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Elisabeth Sparkle, played by Demi Moore, is the tragic center of The Substance. She’s a former movie star who is ruthlessly and abruptly pushed aside by an industry that no longer values her. Her career began with star-studded parties and an Oscar win, but by the time the movie begins she’s been hosting a televised workout class for the last several years. From the start, one of Elisabeth’s defining traits is her fear of losing her youth and beauty. When she looks in the mirror, she doesn’t see herself as an attractive woman; she only sees her flaws.  

Her tenuous position as a celebrity aerobics instructor is taken from her when she turns fifty, reinforcing the idea that as she ages, she becomes less valuable. Making a quick stop in the bathroom at her studio on her birthday, she inadvertently overhears her slimeball producer Harvey shouting into his cellphone that she’s too old to keep on the air. It’s as if all of the imaginary conversations that she has dreaded have suddenly materialized. She’s fired over lunch that day, making it clear to Fargeat’s audience that men like Harvey see her as valuable only as long as they find her an attractive sexual prospect. The humiliation of being so easily discarded fuels Elisabeth’s growing despair; she feels lost because she has spent her entire life being defined by her appearance. Without that, she doesn’t know who she is. Elisabeth’s desperation eventually leads her to the film’s dangerous experimental drug: The Substance offers her a younger, “better” version of herself, an opportunity she can’t refuse. However, as she struggles for control over this new identity, she finds herself locked in a battle with her “best self,” which ultimately destroys them both.  

Elisabeth’s self-loathing is the film’s real antagonist. Rather than advocating for herself, she immediately spirals into hopelessness, distractedly driving through Los Angeles until she crashes her car. This ugly moment foreshadows the destruction that will follow, as Elisabeth leans into her self-hatred more and more intensely. Although she’s surrounded by life-size and giant portraits and posters of herself looking fit, thin, and beautiful, she constantly berates herself for any imperfections. When a young ER nurse secretly gives her access to The Substance, she sees it as an unbelievable opportunity to reclaim the youth that has been stolen from her. Her motivations are entirely rooted in the fear of irrelevance, rather than a sense of self-improvement. She does not question the potential cost of what she is about to do because she has already accepted that, in Hollywood’s eyes, she has lost her only currency of any value.  

The transformation itself is both a blessing and a curse, and it reflects the “split” between Elizabeth’s self-loathing and self-confident personas. When Elisabeth injects the neon-green serum, she creates a new body. Just as the advertisement promised, it’s young, beautiful, and full of potential. However, Elisabeth herself doesn’t really gain anything. Instead of rejuvenating her real body, Elisabeth has split herself into two people. There’s the older version, who still exists and is unchanged, and Sue, a separate person who embodies all the qualities Elisabeth once possessed and now yearns for. Though it initially seems like The Substance provides an opportunity for Elisabeth to re-enter the world as her younger self, it quickly becomes clear that she is not experiencing the world through Sue’s eyes. The two may share a body on alternating weeks, but they are not the same person. As Sue rises, Elisabeth deteriorates—not just physically, as her aging accelerates horribly fast when Sue misses a “switch,” but mentally, as she realizes with terror that Sue does not see herself as an extension of Elisabeth. Even as Sue ignores the switching schedule and drains her stabilizer fluid, leaving Elisabeth to decay, Elisabeth does not take decisive action to stop her. Instead, she gets more reclusive. She stays in her apartment, eating unhealthily and wallowing in resentment and self-pity.  

Elisabeth’s ultimate downfall comes not from the science of The Substance but from her own inability to define herself outside of the things Hollywood desires. By the time she tries to terminate the experiment and stop Sue, it is too late. In the film’s final moments, Elisabeth’s face detaches from the monstrosity Elisasue, groaning and straining as it crawls onto her neglected star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The face smiles, hallucinating that Elisabeth is being admired one last time by everyone who had abandoned her. The fantasy fades away as the face dissolves into a pool of blood. This ending reinforces the awful futility of her struggle against aging and against a shallow world where the odds are always stacked against women. In death, Elisabeth is reduced to an empty symbol. She’s no longer herself, just the name of a starlet who no longer exists. Elisabeth’s arc is a critique of the entertainment industry’s—and patriarchal society in general—relentless demand for youth and perfection. Her destruction is not just the result of The Substance but of a lifetime spent believing that her only value lay in how she looked. She is both a victim of the system, and an active participant in her own destruction. Through her, The Substance examines the terrible price of clinging to an impossible, painfully unachievable ideal. 

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