18 Comments
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Sunny's avatar

Your take on the ending is one so many people ignore, they are so caught up on the sfx and body horror they lose the ability to synthesize analysis if that makes any sense. Love your essays

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Trinity Rollins's avatar

I found I had this problem too. It made me think of the movie Men, with a similarly grotesque ending, that I had a hard time making sense of until long after.

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Spectre's avatar

Read this aloud in a discord server <3

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soft's avatar

not sure if im one of the people brave enough to watch this movie, but your description of it reminds me a lot of how ive interpreted sin eater. like the ways femininity and the male gaze interwieve with being divine or else horrific and monstrous. you probably made the connection already but it jumped out at me. I'm really intrigued by the way you describe the overhead "divine" shot, and i wonder if that perspective is suggesting that our man-made standard of what's perfect looks that disgusting and malformed from a higher perspective, be it divine or enlightened or whatever

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Penelope Scott's avatar

Yes, many themes in common between my analysis of The Substance and Sineater thank you for noticing! The overlap between the monstrous and the divine is something I think about a lot.

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scarlet 🎀🪷's avatar

I love this series sm

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Valeriaa's avatar

I love reading your essays (and your music ofcourse <3)

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naomi ✮⋆˙'s avatar

thank you for cabaret <3

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Angel's avatar

i literally love ur music <3333 ur amazing <33 it’s so cool that u do this email thing :) love u <33

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Raluca's avatar

So I personally won’t watch this movie, I think i am in a tricky emotional state and i will probably internalise too many things. So at this point i am commenting without having seen it, i am one of those people i guess haha I watched an essay about it by Jordan Theresa and she was commenting how with the body horror aspect, it still tied it to stereotypical depictions of what women would find horrible in our current society, ageing. It was interesting to hear that, because from the shots seen, it seems to have leaned into that a lot. Obviously this relates more to the part you haven’t expanded on so much, about the feminism and how it critiques the pressures put on women. However, it is interesting that while trying to portray body horror, it is still relying on stereotypical fears, looking old and not being liked because you don’t look good. While it is to be a critique, it can still perpetuate those ideas, especially since reality is, in Hollywood, women are often not cast when they reach a certain age, while the male colleagues are cast regardless, even when together there is still a big age gap, the women is still considered too old. Anyway, would recommend you watching her video, if you enjoy watching video essays.

What are your thoughts about this underlying message about age being the body horror plot, and i guess connected to the camera shots, where you are meant to feel disgusted because she looked old?

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sky's avatar

Haven't gotten off work to listen to this yet but I'm commenting because I felt eminence guilt from the Instagram story😭🙏

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Penelope Scott's avatar

Nooo sky don’t feel guilty! Then I’ll feel guilty! Guilty for the manipulative nature of my unethical Substack marketing campaign

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Lily's avatar

I’m ruining my sleep schedule because I feel bad (the insta story) BUT ILL POWER THROUGH ‼️

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Penelope Scott's avatar

Oh no what have I done 😂

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March's avatar

I finalllly got around to watching this movie with my partner and at the end it felt like I'd just gotten back from an hours-long workout. It was never meant to be a subtle film, but it definitely feels like the kind of thing that in a decade or two, friend groups will be smoking weed in the basement and someone will say, "omg let's watch the substance" and then they'll watch it and the one person who hadn't seen it yet will also have those images burned into their brain forever.

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Gonzaaa's avatar

I was waiting until I saw the movie to listen to this Substack and like a week ago I finally did. Today, I decided to sit and take the time to listen to the article voiceover.

I really liked your interpretation of the different camera angles that the movie showed depending on which "version" of Elizabeth was on screen. I hadn't thought of that in the same way as you did, maybe because I'm not too good interpreting the little details that art in general contains, but now, after reading the article, I have another perspective of the scenes that I liked.

I find funny how everybody said the movie was so disgusting (and I heard some poeple had to leave the cinema or even threw up in there) while the only part I find really gross is the one where Elizabeth is eating with her boss (I don't remember his name) and all the camera does is to zoom in his mouth to see how he munches the food. I was afraid I couldn't end the movie because of too graphic scenes, but, luckily, that didn't happen.

To finish my comment I wanted to ask you what do you think the scene where Sue is about to have sex but her back opens up and all her organs fall out. At the moment I saw it I thought it would be her death (since she had been Sue for more than 7 days) but no, she just fainted and woke up as Elizabeth. While talking to a friend about it, he told me his interpretation was that it was an allucination due to being in that body for more time that she was supposed to, and I think that could be the answer. There's also this other scene where a chicken leg comes out from Sue's belly button, which, following the same logic, could've been another allucination.

I loved listening and reading this Substack and I would like to hear your thoughts about the previous paragraph!

Have a nice day :D

Edit: I forgot to say that I really loved the music playing in the background while listening! Couldn't figure out if it was the soundtrack from the actual movie or some instrumental you produced. Either way I loved it.

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Extinct_Muppet's avatar

Okay this (gender/sexuality in relation to horror especially body horror) is very important as a topic to me.

What interests me most about body horror is how important it is through a gender lens specifically. It is comforting to people who experience gender dysphoria and uncomfortable to those who don’t.

The Fly, ginger snaps, and Jennifer’s body are all examples of the inherent queerness of body horror and the inherent body horror of forced/unwanted puberty/changes. It gives cis people a view into how we feel especially after/during puberty.

It’s also called monstrous puberty. It is the changing from something human and comfortingly you into something monstrous and unrecognizable as yourself or human at all.

And to see people talk about how terrifying it is, is strange to me because it makes me and other trans/queer people feel seen. Especially when trans people couldn’t be on screen or at least not as protagonists.

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Angel's avatar

hey by the way, do you have tips for writing lyrics? i really struggle with it lol

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