The Cost of the Ideal: Reading The Substance

Recently I got into a conversation with a friend about The Substance with Demi Moore. I found it powerful and multilayered; he insisted it had no meaning. I couldn’t disagree more. The film is built on metaphors and allegories—not everyone is ready to read them. Explaining all of that in English on the fly wasn’t easy, so I decided to write it down; it’s simpler to be precise on the page.

For me the starting point is this: why does Elizabeth choose a radical step after being fired? Years in show business should teach you that fame isn’t forever. She could step away and enjoy her life. But her life is fused with work: she’s alone, without a different anchor, and what matters most is staying onstage, being needed, being loved. In this industry youth is a currency and everything else is written off; losing a job isn’t just professional loss but an existential blow—if you aren’t young, you’re invisible. From there comes the urge to “correct” herself, to match the picture the market demands. The younger version, Sue, is a concentrate of external expectations—bolder, brasher, perfectly readable by the camera. She’s not “me, but younger”; she’s the idea of perfection Elizabeth carried in her head for years, yet never truly was. Refusing one’s real age here isn’t a whim but the outcome of long pressure: when your self-worth is bolted to ratings and other people’s gaze for decades, letting go of that logic is almost impossible. In the end she chooses what she does because the outside world says “you’re done,” and the inside has already absorbed that verdict; she’s offered a quick way to “get power back”—and it becomes a trap.

The key is the split consciousness tied to a shared bodily dependence. The two versions don’t just take turns; they have different psyches and survival strategies, but one resource. That’s the precise metaphor for how an idealized facade lives on its own and feeds on our real self: the harder we work to maintain the image, the weaker we grow inside. You can’t fully dispose of your authentic self, but the facade doesn’t live in a vacuum either—it always needs a donor. That’s how the inner split shows itself: authenticity turns into topsoil for the shop window, and the shop window gradually crowds out its source.

This idea isn’t only in the storytelling; it’s embedded in the visuals. Mirrors and cameras remind us the heroine doesn’t see herself directly but through other people’s eyes; she exists in a hall of reflections and lenses where value is tallied by counters. Medical tubing, drips, equipment—the imagery of dependence and energy transfer: for the facade to shine, the original must be continually siphoned. Grotesque bodily distortions are the logical end of the perfection race: the closer to the ideal, the farther from the human; the attempt to merge with the picture resolves in a collapse of form. The television stage is a modern altar where pain is converted into rating and the body into commodity—a space where self-sacrifice is normalized, even celebrated.

The film unfolds, then, as a meditation on responsibility. It’s not only about a society where youth is the passport and “ideal” bodies are a means of payment. It’s about our consent to play by those rules, turning a foreign gaze into the judge of our worth. At first it seems a small “optimization” will set things right. But optimization without self-acceptance triggers a swap: the image expands while the living self withers into a servicing function.

The core message for me is this: freedom begins where we stop feeding the facade and reclaim the right not to conform. We stop measuring life by reflections, likes, and ratings. As long as the idealized image feeds on us, it will demand more—and disintegration is inevitable. The moment we refuse that bargain, there’s a chance to become a subject again, not a shell for other people’s expectations.