Note: This article is a continuation of a previous one. For previous context, please refer to Can You Control Yourself? An In-Depth Review of “The Substance:” Prologue
“It’s like when you see someone fart on screen,” says the same man who was seen yelling on the phone in the previous scene from the bathroom in Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance.
The camera pans to show a fly on his neck, and we see his greasy hands clawing at a piece of shrimp as he shoves it into his mouth. “People just love that. I mean, that’s just the way it is,” he says. The camera zooms on him consuming greasy thick pieces of shrimp, as Elisabeth Sparkle sits across from him, looking frightened. As disgusting as this scene is, it’s a perfect reflection of showcasing men exactly as exactly how they are: pigs.
The two are shown in a classy restaurant. They are surrounded by identical men in suits. On the man’s side, not a single woman is shown other than a waitress dressed in a short skirt serving men.
On Elisabeth’s side, all men are shown sitting at tables, except for two women sitting at a table with men far away in the background, and later in the scene a bartender who is a woman.
On Elisabeth’s side, all men are shown sitting at tables, except for two women sitting at a table with men far away in the background, and later in the scene a bartender who is a woman.
The difference and similarities between the two different backgrounds highlight the environments the characters are in and their brains. The man is surrounded by men who look just like himself, because Hollywood has been run by the same men with the same views on women.
Elisabeth, on the other hand, is in the same environment, yet feels more uncomfortable as she is like a sheep in a wolf’s den, or a woman in a career field that’s controlled by men.
Both of the characters have been conditioned to the beauty standards and misogynistic ways of Hollywood, but deep down, Elisabeth thinks otherwise, hence the women sitting so far in the background.
As for the man, if his views on women weren’t already clear, a young waitress comes by dressed in a short skirt and serves two men sitting at the table behind the man and Elisabeth.
The man peeks his head around to check out the woman’s butt, showing that he views women solely for the condition of their bodies rather than their character.
“At 50, well, it stops,” the man spits. He shoves another piece of shrimp into his mouth and spits it out on the plate in front of him. The irony of this scene is that the man is allowed to eat however much he wants in a disgusting manner, whereas women are held to much more rigid standards.
“What stops?” Asks Elisabeth. The man looks at her, caught off guard. “What stops?” Asks Elisabeth again, this time more firm.
The man struggles to answer. He stutters, making a few gestures before spotting a man he knows and ditching Elisabeth at the table.
What has “stopped,” is Elisabeth’s reproductive years, the only thing she is good for, according to Hollywood. As soon as women begin to age out and are no longer deemed useful, they are discarded just like the shrimp the man discarded on the table.
And the funniest part about this is that society can’t say this to a woman’s face, like how the man could not tell Elisabeth she was too old and no longer attractive. Women are picked apart in the media and criticized for absolutely everything.
The remnants of the man’s food show how Hollywood eats women up then spits them out afterward.
Elisabeth sits at the table, grave-faced, as she watches a fly drown in wine, which symbolizes the destructive impact Hollywood has had on Elisabeth and how helpless she is from everyone, including herself.
As Elisabeth is driving home from the restaurant, she sees a billboard being torn down of herself from when she was younger. Just as she takes her eyes off the road, she is aggressively T-boned by another car and her car rolls over.
The car accident is a wakeup-call for Elisabeth, but she doesn’t see it as such. The more she tries to hold on to this identity of herself, the more likely it will kill her, like the fly drowning in the wine. She keeps trying to evade reality, but it comes crashing into her. This scene is also a dig at how ageist society is against women and critiques them more and more as they get older, whereas men are allowed to age and are considered attractive.
Sitting in the hospital, Elisabeth’s doctor tells her she did not suffer any injuries, not even a cracked molar.
But that’s not what Elisabeth can focus on. She sits with her back against the doctor and the nurse. The man begins to tell her, “Happy Birt-,” before he is cut off by Elisabeth sobbing. The doctor leaves the room and as Elisabeth plans to sit up, the nurse standing beside the doctor stops her and says he has one last exam to perform.
Confused, seeing as she was just cleared a moment ago, Elizabeth isn’t even given an explanation as to why she had to have another test performed. This goes to show how controlling women’s bodies is another way men try to assert their dominance over women.
The nurse jolts Elisabeth forward and examines her spine in an uncomfortable scene which foreshadows the most infamous scenes in the movie.
“Is there a problem?” Elisabeth asks. “No, it’s perfect,” the nurse says while staring at Elisabeth’s spine. Yet again, the nurse is solely seeing Elisabeth for her body rather than as a human being.
“I wish you the best,” the nurse says to Elisabeth as he hands her coat.
As she exits the obscure hospital, Elizabeth is the only color out of the rest of the bland beige world, which is proof of how she stands out because of her age. Yet this small sequence does not only have a negative meaning, for it shows that deep down, Elisabeth still sparkles. The distance she is from the camera shows how disconnected she feels from herself.
As she reaches into her pocket, Elisabeth pulls out a small item wrapped in paper. As she unravels it, she pulls out a hard drive with the words “The Substance” on it in bold and a phone number on the back. Elisabeth is on her own now.
To be continued………
