Shorts: Dorian Gray in the Substance

[@ourladyofperpetualskepticism]

Yes! I saw this on opening night and immediately thought of your video on Dorian Gray. I enjoyed the hell out of it, and I'm happy you made this video!

[@FashionableCrow]

@@ourladyofperpetualskepticism it was such a fun movie! Glad to know you liked it too 🥳🥳🥳

[@KeyserTheRedBeard]

Impressive analysis, Fashionable Crow. Looking forward to your next upload! I hit the thumbs up icon on your video. Keep up the fantastic work. The parallels you drew between Elizabeth's journey and Dorian Gray were fascinating. How do you think the societal pressures of beauty standards have evolved since the era depicted in both stories?

[@FashionableCrow]

@@KeyserTheRedBeard I’m really not sure on that front. My mind was much closer to home most of the time when drawing a comparison. All I could really think while watching this was how it compared to “Death Becomes Her” in ‘92. This felt like the counter argument to that movie basically validating the anxieties Elizabeth felt instead of mocking her for it.

[@TomBrzezicki]

My opinion of "The Substance" is that it's more of a bleak, black satire on the whole beauty, plastic surgery, stay-looking-young-at-any-price industry than a horror film. "The Substance" is no more a straight horror film than "Dr. Strangelove" is about thermonuclear war, which is why I think I felt a definite detachment from the characters as I watched the story unfold, though I definitely enjoyed the film, particularly the way it played with the audience. Just when you think, "This must be getting close to the end, nothing could be grosser than this!" it takes only about five minutes to discover you're wrong.

[@FashionableCrow]

@@TomBrzezicki I really love this run-through. You’re right about the horror feeling removed. For me, I kept thinking while watching that it felt like the counter argument to “death becomes her” if you ever saw that movie; where Elizabeth’s yearning for beauty isn’t even considered a character vanity or unreasonable. And the substance itself/her feeling of expiring was given very real weight that Death Becomes Her only hand waved away as “if this guy can start life at 50, so can you.” Which, for me, in that movie felt unsatisfying and I felt like the Substance tackled all those places I always felt were left unaddressed. With body horror absurdity that I can’t help but love. 🤩

[@TomBrzezicki]

@@FashionableCrow Thanks for your kind words. I'm afraid I've never seen "Death Becomes Her", but if video stores were still around, I might have gone out to rent it tomorrow. I know there is such a thing as Netflix, etc. but I'm reluctant to sign up for a service I'd probably rarely use. It occurs to me that the idea of preserving youth, beauty, and life itself is a theme of a couple of older novels, such as "She", by H. Rider Haggard, published in 1887, and "Lost Horizon", by James Hilton, published in 1933. Both books have been adapted into films, several times.

[@FashionableCrow]

@@TomBrzezicki I’ll have to look into those books! TY