Structuralism & Signs in The Substance
If you or someone you love is a major cinephile, chances are The Substance has seeped into your conversations since the film’s wide release in late September. The satirical body horror film touched down in Cannes like a lightning strike, earning the Best Screenplay award for writer/director Coralie Fargeat. When I finally saw it a few weeks ago, I was blown away. Much can and has been written about the movie’s cinematography, performances, and special effects, but I think the key element that makes The Substance a standout (and something all writers can learn from) is how successfully it leans into cinema as a language.
One of my favorite lectures from film school at USC dealt with this principle. My professor, Jon Wagner, argued that film can be viewed through the lens of structuralism, a linguistic theory in which language is seen as a self-contained system of signs, and meaning can only be derived through comparison of elements already in the system. A “sign” is essentially something that communicates meaning. In linguistics, the most basic units of signs are words. In film, the most basic types of signs are camera shots. Think of it this way – when you see the ocean, you can’t fully transfer the actual, true metaphysical experience of the ocean to someone else, but you can describe it with language (i.e. “big,” “blue,” “stormy”), which can give the other person a powerful approximation of that reality.
This conception of cinema forever changed the way I thought about movies and what they could do. If the power of film lies in its ability to deliver a very specific, personalized interpretation of reality, then absolutely every small detail has the potential to function as a semiotic sign, and each should be imbued with as much meaning as possible. Coralie Fargeat is a master here, and that’s part of what makes The Substance so effective.
From big picture themes to set design to major story beats, The Substance thrums with well-executed signs. The film is set in Los Angeles, but shot in France, and Fargeat accomplishes the illusion with two simple visuals – a Hollywood sidewalk star, and shots of palm trees. When Elisabeth and Sue begin to diverge, Sue unexpectedly feels something bulge out of her hip, and she pulls out a chicken wing – a rich symbol of flesh made disgusting. Sue’s horror at the greasy wing also provides a squeamish contrast to the preceding scenes of Sue taping her aerobics show, which Fargeat shoots with close-up, pornish shots of Sue’s body, evoking the long history of the male gaze behind the camera. What’s really so different between a glistening chicken wing and Sue’s glistening leg? Sue, ensnared by the male gaze herself, finds the former unacceptable, and the latter her destiny. By the end of the movie, Monstro Elisasue’s final act before she’s beheaded by a crew member is to vomit up a boob – a genius encapsulation of the entire film in one simple visual. Even to the bitter end, Elisabeth is trapped into performing a body-first femininity she believes will save her.
Fargeat also sprinkles in a few references to other great films, a more specific sort of semiotic sign called pastiche, which anchors her film in the cinematic canon. She designed the central TV station to evoke The Shining’s Overlook Hotel, featuring a long hallway patterned with a splintered version of the Overlook’s carpet and a blood-red bathroom to match the Overlook’s. The avalanche of blood Elisasue unleashes on the station mirrors The Shining’s iconic blood tidal wave. Just like the Overlook Hotel, once you give your soul to the station, you can never leave. Fargeat also drops the musical cue made famous in 2001: A Space Odyssey when Elisasue approaches the station stage to speak to the audience. In 2001, the moment marks the beginning of evolution from ape to man, and Fargeat uses the music to similar effect, marking the evolution from man to monster.
What really brings The Substance to the next level is that it’s a story filled with meaningful signs about a woman who’d rather be a sign herself than a person. Elisabeth is obsessed with herself as a symbol of youth and beauty – she’d rather be an ageless ballerina in a snow globe than a three-dimensional woman living a three-dimensional life. She goes so far as to transform herself into Sue, a sign-made-flesh, a collection of her most sellable and desirable traits. She only knows herself in relation to the meaning others give her, rather than meaning she generates herself. It’s a brilliant way to satirize how Hollywood chews women up and spits them out, and the dangers of treating women like images rather than people. It’s also a narrative uniquely suited to the language of film. In the first act, Harvey, Dennis Quaid’s character, tells Elisabeth “After 50, it stops.” Elisabeth asks what “it” is, and she never gets an answer. We’re left with the hugeness and vagueness of “it,” reflecting the limits of the written word. In a way, the entire film functions as a cinematic answer to her question.
All of these elements combine to make The Substance both extraordinarily complex and very simple, at the same time. It’s remarkable that a film with so little dialogue won Best Screenplay at Cannes, and it’s a testament to Coralie Fargeat’s mastery over cinematic language. It’s also a great lesson writers can take to their own scripts – where can you add signs and symbolism in your story? If you’re happy with your narrative itself, where can you heighten it visually, auditorily, and cinematically? How can you add meaning in every frame? That could be the key to making your screenplay unputdownable and unforgettable.