Don’t Look Away!: Reframing the Abject in Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance

“Beauty, women’s business in this society, is the theater of their enslavement.” – Susan Sontag

The media bombards women with a Faustian, beauty shock doctrine, an avalanche of anxiety-riddening expectations that function to convince them, no matter what their age, to engage in the culture of consumerism. From purchasing the best skin products to considering the most invasive plastic surgery, women are constantly pressured to “fix themselves” to conform to the standards of youth and beauty as prescribed by the culture or risk a depreciation of their value. The narrative that unfolds in Coralie Fargeat’s film The Substance should not be surprising, particularly to women. With its startling visual effects, grotesque makeup and costume design, and jump-scare sound effects, Fargeat depicts the truth of a woman’s daily battle with her identity in a hyper-real, mind-bending, gag-inducing nightmare. The film’s hyper-stylized world and multi-generic narrative, in which Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) experiences these horrors, are only a metaphor for the larger adversity that women face every second of their lives: the ticking clock of their youth. 

In industries that profit from constructed standards of feminine beauty and a synthetic desire of to-be-looked-at-ness, 1  a woman’s value depreciates over time. Through the media they consume, women learn that they are most valuable when they are young. Results from a recent study conducted by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media and the Next Fifty Initiative concluded that from 2010 to 2020, the number of roles and average salary for a female actor in American film and television decrease significantly after the age of 34, whereas a male actor’s roles increase until age 46 and their salary peaks and stabilizes at 51. 2  The prevalence of older female actors is much less common: “Of all characters 50+ in film, a staggering 80.6% are men, and in television that share is 69.9% … Of 50+ leads, in film, 93.3% are men and in television 81.2% are men.” 3  Lack of equitable representation on screen confirms the ideological conclusion that once women reach a certain age, they no longer hold the same value they possessed in their youth. They are no longer have value on screen unless they take desperate measures to mediate the natural aging process, and even then, as this data concludes, they still do not meet the expectations of the media consumer’s diet. A vicious cycle of ageism and misogyny emerges, in which audiences learn to accept this lack of representation as the norm, while less emphasis is made on inclusive production practices.

Cultural messaging in the media regarding gender, youth, and beauty are part of a larger discourse surrounding age, sexual desirability, and body ideals that work to define and control normative feminine attributes while demonizing transgressions from them. The media’s portrayal of women acts as a symbol that inadvertently serves to uphold the cultural myths constructed by a misogynistic patriarchy. As Laura Mulvey asserts, woman “stands in patriarchal culture as a signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his fantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer, not maker, of meaning.” 4  Roland Barthes claims that cultural mythologies such as this in visual media serve to perpetuate the transmission of ideological control. Myth is a culturally constructed higher meaning/value attached to signs within a societal discourse that reinforce dominant ideologies. Unlike the arbitrary relationship between the signifier, signified, and its sign, Barthes’s higher-order mythical signification is never arbitrary, as “it is always in part motivated, and unavoidably contains some analogy.” 5  It is a semiotics of culture, an unspoken roadmap that reaffirms the constructs that work to maintain power relations. 

The Myth of Gender Roles in Horror Films

Women portrayed in media who question or attempt to push back against the patriarchal feminine ideal are judged harshly for their transgressions. As Barbara Creed states, “the violation of gender roles is considered by society as far worse for women than the violation of the law itself.” 6  Female characters who perform in ways that do not align with dominant patriarchal ideologies can lead to their sexist depiction as dangerous, wrong, or disturbing. This intense, visceral response is what Julia Kristeva defines as an acceptable reaction to something which is abject, that which “disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite.” 7  Creed further describes the abject as “that which must be expelled or excluded in the construction of the self.” 8  In order for one to exist in patriarchal society, one must “reject or repress all forms of behaviour, speech and modes of being regarded as unacceptable, improper, or unclean.” 9  Proper and clean forms of behavior, though, are created, developed, and controlled by patriarchal society and are informed and confirmed through everyday interactions, most significantly through what is learned when consuming media texts.

Audiences, as readers of Myth, formulate negative interpretations of women through misogynist misrepresentations in the media. 10  The predicament of a woman’s place within the narrative creates the Myth, which as Barthes asserts, “does not deny things, on the contrary, its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it gives them a clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact.” 11  When it comes to media representations, the audience interprets more than just a woman on screen. Mulvey claims that the visual presence of a woman is a spectacle in mainstream film and “tends to work against the development of a storyline, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation.” 12  The audience/male hero is taken off-course by the woman, as her placement in the story in ancillary and acts as a type of obstacle to be overcome. Viewing an older woman on screen is a surprise due to their lack of representation in the media, which leads to fear, Othering, and pity, not to mention the potential abject-ness of her physical form through the male gaze. A young woman on screen is only a sex object, a distraction for the male character and audience. A woman who transgresses her place in patriarchal society is a shock to the ideological system and must be punished. But all these troublesome responses to women are naturalized by Myth. Barthes describes that this “glossing over” 13  of meaning is unconsciously transferred to audiences as they learn to not question the media they are consuming. This perpetuates a feedback loop of misogynistic perspectives on and off screen.

The media often presents women who act against their place in society as strange, problematic, villainous, and to the extreme, monstrous. In the mid-1990s, Creed connects Kristeva’s theory of abjection with what she terms the monstrous-feminine in horror films released from the 1960s onward. She asserts that the connection of women with the abject subjugates them and further confirms the patriarchal order, the symbolic. 14  Through adherence to patriarchal law, all representations signifying the maternal are deemed as abject: “The abject is placed on the side of the feminine: it exists in opposition to the paternal symbolic, which is governed by rules and laws.” 15  This binary of the father/symbolic and mother/abject stems from biblical texts that describe women and pubescent girls as unclean and impure, and is further suggested through Freud’s castration anxiety theories. 16  Woman’s ability to produce life connects her to the birth/death dichotomy furthering an abjection toward women and nature. Creed argues that images or concepts deemed abject are “a source of horror, [which] works within patriarchal societies, as a means of separating the human from the non-human and the fully constituted subject from the partially formed subject.” 17  These misogynist dichotomies ultimately assign women to a role as Other— to be feared and judged.

Horror films, of the body horror genre, exude the abject through depictions that threaten the stability, sanctity, and cleanliness of sanitized society. These include decaying corpses, bodily wastes and fluids, and various religious “abominations” 18  like intentional body modifications, sexual perversions and immorality, human sacrifice, and murder. 19  The audience experiences this disturbing content and reaffirms the ideological messaging as abject. They, according to Creed, can confront these sickening images and act on a desire “to throw up, throw out, eject the abject (from the safety of the spectator’s seat).” 20  By doing so, they confirm the ideological safety net of the symbolic, of what is human versus non-human, life versus death, clean versus unclean, male versus female, and the cycle of oppressive patriarchal ideology recurs in a never-ending loop of indoctrination. 

Reframing the Knowledge-Power of the Monstrous-Feminine

Nearly 30 years after its inception, Creed revisits the monstrous-feminine in Return of the Monstrous-Feminine: Feminist New Wave Cinema and proposes a new, transgressive means of utilizing its power. As Mulvey states, feminists are caught in a web of power, where their transgressive analysis must proceed from lines of patriarchal logic: “There is no way in which we can produce an alternative out of the blue, but we can begin to make a break by examining patriarchy with the tools it provides.” 21  The monstrous-feminine typically serves as a  “misogynistic fantasy,” constructed by patriarchal ideology “to enable the male viewer to explore his own deeply imbedded [sic] fears about female sexuality.” 22  However, Creed reminds us that horror films “shock and repel, but they also enlighten. They provide us with a means of understanding the dark side of the patriarchal unconscious, particularly the deep-seated attitude of extreme ambivalence to the mother.” 23  

After decades of continued abjectification of women as a means of controlling their image through horror films, contemporary feminist filmmakers reclaim the power of the abject subject. They refocus on the effect of the film’s content on the female filmgoer, where the female protagonist/monster’s purpose is transformed to represent a type of feminist revolt. 24  Creed coins this collection of films as “Feminist New Wave Cinema,” 25  where female characters who are deemed monstrous (her examples include single or older women, pubescent girls, lesbians, and widows) exist as powerful, influential characters on a quest for positive, inclusive change:

Determined to discover their own identity and desires, the female characters embark on a journey into the dark night of abjection, where they engage with the underlying horrors of the patriarchal order. Their journey is feminist in that they have the courage to revolt and enter into that dark place in order to see for themselves the corruption at the heart of the symbolic order. 26

This “dark night of abjection” allows a female protagonist to tell her story, in her own voice, and transfers the repulsive abject onto the patriarchal system and away from their alleged Otherness.

Spectacle also serves a critical function through its use as a transgressive method of storytelling in contemporary films like those in the Feminist New Wave Cinema subcategory. Geoff King claims that spectacle is no longer locked into the typical diversion-from-narrative tactics of Classical Hollywood cinema, stating, “it might be said that narrative momentum is ‘bracketed’ a good deal less in the contemporary Hollywood spectacular blockbuster,” 27  than it was in was in previous decades. In the body horror genre, visual spectacles of the abject, such as watching a pubescent girl masturbating with a bloodied crucifix in The Exorcist (1973) or the gruesome birthing scene in The Brood (1979) adds to the narrative complexity of the film, drawing the audience into the story while actively working against their ideological makeup. It lets the audience reject it as Other, abject, and reaffirm cultural expectations of purity and rightness. With Feminist New Wave body horror films, however, the use of spectacle through gruesome, abject situations is used to call the audience to question its morals and expectations, a dimension of such films that will be discussed in more detail later in my analysis.

In a sense, Feminist New Wave Cinema and its transgressive calling out of ideological misrepresentations of women (in modern culture) align with Michel Foucault’s theory of knowledge and power. Foucault’s discourse, a way to present knowledge through language, defines the way in which a topic is represented, understood, and ultimately accepted. As Stuart Hall aptly describes, discourse thus affirms and defines an “acceptable and intelligible way to talk, write, or conduct oneself, so also, by definition, it ‘rules out,’ limits and restricts other ways of talking, of conducting ourselves in relation to the topic or constructing knowledge about it.” 28  Knowledge surrounding ideas like gender roles, beauty, and sexuality all exist due to and through the discourses in which they reside. Foucault affirms that power “is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society.” 29  It is important to note, as Foucault warns, that the oppressive functions of these discourses do not necessarily stem from validated truths. The more discourses that occur, the more knowledge gained and shared, the more power produced. This idea correlates with the oppressive nature produced by misrepresentations of gender roles in media. As Hall concludes, “Knowledge linked to power, not only assumes the authority of ‘the truth’ but has the power to make itself true.” 30  Through discursive practices, these systems of control gain power over those within a particular society in which these discourses occur. However, Foucault asserts that along with these developed and continuously affirmed norms, ruptures can happen. 

Through abjection in Feminist New Wave Cinema films like The Substance, there is a transference of power through its transgressive qualities that challenges or attempts to change cultural norms. These films ask the audience to question their deep-seated understanding and allegiance to the unspoken testaments of patriarchal ideology by refusing to support or perpetuate degrading stereotypes. In order for power to exist, where certain discourses dictate the terms for assigning truths, Foucault argues that there must be an opposing factor: “Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power . . . These points of resistance are present everywhere in the power network.” 31  Feminist New Wave Cinema filmmakers turn the repressive lens on characters, ideas, or institutions which negatively impact women’s voices. 32  Their “monstrous” female protagonists experience their own struggles with abjection, such as through “a disturbance of identity, violence, meaninglessness, and a collapse of boundaries with the possibility of revolt and rebirth.” 33  But instead of the typical destruction of the abject in order to confirm the stability of patriarchal systems, these women use their abject-ness as a source of power and resiliency to face the patriarchal demons that have stamped them with such a perverse label. These films are not pigeonholed into one genre, however. 34  In fact, they often draw from multiple genres, creating what Creed describes as an “aim to bring together their own mix of genres to create their own space—a feminist space—in which to explore the nature of the heroine’s revolt.” 35  The horror genre is not completely avoided though, as Creed adds that most still use the aesthetics of horror and its level of spectacle to inform the narrative and help to “convey the reality—often the surreality—of the human struggle.” 36

When Carolie Fargeat presented her final cut of The Substance for distribution through Universal, she was asked to make substantial revisions, which she firmly denied, leading to the studio backing out of the deal. 37  Fargeat’s belief in her film’s message aligns with the Feminist New Wave Cinema’s goal of revolt not only as a political message, but as a personal one. 38  She set to present a narrative that is just as vicious as the patriarchal ideologies women face every day, stating in an interview with Variety,

‘I held on so tightly during the making of the film and the difficult post-production phase, when everyone wanted me to make it less violent, less excessive, less gory, less frontal. I knew that I had written this film to be more than — or at least at the same level as — what I’m denouncing in the film,’ Fargeat says, adding that our society is ‘still insanely violent for women and puts us in boxes’ to a point where we ‘create our own violence against ourselves.' 39

Fargeat experienced gendered judgement throughout the post-production of her film, as it is ingrained in patriarchal ideology that women are nonviolent and unaggressive. Creed asserts that “this is the very argument that patriarchal ideology has used for the past 2,000 years to control women – it is precisely because women by definition are ‘pure’ creatures that they need men to ‘guide’ them through life’s stormy passage.” 40  But women are more than capable of forging their own destructive, unfeminine path, especially pioneers like Fargeat who traverse the male-dominated system of media production. 41  Fargeat’s battles to ensure the distribution of her film “have only sharpened her resolve to bring about change,” much like “Feminist New Wave films [which] show the female protagonist who refuses her ‘proper place,’ who speaks with authority in her own voice and through her own actions.” 42  She reflects upon her own life as a woman, “how monstrous she felt … as a tomboy, with glasses” 43  growing up around the feminine ideal of the 1980s and 90s like Cindy Crawford and Jessica Rabbit. Women are taught to measure themselves against women on screen, and Fargeat aimed to rip that idea apart, grappling with its personal effects by producing a film with a universal message for all subjugated women. The Substance is an unforgiving visual representation of an aging woman’s internal struggle against the oppressive patriarchal knowledge-power discourse which designates her as abject. As an example of Feminist New Wave Cinema, this film forces the spectator into an uncomfortable state of reflection, presenting a brutal commentary on the violences shoved down the throats of women through its reclaiming of Barbara Creed’s concept of the monstrous-feminine.

Aging as Abject: The Double Standard

The Substance presents the physical, emotional, and mental destruction of an aging actor, Elisabeth Sparkle, under the heavy hand of Hollywood’s misogynistic culture. On her 50th birthday, she is fired from her long-standing role as a popular celebrity television aerobics instructor. Elisabeth spirals into despair, as her identity, which is founded upon her public image, becomes devalued. She is surreptitiously presented with an opportunity to use a new, experimental, black-market drug called The Substance, which she is convinced into believing is her last hope to reclaim her youth. However, a major side-effect of taking this drug is that her “improved” self is only active for seven days and must follow the directions correctly to maintain her life before activating the “switch” back to her original self for the next seven days before the cycle can restart. After injecting the drug, she births Sue (Margaret Qualley), who replaces Elisabeth and becomes a viral overnight sensation. Entranced by the attention, Sue decides to bend the rules of the drug to remain awake for longer periods of time. A battle between the two personas ensues, until Elisabeth is depleted of all remaining youth and beauty, leaving her a decrepit elderly woman. When Elisabeth tries to terminate the use of the drug, Sue murders Elisabeth and panics upon realizing that she, too, will deteriorate. Sue tries to re-activate the drug, leading to the birthing of a deformed monster, named Monstro Elisasue, a tortured amalgamation of both personas. Elisasue seems to accept her new transformed self and attempts to host a live television show on New Year’s Eve. But upon seeing her disfigured form, the audience retaliates in horror, and a bloodbath ensues. Elisasue manages to escape the studio audience, but dissolves into a formless mass as she exits the studio and enters a deserted Hollywood Boulevard. A blob with Elisabeth’s face crawls from the remains to her star, where she hallucinates being photographed and loved by the public eye until she dissolves into a pool of blood.

In the film, Elisabeth’s misrecognition of herself as abject leads her to trust a black-market drug and serves as an unforgiving commentary on the power of oppressive societal norms that lead women to depend upon youth-enhancing consumerist goods. The film does not begin with the typical Feminist New Wave depiction of its female protagonist as a monstrous-feminine who defies society. Instead, it focuses upon the ingrained misogyny towards older women that taught Elisabeth to perceive herself as abject. Elisabeth’s belief in her abjection is confirmed through her interactions with the studio’s producer, Harvey (Dennis Quaid). While using the restroom, Elisabeth overhears Harvey talking on his cell phone about her: “How the old bitch has been able to stick around this long, that’s the fucking mystery to me! Oscar winner, my ass! When was that, back in the 30s, for what, King Kong?” Creed claims “These people who the patriarchal symbolic order ‘others’ are spoken of as if they were not ‘proper’ subjects, sometimes as if they were not ‘fully’ human.” 44  Harvey speaks of Elisabeth like she is disposable, as if her worth as an actor is eclipsed by her age. She now occupies Kristeva’s concept of the border, an “in-between state” 45  where she is no longer accepted as a valuable asset to the studio, but rather an object easily tossed away and forgotten. Otherwise, her existence threatens what society deems as acceptable and beautiful enough to remain on camera. 

Feminist New Wave Cinema transforms the power of the camera’s male gaze from its typical focus on a woman’s to-be-looked-at-ness to a more empathetic perspective of the female protagonist. The camera forces the audience to empathize with Elisabeth as Harvey nonchalantly fires her over lunch. Creed argues that some men are portrayed in these feminist films as “the abject, violent other.” 46  Harvey represents the patriarchal system that labels Elisabeth as abject. He is distorted by the wide-angle lens, whereas Elisabeth seems far away in the shot-reverse-shot; her brow furrowed in polite disgust. “People are just people. I have to give people what they want. That’s what keeps the shareholders happy! And people always ask for something new. Renewal is inevitable. At 50, well, it stops,” says Harvey, as he looks over his shoulder at a young, female server who bends over to serve the table behind them. As he speaks, Elisabeth (and audience) cannot help but stare as he animalistically devours his food. Extreme close-ups of his butter-soaked fingers show him rip apart prawns that he shoves in his greasy mouth as he speaks. Creed writes that Feminist New Wave films present “man’s abjection [as] tied to his intentions and deeds” his “aggressive phallicity,” and ability to “rob women of their identity.” He is “the misogynist, racist and homophobe, who has violated women and other marginalised, dispossessed individuals.” 47  When Elisabeth asks for him to clarify what “it” is that “stops,” he stammers, making groping gestures, wagging a limp, flaccid shrimp tail. Enough said: Elisabeth does not “do it” for the audience any longer, and that is a problem for capitalists and men alike. She is abject.

Fargeat explains that Demi Moore’s decision to play Elisabeth was a personal choice to combat the critical wave of abjection she faced in her own career. In a sense, Elisabeth’s story, though dramatized and hyperreal, mirrors many female actors’ downward trajectory. Fargeat stated that “it was a time of [Moore’s] life, she was about to be 60, she wanted to get her narrative back for herself. She wanted to exist for herself, take it back from the things people were projecting onto her.” 48  After an exceedingly successful career, Moore’s professional journey slowed in the late 1990s, around her mid-30s. With the turn of the century, her roles became more sporadic and niche, but never hit the same mark of success that she had experienced in her youth. She was brutally criticized by the media, which accused her of exploiting her body as if she were still young enough to do so. 49  Moore’s role as Elisabeth in The Substance is a metaphorical representation of the horrors that she, herself, as a female actor and alongside other women in the industry, have experienced while navigating the misogynist, prying eyes of consumer culture. 

The Archaic Mother & Her Über-Wench

Sue’s spectacular birthing scene aligns with Kristeva’s description of the Archaic Mother but with a twist that questions the sanctity of human creation and woman’s place as the abject source. Creed explains that feminist directors often “play with the generic conventions of maternal horror by inventing new forms of the mother-child relationship as well as new ways in which the mother speaks in her own voice.” 50  Elisabeth births Sue parthenogenetically after she injects herself with the drug. Her intention is to recreate herself, as The Substance advertisement states: “Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself? Younger, more beautiful, more perfect?” Elisabeth experiences an intense, horrific birth as Sue’s fully formed, adult-sized body erupts out from her spine. Sue crawls out of Elisabeth, covered in a vernix-like discharge, and walks over to the mirror to examine herself. She strikes a pose, arching her back in a way that accentuates her curves, her arms above her head. Sue’s likeness is a creation of what Fargeat and Qualley deemed as the ideal woman. Fargeat explains that her goal was “‘if I were to wake up in a body that was the perfect one, what would it be? . . . I wanted to transmit to the audience, waking up in that ideal, in a body that’s going to give you so much importance in the world.” 51  Sue embodies qualities of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Übermensch, a being that exists beyond social conformity and lives by its own mores and value systems. The drug acts as a metaphor which destabilizes the sanctity of birth because of a man’s participation in the birth/death dichotomy. Men are not necessary in the rebirth of a woman’s value, she is in complete power of her own decisions, or at least, she believes she is. Fargeat reframes the attribute of the monstrous-feminine, as Elisabeth’s offspring is not horrific or abject, but perfect: 

What is common to all of these images of horror is the voracious maw, the mysterious black hole which signifies female genitalia as a monstrous sign which threatens to give birth to equally horrific offspring as well as threatening to incorporate everything in its path. This is the generative archaic mother, constructed within patriarchal ideology as the primeval ‘black hole’. 52

Though birthed grotesquely from “the mother,” Sue does not embody the stereotypical monstrous-feminine ideal of the abject offspring. Rather, she exemplifies all qualities of the desirable sex object, the feminine ideal through the male gaze. Her birth is abject in another way: it forces the audience to witness the horrors that women will endure to be seen as valuable in a society that sees them only as objects. 

Sue becomes diluted by the power of patriarchal ideology which worships her as a sex object, and in turn begins to disrespect Elisabeth. Kristeva asserts that the child learns about its body, particularly what is considered abject or indecent through interactions with its mother, “the trustee of that mapping of the self’s clean and proper body; it is distinguished from paternal laws which, with the phallic and acquisition of language, the destiny of man will take shape.” 53  After Sue’s birth, she compares her body to Elisabeth’s lifeless one, strewn haphazardly on the bathroom floor, back blown open, blood, vernix-like fluid, and neon yellow Substance surrounding her. Sue recognizes Elisabeth’s gaping back wound/vagina as abject and to her chagrin, feels obligated to stitch it up. She leaves her there on the bathroom floor and props her head up with a pillow. However, once Sue becomes more involved with the studio, she puts herself on such a display that it is almost uncomfortable to watch, and also starts to disrespect the balance required of The Substance. She renovates her bathroom and creates a room to hide Elisabeth’s body, hiding away the abject mother, siphoning more fluid from her than allotted, leading to Elisabeth’s slow decay. As Creed asserts, “In the child’s attempt to break away, the mother becomes an abject; thus, in this context, where the child struggles to become a separate subject, abjection becomes ‘a precondition of narcissism.’” 54  When Elisabeth calls the phone number associated with The Substance, she is reminded by the ambivalent male voice to “Remember, there is no ‘she’ and ‘you,’ you are one. Respect the balance and there will be no inconveniences.” But this is not an inconvenience to Sue, who is relishing the male gaze. Patriarchal society indoctrinates her, making her narcissistic, deviant, and entitled. 

Fargeat uses the male gaze and the use of spectacle to call attention to its objectifying nature, to the point where the gaze itself becomes abject. Sue is dramatically put on display while filming a new exercise program, her curvaceous features highlighted by her tight-fitting, colorful leotard. Although this sequence acts as a break from the main narrative, its addition adds an intense hyper-sexual, almost pornographic depiction of Sue that serves as a reflection point for the audience. The camera dissects her body into fragments, focusing on her thighs and backside while filming her gyrating and thrusting her hips for the lens, her brow furrowed, lips parted with pleasure. It is important to note that what we see of Qualley is not a realistic representation of her form. As Fargeat explains,

With Margaret, we totally created that shape. In real life, when I met her, she’s very skinny, she doesn’t have boobs, she’s almost like a tomboy. She wanted to create that girl. She trained every day to sculpt this body. We created prosthetic boobs. She really worked to create this perfect, curvy body where everything sweats sex appeal. 55

This hypersexualized, unrealistic feminine body on display serves to reframe the male gaze and make the filmgoer rethink their position as someone who looks. After witnessing the heartbreak and disregard that Elisabeth experienced at the hands of the studio who threw her away like a piece of trash, the audience is forced to question why the same studio is so enthralled with Sue. The patriarchal system’s work to subjugate women is on display, the gaze transformed to refocus its lens on the plight of the oppressed. As Creed claims,

The feminist gaze invokes all the senses. It is compassionate and empathetic; it invites the spectator to situate herself in the place of the protagonist on the screen, to experience what the other is experiencing through affect. It is an all-embracing sensory gaze, one that understands the protagonist’s daily life, emotions, relationships, bodily states, and desires. It sees and feels the whole person. 56

As we watch Sue on the television with Elisabeth, we take on her point of view through a shot-reverse-shot. Her envy of Sue’s immediate success is palpable, but Sue loses ownership of her body to the camera after her sexualized image is plastered on gigantic billboards. Is this what Elisabeth wanted, or was she again, fooled by the power of the misogynist patriarchy?

Into The Dark Night of Abjection

Despite Elisabeth’s efforts to feel beautiful, she continuously compares herself to the impossible, unrealistic beauty of Sue, and further embeds herself into her own abjection as her image of youth is reflected at her. As Creed asserts, “an ordinary woman can be seen to become monstrous when she behaves in what is seen to be an unnatural manner by abandoning her proper feminine role.” 57  As a woman who focused on her career, Elisabeth did not fulfill the role of wife and mother. Her existence outside of the domestic exposes a weak point in the patriarchal symbolic order. She did not need a husband or a family to be successful, but now, as an unemployable middle-aged woman, who placed her own worth in fame and success, she no longer has anything to prove her value. Panicked that she is wasting her life, Elisabeth makes dinner plans with a friend from high school, Fred (Edward Hamilton-Clark). Fred is unperturbed by Elisabeth’s age, stating “You haven’t changed a bit! You’re still the most beautiful girl in the whole wide world!” When she finally makes plans with him, she dresses in a plunging red dress, but she continuously second-guesses herself, as she feels inadequate in the shadow of Sue. She fiddles with her clothing, her hair, fixes and reapplies her makeup, until she becomes increasingly violent toward herself, leaving her complexion reddened and smudged with makeup before giving up entirely. Elisabeth’s existence as an older, single woman, is monstrous according to societal expectations, but she fails to see her worth, even when reassured by a kind soul.

As we learn to empathize with Elisabeth, we are overwhelmed by her jealousy and perturbed by Sue’s narcissistic behavior. As Sue continues to disrespect the balance of the drug, she causes Elisabeth to regress into a decrepit, arthritic, elderly woman. She loses all motivation for living, wasting her seven days waiting to switch back to Sue, but then retaliating against Sue in abject ways. She binge-eats and leaves rotten food scattered about her apartment, making it harder for Sue to live her hyper-sexualized life. Kristeva asserts,

In a world in which the Other has collapsed, the aesthetic task—a descent into the foundations of the symbolic construct—amounts to retracing the fragile limits of the speaking being, closest to its dawn, to the bottomless ‘primacy’ constituted by primal repression. Through that experience, which is nevertheless managed by the Other, ‘subject’ and ‘object’ push each other away, confront each other, collapse, and start again—inseparable, contaminated, condemned, at the boundary of what is assimilable, thinkable: abject. 58

Patriarchy not only pits women against each other, but onto themselves. Elisabeth’s self-hatred causes her world to collapse. The fight between Elisabeth and Sue is a metaphor for the hatred women often feel about themselves because of the impossible expectations that patriarchal society imposes upon them. Elisabeth knows she will no longer experience the fame and attention that Sue is immersed in. Fargeat elucidates the metaphor, stating that since Elisabeth and Sue are one being, “the allegory instead is that beauty standards create a duality – how you look versus how you have to look, to please the world – that is inherently violent. The self resents the mask for suffocating it; the mask is disgusted by the self.” 59

Their war reaches a boiling point once Elisabeth realizes what was left of her beauty and youth has been siphoned out of her so Sue could delay her switch. Elisabeth decides to end her use of the drug and starts to inject Sue with the black termination fluid. However, she stops herself, realizing that Sue’s biggest moment, starring as the host on the New Year’s Eve show, will also be her biggest moment as she lives vicariously through Sue. “You’re the only lovable part of me, you have to come back!” Elisabeth cries as she tries to revive Sue. Miraculously, Sue awakens, and the two halves of the same woman stare at each other for the first time, until Sue sees the termination syringe. As Fargeat explains, “This distinction between who you really are and who you’re trying to be, that’s what creates the real violence. That’s what creates the disconnection with yourself. Everything you do to try to look some other way creates two selves; and there will always be this fear that your real self is going to find a way to be seen.” 60  Realizing Elisabeth’s initial plan, Sue erupts into a violent, bloody frenzy and brutally beats Elisabeth to death. As Kristeva asserts, the “subject” and “object” confront, collapse, and start again, but this misogynist dance leads to the creation of a true abomination that destroys both sides.

The creation and public reveal of Monstro Elisasue acts as the culmination of the film’s representation of the monstrous-feminine, a display of the effect of abjection, a representation of how far a woman is willing to go to be accepted and desired by patriarchal society. Sue returns to the studio to prepare for the New Year’s Eve special and tries to act like everything is normal. But her hearing becomes distorted, and her teeth start to fall out. She remembers the voice from The Substance commercial ringing in her ears: “Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself?” She then rushes out of the studio and back to her apartment, literally beginning to fall apart as she makes her way there, her fingernails pulling away from her skin, her ear falling off, her vision blurring. Panicked, she injects herself with the Activator, disregarding the clear warning label that states SINGLE USE. Instead of a “better version” being birthed from her spinal column, a distorted, monstrous being is created that embodies features of both Sue and Elisabeth. This being, named Monstro Elisasue, is a visual representation of the abject, as Creed describes that “abjection arises in the spaces which emerge during that moment of erosion between borders.” 61  Even though Elisasue is a monstrous being, she still tries to make herself pretty for the camera by dressing in Sue’s blue tulle gown, sticking earrings into her bulbous, deformed head, curling her strands of hair, and super-glueing Elisabeth’s face on from a life-sized portrait. She represents how far women are willing to go to be accepted by the symbolic order, that there is always a piece of her that can be improved, that she is never truly perfect. 

Monstro Elisasue also represents Elisabeth’s realization of what she has done to be accepted by patriarchal society and maintain her flawless feminine image. She still goes on with the show, showing up to the studio like everything is normal. Harvey eagerly awaits her debut, telling the other white male executives, “She is my most beautiful creation. I have shaped her for success!” As Creed asserts, in Feminist New Wave Cinema,

The female protagonist embarks on a journey to confront her ‘other’ and in so doing she brushes up against abjection . . . but she is not contaminated to the point of becoming an abject thing incapable of renewal. Already existing outside the symbolic order, she possesses a clear perspective and understanding of the abyss on which it is founded. As she undertakes her personal journey into the dark night of abjection, she comes to realise that her only option is revolt. In acting against the patriarchal order, she is seen by its representatives as abject. 62

Despite her attempts to maintain normalcy, the audience retaliates. Creed explains that when “confronted by the sight of the monstrous, the viewing subject is put into crisis – boundaries, designed to keep the abject at bay, threaten to disintegrate, collapse.” 63  “Shoot the monster! It’s a freak!” they scream, much to Elisasue’s despair as she shouts back, “Stop! It’s me! I’m Elisabeth! I’m Sue!” Audience members flood the stage, pulling at her limbs and eventually decapitating her to regain control of what they are experiencing. In final retaliation, however, Elisasue grows another head, even more gruesome than the previous, and one of her arms falls off, causing a firehose like explosion of blood all over the audience. While the audience tears Elisasue apart, a shot of a young girl in tears fills the screen. 

This sequence of shots is reminiscent of the themes presented in Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (1964) or Marina Abramović’s Rhythm O (1974), where the boundaries between performer and audience dissolves. What is an audience willing to do to an individual who actively calls out their objectivity and rejects set boundaries? Creed ascertains that contemporary horror film “often ‘plays’ with its audience, saturating it with scenes of blood and gore, deliberately pointing to the fragility of the symbolic order in the domain of the body which never ceases to signal the repressed world of the mother.” 64  Despite her destruction, Elisabeth has overpowered the patriarchal dominance of the studio, shocking all who are watching into experiencing what the system has done to her. In a sense, Elisabeth, as female protagonist in a Feminine New Wave film, “speak[s] again in her own voice in order to call out the abject male.” 65  Elisasue covers the walls of the studio in her blood, and Elisabeth finally ejects the abject shame she has lived with onto her oppressor.

Fargeat’s reclaiming of the monstrous-feminine is a powerful message to the filmgoer and patriarchal society of the horrendous feats women will embark upon to be accepted and viewed as fully human. By birthing Sue, Elisabeth attempts to reclaim her “power” against the system, and in the end destroys the misrepresented concept of herself in the process. Elisabeth transcends society’s ideals of beauty and femininity, acting as a pariah that transfers the pain and suffering women experience at the hands of the patriarchy in order for her audience to reflect on their own placement as oppressor and bearer of the misogynist look. After Elisasue falls apart, a blob of blood and guts with Elisabeth’s face crawls to her star on Hollywood Boulevard. She has transformed beyond the ideological construct of feminine beauty and accepts herself, free of the false mask of feminine beauty ideals as her soul is enlightened by the absurdity of her experience. Creed explains that “To the male spectator, she might be a monstrous figure . . . but to the feminist spectator she is a woman—an empowering, inspirational figure who is engaged in a life-and-death struggle with the violence of the patriarchal symbolic order.” 66  It is clear that the studio will no longer run in the same way after the debut of Monstro Elisasue either. She has potentially opened the world’s eyes to what unrealistic expectations can do to women and breaks open the discourse of what society deems as truth regarding its creation and maintenance of oppressive, misogynist, patriarchal power. Elisabeth sacrificed everything in attempts to re-establish her value, but then turns the objectifying gaze upon the male studio executives who destroyed her self-worth. 

In a sense, Hollywood filmmaking has also been affected in a similar way as Elisasue’s fictional studio. As Fargeat asserts, “‘everything you ask us to hide, to cut, to make thinner, to erase, it will explode. Our pearly smiles are made of so many horrendous things that we have to keep within ourselves. I was trying to deconstruct, explode the idea of beauty. To show the reality of who we really are and what we’re made of.’” 67  Fargeat, along with other feminist writers and directors who fall within Creed’s Feminist New Wave Cinema have blown open Mulvey’s assertion that only alternative cinema “provides a space for the birth of a cinema which is radical in both a political and an aesthetic sense and challenges the basic assumptions of the mainstream film.” 68  Transgressive depictions of women have infiltrated mainstream media, finally challenging the patriarchal oppressive discourses described above. Before we all make our own Faustian deals in life, it is important for us to reflect on why we make our decisions, and whether we are acting upon our own self-volition and well-being, or if we are being coerced into a deeper, more dangerous dark night of abjection.

Footnotes

• 1

  Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in Visual and Other Pleasures (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1989; originally published in Screen, 1975), 19.

• 2

  Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media and Next Fifty Initiative, Women Over 50: The Right To Be Seen on Screen (2020), https://geenadavisinstitute.org/wp content/uploads/2024/01/GDIGM-Next50-WomenOver50-Study.pdf.

• 3

  Davis Institute, Women Over 50: The Right To Be Seen on Screen.

• 4

  Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 15.

• 5

   Roland Barthes, “Myth Today,” in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, ed. John Storey (England: Pearson Education Limited, 2006), 298.

• 6

  Barbara Creed, Return of the Monstrous-Feminine: Feminist New Wave Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2022), 71.

• 7

  Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 4.

• 8

  Barbara Creed, “Horror and the Monstrous Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection,” in Feminist Film Theory: A Reader, ed. Sue Thornham (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 37.

• 9

  Barbara Creed, “Horror and the Monstrous Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection,” 37.

• 10

   Barthes, “Myth Today,” 299.

• 11

  Barthes, “Myth Today,” 301.

• 12

  Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 19.

• 13

  Barthes, “Myth Today,” 309.

• 14

  Creed, “Horror and the Monstrous Feminine,” 166.

• 15

  Creed, “Horror and the Monstrous Feminine,” 37.

• 16

  Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 71.

• 17

  Barbara Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, feminism, psychoanalysis. (New York: Routledge, 1993), 252.

• 18

  Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 93.

• 19

  Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine, 252.

• 20

  Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine, 253.

• 21

  Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 15.

• 22

  Barbara Creed. Return of the Monstrous-Feminine: Feminist New Wave Cinema. (New York: Routledge, 2022), 4.

• 23

  Creed, “Horror and the Monstrous Feminine,” 166.

• 24

  Creed, “Horror and the Monstrous Feminine,” 4.

• 25

  To give some context, Creed presents the following films as examples of Feminist New Wave Cinema, but keep in mind that the list is not exhaustive and continues to grow: The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014), Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennel, 2020), Revenge (Coralie Fargeat, 2017), Nomadland (Chloé Zhao, 2020), The Assistant (Kitty Green, 2019), A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Ana Lily Amirpour, 2014), Jennifer’s Body (Karyn Kusama, 2009), In My Skin (Marina de Van, 2002), Titane (Julia Ducournau, 2021).

• 26

  Creed, Return of the Monstrous-Feminine, 2.

• 27

  Geoff King, “Spectacle, Narrative, and the Spectacular Hollywood Blockbuster,” in Movie Blockbusters, ed. Julian Stringer (London: Routledge, 2003), 123.

• 28

  Stuart Hall, “The Work of Representation,” in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, ed. Stuart Hall (London: Sage, in association with Open University, 1997), 72.

• 29

  Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Random House, Inc., 1978), 93.

• 30

  Hall, “The Work of Representation,” 76, italics in original.

• 31

  Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 96.

• 32

  Creed, Return of the Monstrous-Feminine, 3.

• 33

  Creed, Return of the Monstrous-Feminine, 4.

• 34

  Creed, Return of the Monstrous-Feminine, 6.

• 35

  Creed, Return of the Monstrous-Feminine, 6.

• 36

  Creed, Return of the Monstrous-Feminine, 3.

• 37

  Elsa Keslassy, “The Brains Behind ‘The Substance:’ How Coralie Fargeat Stayed True to Her Gutsy Vision: ‘Everyone Wanted Me to Make It Less Violent, Less Excessive,’” Variety, January 29, 2025, https://variety.com/2025/film/global/the-substance-coralie-fargeat-oscars-1236289808/.

• 38

  Creed, Return of the Monstrous-Feminine, 15.

• 39

  Keslassy, “The Brains Behind ‘The Substance.’”

• 40

  Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine, 156.

• 41

   Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine, 156.

• 42

  Creed, Return of the Monstrous-Feminine, 13.

• 43

  Zoe Williams, “‘Before Ozempic we had amphetamines. But it’s always the same violence’: 

  Coralie Fargeat on women, ageing and Hollywood,” The Guardian, February 3, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/feb/03/i-was-trying-to-explode-the-idea-of-beauty-coralie-fargeat-on-the-substance-women-and-hollywood.

• 44

  Creed, Return of the Monstrous-Feminine, 11.

• 45

  Creed, Return of the Monstrous-Feminine, 11.

• 46

  Creed, Return of the Monstrous-Feminine, 9.

• 47

  Creed, Return of the Monstrous-Feminine, 5.

• 48

  Williams, “Before Ozempic we had amphetamines.”

• 49

  Christopher Goodwin, “She can’t take any Moore,” The Times, March 4, 2012. https://www.thetimes.com/article/she-cant-take-any-moore-mkldh7thmhs. 

• 50

  Creed, Return of the Monstrous-Feminine, 24.

• 51

  Williams, “Before Ozempic we had amphetamines.”

• 52

  Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine, 261.

• 53

  Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine, 72.

• 54

  Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine, 254.

• 55

  Williams, “Before Ozempic we had amphetamines.”

• 56

  Creed, Return of the Monstrous-Feminine, 17.

• 57

  Creed, Return of the Monstrous-Feminine, 68.

• 58

   Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 18.

• 59

  Williams, “Before Ozempic we had amphetamines.”

• 60

  Williams, “Before Ozempic we had amphetamines.”

• 61

  Creed, Return of the Monstrous-Feminine, 38.

• 62

  Creed, Return of the Monstrous-Feminine, 13.

• 63

  Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine, 262.

• 64

  Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine, 256.

• 65

  Creed, Return of the Monstrous-Feminine, 10-11.

• 66

  Creed, Return of the Monstrous-Feminine, 17-8.

• 67

  Williams, “Before Ozempic we had amphetamines.”

• 68

  Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 15.