The Lack of Substance...

Did you watch the film The Substance?  Well, I was not prepared for what I got when I watched it.  It did help cement me in top place with my daughter for picking the absolute weirdest films of all time.  I am on the leader board in my family, in fact, I am the only one ranking currently.

I guess I kind of have a knack for selecting the most weird and fucked up films...and men.  Yay me!

Well, if you haven’t seen it and intend to, stop reading, I am going to spoil it for you to some degree.

The film is about an aging star who hates herself and yearns for her younger, more beautiful self.  Longs for the days when everyone loved her, wanted her and sought her out. 

I can relate to this.  It seems hollow and trite but I get it.  There is something really hard about losing your youth and vigor.  It isn’t wrong, it is natural but it is hard to accept nonetheless.  We all resist it in our own ways to some degree.

Anyway, back to the film...she finds The Substance that promises her a better, younger version of herself and of course, she can’t resist.  And also of course, it doesn’t go the way she expects.  Apparently, self loathing comes out regardless of how young and beautiful you are...

The film is a relevant commentary on today’s beauty and aging standards and how impossible they are to meet and how much we tend to long for a youth that has blossomed and now withers on the vine, daily.  I get this too.  It is hard to assimilate into my being that I am never going to be young again.  Intellectually I know this, but somehow I still have this area of delusion that one day...

So I buy the creams and the botox.  I tend to my skin like it is some sort of Demi God (pun Intended).  Wishing that I had been more thoughtful in previous years to how much what I did then would literally be written all over my face...But with youth comes an insufferable arrogance that assures you cannot and will not recognize how temporary your looks are until you start to lose them.

So Demi Moore’s character trades in her DNA to spawn a new, better version of herself in looks only.  And by whose definition?  Certainly “Sue” was younger and more toned and beautiful but was she more beautiful than Elisabeth?  I think you would be hard pressed to find a great number of people that would say that Demi Moore, at any age, is not one of the more beautiful women Hollywood has produced over the years.  Hollywood really is a short form for beauty manufacturing...I mean, at least where women are concerned.  The men get a wider pass rate.

But whose standard of beauty are we using when we judge beautiful, the definition?  I happen to think Demi Moore is fucking hot and amazing at her current age.  But I also know she has had a ton of work done and works hard to look the way she does now.  So are we using my standard of beauty?  Well, then what about all the people who would disagree with me?  Seems like the movie infers that Hollywood gets to decide and the rest of us just follow along with however they define it. We have no say, we are just obliged to follow along...

This movie is about a Faustian Bargain - the old deal with the devil.  And I am not sure there is a more fitting application than to villainize Hollywood to the Lucifer status.  I mean, how many souls have been bought and sold there?  I would argue all of them...I don’t think you get to be Hollywood famous without the subrogation of your soul.  Kudos to those who took their souls back, but seriously at what price?

In the film, Demi gives up whatever beauty and good looks she has left and becomes a “monster” and Sue, the younger more beautiful version gets subsumed within the evolving monster.  She was literally spawned from that same "devil." Both women desperate for the love and approval of a very fickle crowd that really has no margin for error.  And boy, how spectacularly Elisabeth and Sue erred! And how disgusting the spray of their vanity is as it washes over the populace! It taints us all, no exceptions.

The film is a social commentary in its most grotesque version.  Showing us who we become when we sell our souls to become something we used to be or perhaps never really were, but believe that we were.  Perhaps the outward manifestation is only a projection of all that fails within?

I am still reconciling the film’s meaning and impact.  And I am trying to figure out where my limits are.  I do not like the effects of aging...but I can honestly say that I have never been this version of me before and I can’t remember a time where I was better. Sure I was younger before and my skin didn’t sag and all of that.  But was I better just because I was younger?  For me the answer is a resounding NO!  I was just younger.

I think Hollywood sells us what we desperately want to buy:  The delusion that what appears on the outside is more important than what is on the inside.  And I for one, know that is simply untrue.  What appears on my exterior is really only a reflection of what exists on my interior.  I suppose this isn’t true for everyone, there are a lot of beautiful assholes in this world, but for me, I know that the light that shines start within me and radiates out from there.

So I would do better to nurture and grow this nascent and budding spirit than to apply all the creams and injections and all of that...  Even though I know it to all be folly, I still dye my hair, buy the products, get the Botox and long for a shell that doesn’t show the signs of aging so much.  I wish I didn’t care, but I do.

I would love to say, “I would NEVER do” what Elisabeth does...but I don’t know, am I not sort of like Sue in her relentless pursuit of self interest?  Do I not also believe that the more “beautiful” I am on the outside, the more I might garner the favor and love of others? If I don’t believe that, then why do I even bother?

I guess what I am left with is this:

Faustian bargains exact their price always...and we always are the ones to lose.  What we “gain” in the beginning pales in comparison to what we ultimately lose...which is ourselves.

I too lack substance.  I too want to stop or at least slow the hands of time from their constant tick tocking.  But does this really make me better?  Am I not still alone and still feeding the beast that resides within who tells me, “you are not enough, you will never be enough!”

And why do I believe creams and filler and Botox will ever heal that which tells me I am not ok as I am?

The lack of substance which is what makes Elisabeth fall prey to the belief The Substance will save her is the real issue...which perhaps might have been a better use of her time sitting alone in her beautiful home contemplating rather than bemoaning her squalid interior existence and aging exterior.  As she found out, there is no remedy for the decay of the exterior that warrants a destruction of what resides within.  Each of us, no matter what horrors we have created in this life, has the seeds of good within...and perhaps the best use of the life we are given is to work to bring forth that in ourselves and others.  With and without the creams...

Again...still.

Naked self...quite literally.