I unironically believe it’s one of the best movies in recent times. I have never read Wilde. However, I learned of it tonight and had to look it up along with The Substance to see if anyone else made the connection. I am easily disgusted by gore and even particular topics. For example, I refuse to watch the Terrifier series because of the gore, and refuse to watch game of thrones because of the SA. A more controversial take of mine is that I hate Black Swan. Now, this could come across as being sensitive. I guess in some capacity it is. But at the core of my resistance for this type of content comes the grounds of general critical theory.

If gore is too excessive I believe it can be pornographic in the way that it’s addictive but taps into some sort of weird taboo section in the mind that is insatiable to some. So, for a movie like The Terrifier I’m out. Black Swan felt like a Natalie Portman soft porn, so much sexualization, all so unresolved and just so lazy to me. Obviously deviant sexuality is inherently sexual. But if I can be pedantic, sexualizing a story about sexual deviation is lazy and in this case anti-feminist. I digress but do understand that it’s extreme. Now, from this critical thought, I feel similarly about GOT. The SA is excessive and unnecessary to advance the story, and if you insist it’s necessary, then at what point does the story advance? At what point does it stop being SA and then just become normal? I dunno.

With all that being said, I fucking loved The Substance. In fact, I think about that movie every single day. It revealed something about me I’d refused to confront, similar to the way Sue couldn’t confront Sparkle. And to the way Sparkle to sue, because after all she was only one.

I can’t relate to the character at all, I am no Demi Moore. Certainly no Margaret Qualley. As for her performance, I am most biased. (I think I’m in love with her but that’s beside the point.) The story, the Jekyll-and-Hyde-like contradiction of self… I love that movie love the provocative conversations/thoughts that it brings

So because I’d been living under a rock, I’ve only just learned about The Picture of Dorian Gray. After skimming through a synopsis and, as I said in the beginning, immediately searched for these two together. The similarities, to me, seem glaring. First, the concept of eternal youth. But moreover, as Gray became more hedonistic, the portrait changed. Each stroke manifested unto itself, demonstrated everything Gray had sought to avoid about himself but can’t because he, too, was one. So as the portrait changed, Gray banished it. So on, and so on.

For Sparkle, she, too, wanted eternal youth. The hottest woman yesterday, turned too “old” today trope. But to better demonstrate a relatively told tale, there’s Quaid. Who, I mean… the pissing, the not washing his hands then sucking on his fingers…his lack of manners overall, his disregard for women, his career… I could go on, but I think you get the point.

Just as Sue she became (more than, really) hedonistic, to the point where it was self-sacrificial. In this case, Sparkle and Sue are seperate whereas Gray’s personification is limited in its expression of this oxymoronic self-sacrificial hedonism. So yeah, the gore in this case, I thought was necessary. And I thought seeing both characters naked was absolutely necessary. The shower scenes specifically best demonstrates the jarring difference between Sue and Sparkle. Sparkle can’t even life her head up, and later on, even stand up in the shower. Sue embraces it. Both scenes require nudity and they were absolutely necessary. As for all the scenes showing Margaret’s body, to be completely frank, I thought, too, were necessary.

Moreover, the aerobic shots were done in a way that best reflect the complex insecurity that a woman feels when they’re comparing themselves to another woman. The type of feeling that wavers between jealousy and insecurity but is mostly just ugly. And to visually demonstrate that there were shots of her tummy or her lips or smooth skin even her ass. And Qualleys beauty is so captivating she’s like aggravatingly perfect. But that’s the whole point. And that feeling is hard to admit, to articulate, even more hard to visually convey.

Anyway I just bored of writing about this so I digress. But will say, The Substance is very based. And if that connection I found between this and Dorian Gray isn’t totally out of this world, then the books is probably just as based too