In Coralie Fargeat’s 2024 film The Substance, the tension between the aging female body and patriarchal beauty standards materializes through the increasingly violent dynamic between Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), a celebrated star nearing the end of her career, against Sue (Margaret Qualley), a younger manifestation of herself who embodies the patriarchal ideals of beauty. Drawing upon Dylan Trigg’s framework of the phantom body as it pertains to body horror in his article “The Return of the New Flesh: Body Memory in David Cronenberg’s The Fly,” I argue that The Substance corporealizes the phantom body as an unattainable, patriarchal ideal of youth through the character of Sue.

Trigg’s notion of the phantom body challenges the singularity of the body, emphasizing the persistence of bodily memory (83). In his article, Trigg examines how the body retains a lived experience that can haunt an individual long after transformation or trauma has altered their physical form (84). He describes this phenomenon in relation to David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986), where Seth Brundle’s transformation into Brundlefly marks a dissociation between cognition and corporeality, making his past human body a distant, yet persistent, memory (83-84).  This phantom body retains an agency of its own, creating a liminal state between the self and the Other (94). Functioning similarly in The Substance, Elisabeth’s youthful star persona of her past lingers as an unreachable, haunting ideal that the film externalizes via Sue.

Elisabeth’s relationship with Sue mirrors Trigg’s exploration of body memory and bodily anxiety (89). Elisabeth’s career as a film star and fitness instructor, heavily built upon her appearance, subjects her to patriarchal scrutiny. As Trigg explains, phantom limbs illustrate this paradox of bodily absence and persistent sensation, wherein “the cognitive knowledge that a particular article of the human body is missing” conflicts with “the retention of a lifeworld, that no longer exists” (87). For Elisabeth, her youth operates as this phantom body–an absence that continues to shape her present perception of herself as she naturally ages under the inspection of the patriarchal industry gaze. As she reckons with her passing stardom and fading relevance, a mysterious laboratory offers Elisabeth a substance that promises to transform her into a younger, more enhanced version of herself, as long as she “respects the balance” of the two sharing consciousness evenly with seven days as Elisabeth, and seven days as the younger double, remembering that “they are one.” After she takes the Substance, Elisabeth undergoes a horrific mitosis-like transformation that results in the promised younger version of herself grotesquely emerging from her body. Sue, an externalized embodiment of this phantom body Trigg describes, serves as an idealized version of Elisabeth as she once was. As Sue gains autonomy, she exposes the inherent violence of this ideal, demonstrating that the pursuit of an inherently unreachable standard results in self-destruction.

Trigg’s assertion that “phenomenologically, what appears to be unfolding in this body anxiety is the subordination of the lived body to the physical body” aligns with the conflict between Elisabeth’s deteriorating physical form and the spectral ideal embodied by Sue (89). Elisabeth’s subjective self–her lived body– struggles against the dysmorphic manner in which she perceives her aging face and body. As the ideal double, Sue takes Elisabeth’s place at the network, career, and steadily increasing time with the shared consciousness each week, the balance becomes disrupted with physical consequences manifesting upon Elisabeth’s body, making her appear more aged with each transgression. Thus, Sue aligns with Trigg’s depiction of the phantom body as an entity that refuses to remain a mere memory. 

The physical manifestations of this phantom body’s presence in The Substance further illustrate Trigg’s argument regarding the horror of bodily transformation. The film features sequences in which Sue’s actions directly impact Elisabeth’s body and vice versa, such as the moment when Sue’s body purges a chicken bone that Elisabeth consumed, or when Sue’s extension of her cognitive time results in the rapid aging of Elisabeth, thus highlighting their shared corporeal connection. This aligns with Trigg’s discussion of” body memory,” where he differentiates between the rational appropriation of experience and the body’s recollection through sensation (93). Elisabeth’s loss of control over her own body aligns with the horror Trigg describes: “Thus, from the glorified self, we are thrown into an ambiguous realm, in which the original source of empowerment–strength and sexuality–become agencies of alienation” (94). Sue initially grants Elisabeth the experience of renewed youth and desirability, but this empowerment rapidly deteriorates into a loss of agency, reinforcing the impossibility of truly embodying the phantom body, which is within this context, the youthful patriarchal ideal.

As the film progresses, Sue and Elisabeth’s struggle escalates into a grotesque confrontation that results in Trigg’s notion of the horror of becoming “no one: a mute, anonymous, and prepersonal self manifest simply as an aggregate of limbs and tissue” (97). The climactic emergence of the monstrous hybrid “Monstro Elisasue” literalizes the collapse between the idealized body, Sue, and the decaying self, Elisabeth. The final form of Monstro Elisasue embodies the ultimate failure of their attempt to attain patriarchal beauty standards–she is neither youthful nor aged, neither desirable nor anthropomorphic, but a distorted amalgamation of Elisabeth, Sue, the violence they have enacted upon one another, as well as the violence of patriarchal beauty standards. In this moment, the phantom body ceases to be merely a haunting yet absent figure. Instead, it manifests as an uncontrollable and slowly deteriorating monstrosity, revealing the impossibility of reconciling patriarchal ideals with the reality of lived bodily experience.

Elisabeth’s phantom body–her past self, internalized societal expectations, and the industry’s demands–takes form in Sue, but instead of fulfilling its promise, it consumes and obliterates them both. Elisabeth and Sue’s battle for agency and control, ultimately culminating in their grotesque amalgamation, serves as an allegory for the inescapable cost of chasing patriarchal ideals of perfection. Their shared fate underscores the futility of violence against oneself and others to maintain relevance or proximity to power within a system that dehumanizes women’s bodies. The film closes with Elisabeth’s face, now detached from Monstro Elisasue, crawling to and resting upon her long-neglected star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, before melting into a puddle of blood and gore. In these final moments, the film exposes the horror inherent in the relentless pursuit of an ideal that, by design, can never be reached. In doing so, The Substancetransforms the phantom body from an abstract cultural pressure into a viscerally embodied nightmare, revealing the monstrous consequences of a society that refuses to let women age naturally.

References:

Cronenberg, David, dir. The Fly. 20th Century Fox, 1986.

Fargeat, Coralie, dir. The Substance. Mubi, 2024.

Trigg, Dylan. 2011. “The Return of the New Flesh: Body Memory in David Cronenberg’s The Fly.” Film-Philosophy15(1): 82-99.