“Material”… The oppression of women between the greed of capitalism and the cruelty of time | art
The viewer enters the dark hall in the theater after handing over his defensive weapons, and completely surrenders to the screen. If he senses an attack, he has no choice but to close his eyes, but injury becomes inevitable if what is shown on the screen aims to harm the viewer, who will not remain with his eyes closed. Throughout the film’s run.
Perhaps the possibility of being hit by screen bullets that penetrate the eyes into the conscience and feelings is what should call on film makers, especially directors, to take into account their audience and not commit to the crime of harming the senses, even if the goal is noble, such as drawing attention to the brutality of capitalism, the stereotyping of beauty, and the control of… Women’s bodies.
The phenomenon of crossing the line between entertainment and enjoyment of the viewer and harming his senses is clearly evident in horror films, which derive their name from the elements of fear, blood, and fire. However, there is a harsher subgenre known as “body horror”, as exemplified by the film The Substance, currently showing in both the US and Canada.
The film, directed by feminist activist and director Coralie Fargate, raises the issue of the oppression that women are subjected to by setting standards of beauty, and the harsh discrimination against those who show signs of aging, especially when their work is in the spotlight of television and cinema.
Has anyone watched The Substance movie? 😨😨😨 pic.twitter.com/cenMukw9DW
— Julie Hamill (@JulieHamill) December 28, 2024
The story revolves around a famous woman who presents a morning exercise show for women on a television channel. Time runs out, and wrinkles appear on her face. As a result, she is subjected to pressure from the program’s production director and the channel’s investor representative. She finds a mysterious advertisement that offers her a drug that she must take. Through a deep cut along the spine, a younger and more beautiful version of herself emerges from her body. According to the conditions of the drug, she must take 7 doses and live as her younger version during the day, but at night, the older version returns. . The conflict between the two copies begins because of the greed that possesses the younger one, so she consumes the drug, until the older copy turns into a deformed monster who does not realize the extent of the ugliness that afflicts him, while the audience and officials in the channel confront her with repulsion and expulsion.
Demi Moore
Demi Moore is one of the highest paid Hollywood actresses, but she did not win any major award, and despite being nominated for about 47 awards, including an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe, she received 9 awards from institutions and festivals that are not considered among the highest rated in the world of cinema. Demi Moore is nominated for a large number of best actress awards for her role in the movie “Matter,” from critical and women’s institutions in the United States of America.
Her role as Demi Moore in the movie “Ghost” in 1990 is considered the most successful in her artistic career, and it brought her international fame and strengthened her position as a leading actress in Hollywood. The actress, who is over 60 years old, appears to be in a state of brilliance and mental clarity that enables her to penetrate the essence of the heroine’s crisis, as she performs amazingly in front of the mirror, and presents that bitter feeling of oppression compounded by time and features that have withered with time, and the producers as well, as she embodies that state. Which approaches complete madness, a struggle that takes place between two versions of one woman: the first is a young woman who aspires to obtain wealth, fame, and money all at once, even at the expense of her physical and mental health in the future, and the second is a mature woman. She has experienced life, so she seeks balance in consuming her body, which eventually collapses as a result of the curse of aging and the curse of turning women into a commodity in a brutal capitalist world.
Demi played her role alternately with the young actress Margaret Qualley, who was afflicted with Moore’s infection, and she excelled in embodying that rage that afflicts a girl who was deprived of her beauty, and suddenly regains it, along with money, fame, and status.
American actor Dennis Quaid succeeded in embodying the character of the greedy producer who lost his humanity in a profession that recognizes only its conditions and consumes women like tissue paper. Quaid introduced the character under the name “Harvey.” Perhaps the name did not come by coincidence, as he is the most famous and criminal producer with actresses in the history of Hollywood. In Hollywood, he is Harvey Weinstein. He was convicted of more than one court ruling for his misconduct with actresses, and more than 200 lawsuits were filed against him on charges of insulting women. Actresses.
Although most of the characters seem closer to caricatures, director Coralie Fargate’s camera took revenge on “Harvey” by focusing on his disgusting way of eating, to convey the feeling that he is closer to a predatory animal, and using very close-up shots of his facial features in a way that made them frightening and disturbing as well.
Horror and social criticism
No director or screenwriter would make a film without having a vision, and carrying a message that the film aims to present in the public space. The message includes criticism of reality and an attempt to demolish in exchange for a vision of a different building, which is something that requires pure artistic formulation, but the rhetoric and directness that prevailed in Most of the areas of “Material” created a caricature situation, and presented a loud voice that made the work closer to a political speech on a damaged microphone, so the sound came out annoying.
Despite the directness of the presentation, and the eloquence of the dramatic facts in expressing the issue to be presented, the director resorted – without real need – to using symbols, especially in the scene where the heroine’s appearance transforms into a distorted monster resembling a monster, and she unleashes waterfalls of blood on those present on the occasion of the celebration of the beginning of the new year. It is a scene that carries the significance of everyone’s involvement in the blood of the woman or the victim, but it carries with the same degree of symbolism, hurting the feelings of a viewer who understood and felt everything that the creator wanted to present, and it is also a lesson for every filmmaker, to rectify his revolutionaryism. And his anger, and he strikes a balance between his belief in the issue and the ways of artistic expression of it.
The “harm” is achieved from the beginning of the work in the heart-stopping repetition of scenes of the body split from behind along the length of the spine, and the harsh extraction of spinal fluid with the continuous coloring of that fluid to express its depletion or corruption, then focusing on the “stitches” that treated the longitudinal split in the body. The heroine appeared.
The film knocks on closed doors to a major issue, which is the capitalist oppression of women and men alike, the monster that the heroine has turned into, and the monster that the film sees as her creation, which is the producer “Harvey”, as both of them are capitalist products that turn people into monsters or prey with the aim of amassing wealth without… Looking at the collateral “losses” that lead the human spirit to crushing, but it does not seem like a work of art, as much as it seems like a scream that deafens the ears and hurts the senses, which makes the viewer remain silent in pain and turn away from the issue. Herself.
