that create celebrities. At the same time, celebrities are being forgotten. I think actually, you're right. more and more filmmakers are opting for unknown actors. And in a way, everyone is a celebrity now. Demi Moore has an Instagram account. I have an Instagram account. You have an Instagram account or some sort of social media account. There you go. So who cares how many followers you have? To me, this film is not so much about celebrity. It's about what the industry does to women in general. The pressure, for example. The way films are made these days, they're with new close-ups and new HD resolution. Women and all the actors are expected to look flawlessly. That's the problem that the substance is addressing. I think it helps us get more comfortable with aging skin on screen, with saggy breast skin, saggy bottom skin, saggy skin on our bellies. I think it was very brave of Demi Moore to put her body there, although she looks perfect, but she starts looking older and older. And just to see that on screen, for me, it was kind of reassuring. It was just, yes, let's put more of that on screen. Women of all ages and respect to those cosmetics companies, for example, who put older women more and more in their advertisement campaigns. I think it helps psychologically all of us. And final question from my friend is to be eternal must you accept to be cracked up? What my friend is talking about is that Hollywood walk star on the pavement that Demi Moore's character gets. That star first it's brand new and shiny but then months and months and years pass and it gets cracked up and people walk on top of it, people spill things on top of it. So the star with cracks that are eternal. In my friend's opinion, that is symbolic. But I disagree with this interpretation of the star on the pavement. For me, it's anything but eternal. All those sacrifices Elizabeth has made and all she gets is a cracked star on the pavement that nobody even looks at. I think eternal is something that outlasts human life on Earth completely. Nothing like fame, money, beauty outlasts the apocalypse. What outlasts the apocalypse for me is love and peace and how much you helped or didn't help people around you. This positive energy that you can bring into the world, your kindness, your passion for things that are outside your comfort zone will be floating in space forever. And that's what I believe. What will be floating in space after Elizabeth, after her career as a fitness star or an actress? Her passion for looking gorgeous with a ton of makeup on? I don't think so. The film for me, it reminds us that, yes, it's important to have a career, but think about what's going to be floating in space after you're gone and the whole planet is gone. What kind of energy have you created throughout your life? Has it been something beautiful? Has it been something fresh, something new, something life-giving or hope-giving or something that made others feel bad about themselves? So lots of questions raised by this film. It's an amazing piece of cinematic art, an amazing script. I recommend this film thoroughly and I hope you will like it as much as I did. People are gonna love that.
