Artist In Residence - (A Short Play For International Nurses' Day) by Barry Watt.

Boy - So why did they call her, 'The Lady of the Lamp?  Was she a Genie?

 

Mother - No, it's because Florence Nightingale was a nurse who visited patients at night during the Crimean War.  Also she represented a positive force during dark times.

 

Boy - Was she a good person?

 

Mother - She did what she could and stood up for herself and others.  She introduced better practices around hygiene and published a book in 1859 called "Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not".  She saw people as a whole and understood that disease like everything else is a process.  By helping someone with the simple things that encourage personal dignity such as cleaning up wounds and keeping the environment clean, quiet and organised, the patient's healing can be encouraged.

 

Boy - Was she a God or a deity?  She makes me think of Wonder Woman.  Did she have a 'Lasso of Truth'?

 

Mother - Ha, no, she didn't need a magical rope.  She just needed the support of her friends and supporters.  Please take a look at the ceiling (Boy looks up).  It's really high. Also take a look at the windows; see how they let in lots of light.  Natural light helps recovery.  The beds also are spread out, so that the Nurses can move between them.  Florence Nightingale helped to design this style of open plan ward.  Stretch out your arms, breathe in, feel the air and space.

 

(A Nurse approaches the bed that the Mother is laying on).

 

Boy - Thank you for helping my Mum.  Is she going to be all right?

 

Nurse - We will do our best for her and for you because your Mum has told us what a good boy you are.  

 

Boy - Can I be a nurse one day?  

 

Nurse - You listen, care about others and continue to learn.  You are already part way there.

 

(The Boy smiles, reaches into his pocket and offers the Nurse a picture.  She looks at it and places it close to her chest).

 

Nurse - Is this me?  You know something? It also looks like my friends over there (She points at the Nursing Station at the end of the ward).  I am going to cherish this picture.  

 

(The Boy excitedly nods).

 

Mother - See, I told you, they would like the picture.  It's honest and creative like you, son.  

 

(The Nurse reaches over and checks the drip).

 

Nurse - Mrs Watson, would you like a drink?  I am just going to make a cup of tea.

 

Mother - Yes, please.  Can Jimmy have an orange juice if you have one?

 

Nurse - I think that can be arranged for our young artist in residence.

 

Barry Watt - 10th May 2026

Afterword.

Wonder Woman and 'the Lasso of Truth' are copyright to DC Comics.

Florence Nightingale's Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not is still in print and appears to be a highly influential text as was Florence Nightingale whose birthday it would have been today, which is one of the reasons why International Nurses' Day is celebrated today.

For more on the Nursing profession and also on International Nurses' Day, please check out the Royal College of Nursing's website:

www.rcn.org.uk

Mrs Watson and Jimmy are figments of my imagination and are not related to any living beings, although, if I see them I will send them your regards.

                                                                                                                        BW

Photos of Flowers.  Flowers as fragile and ambivalent as each human life.

                                                                                      Barry Watt - 12th May 2026.

How Do You Want To Be Remembered? - On Autobiography, Biography and Flashing Obliquely In Public.

Back in 1993 when I studied A-Level English Language and Literature at college, one of the first exercises we were given was to choose an event from our pasts and to write about it.

I mulled over the task and came up with an idea.  I would document everything up to that point in my life as a poem.  I subsequently created an autobiographical poem that rhymed.  It amused me that I had created a sprawling, essentially comprehensive snapshot in to the many life events, that I felt at the time defined me.

I gave the poem to the teacher of the class, who returned it without marking it or commenting on any aspect of the poem.  I never did identify why she chose to leave the work as it was.  It wasn't perfect but it flowed and I did show it to other people for awhile after it had been written but recently like most of my poetry, it lays dormant.  A collection of repressed ideas.  I read the poem in a therapy session to the therapist and it helped to unlock events I had very obviously chosen to lock behind closed doors.  It had very much become the portrait in the attic.  References to having been bullied etc stirring up pungent odours that the air freshener of therapy can hopefully, reconfigure, redefine and neutralise the occasional menace of the memories.

Having said that I gaze upon the books piled up in my home and I see the accumulated memories of a number of important cultural figures, primarily creative people such as actors and singer/songwriters and I remain amazed at the phenomenon of sharing and oversharing.  I guess the question that both the subjects and their biographers, whether the biographers be themselves or someone else, is how and why do you want to be remembered?  

In terms of formal construct, the main difference between biographies and autobiographies is chronology.  Biographies largely seem to follow a linear structure, touching on key events in the subject's life, regularly comprised from the memories of people who know or who knew the person.  They are often sycophantic or at the very least, careful not to slander the subject.  There are exceptions to this but obviously, posthumous excavations of the negative aspects of a person's life are less likely to result in litigation unless an angry family member or estate is potentially slighted through association.

Oddly enough, although a chronological excavation of a subject would seem the most satisfying to a reader, the imposition of too much order and detail can leave the reader with a one dimensional portrayal of the subject; a road map from point a to z with little room for excursions.  Emotional content can be subsumed within the minutiae of dates and interminable explorations of bloodlines.

Now successful autobiographies are a different ballgame.  If you are writing about yourself, the impetus to document everything is less important than the urge to present key events, that you can either remember clearly or you feel may be important to relay, in order to convey a feeling or an idea.  I am current reading Robbie Robertson's Testimony and he cleverly focuses on his early days of touring with Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, whilst jumping to key facts about his childhood but only if they serve to illustrate his development as a musician or as a creative individual in general.  His humorous asides about how he created his first amplifier etc serve to help with the creation of his self-image.

For me, the most successful autobiographies focus on quite a narrow time period or alternatively, choose to present events in a slightly chaotic fashion.  Patti Smith's regular dalliances with her past are exceptional because she is both poetic and insightful in her excavations of her emotional life.  The book Just Kids glows with the vibrancy of a relic.  Her relationship with the photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe is as flowing and honest as a therapy session without an end.

On the other hand Morrissey's Autobiography, although extremely evocative of his childhood then runs into an extremely turgid account of his court case with the other members of The Smiths, where arguments concerning ownership of songs and royalties reared their ugly heads.  This occupies a large chunk of the book and the reader gets caught up in Morrissey's rage at how he perceives he has been abused by the legal system.  To be fair, the reader can never know what the experience did to him and the rights and wrongs of the case.  But in dealing with the 'facts', he represses the true feelings that the court case must have brought up from his past.

Discussing Morrissey's Autobiography brings to mind other autobiographies where the authors take themselves as far as they can in exploring some horrible truths about the past then hold back either for the sake of their sanity or to prevent retribution.  I am particularly thinking of Pete Townshend's Who I Am and Kathy Burke's A Mind of My Own.  Townshend's autobiography (and indeed, his musical oeuvre at times) hints at childhood abuse by a figure close to him.  The trajectory of his autobiography pushes so close to identifying the individual but then pushes back.  As a whole, his autobiography is a work of gentle catharsis but warrants the question, at what point is repression more valuable than revelation?  By revealing all, are your leaving yourself open to personal destruction?  The self totally revealed, a damaged psyche and no safety net (after all, there is a safety net in song lyrics, which can be abstract, but prose is far more intrusive or can be).

Kathy Burke also talks about one or more abusive relationships, which she offers to the reader to explore and possibly explain her motivations and choices at various points in her life.  Again, she does not name the guilty but makes it clear that they exist and in doing so helps other people who may have been in coercive relationships to either seek help or to come to terms with the essential truth that relationships can be damaging with the wrong people.  As such, leaving a narcissistic personality type or abusive individual may present a chance to grow and recover.

A very unusual and oddly, revelatory type of 'biography' exists where a writer takes an actual figure, reinvents a key moment or moments in their life, whilst framing the whole thing as a work of fiction.  One supremely powerful example of this is Benjamin Myers' Jesus Christ Kinski, where the 'fictional' writer in the book documents the actor, Klaus Kinski's short lived tour of a production focusing on the life of Jesus Christ (from Klaus Kinski's perspective).  The work is framed and juxtaposed with the 'fictional' writer describing his own life as he creates this work and moves house etc.  As such, the 'fictional' writer imposes his own version of Klaus Kinski as he struggles with his performance and the audience (one of the shows was filmed) and his own life.  Somewhere, on the outside of this seemingly meta-autobiography or narrative, we have the actual writer, Benjamin Myers who is either every character in this 'novel' or nowhere at all.

In a similar vein is Zawe Ashton's Character Breakdown that presents certain events as stories that may or may not be from her own past.  Beautifully realised fragments of a creative psyche.  In many respects, developed as an actor might break down and reconstruct their chosen role to reflect aspects of themselves.

This leads me to the essential question of how truthful can any form of biography or autobiography be?  After all, the creative subject in whatever medium they are using is relying on memory, which changes over time and can be reconfigured to exemplify the chosen moment or to make the present more bearable (the past can weigh heavily at times on an individual's current actions).  If an autobiography can be construed as an attempt to layer meaning on seemingly incongruous and occasionally, more meaningful events, isn't the author partaking in their own form of fiction or at least, mythologizing their own lives?

Ultimately, why do you want to be remembered and what will be your legacy?

                                                                                                     Barry Watt - 26th January 2026.  

Afterword.

Now as is often the case when I finish writing a blog, it never feels finished.  I suddenly remembered a number of other autobiographies I could have included such as pretty much everything Blake Morrison has written, Bob Dylan's autobiography and so many others.  But nonetheless, the other point, I want to mention is the fact that I seem to have forgotten about the idea of the 'ghost writer'.  What if the books we are reading that are purportedly reading have been written with the help of someone else does that then render the so-called 'autobiography' as something less authentic and honest?  Also unless it is made clear, how can we differentiate if the work has been written with someone else?  Okay, there are writers with distinctive voices such as Bob Dylan and Patti Smith but what about all of the others?  I would argue that it probably doesn't matter so long as the content is truthful and effectively authorised by the subject of the writer.  Although, the prospect of artificial intelligence being applied to people's pasts scarily brings up dystopian visions of a society gone awry.  It could happen.  Maybe, 'ghost writers' are a bad idea.

Anyhow, the books mentioned in this blog are:

Robbie Robertson - Testimony (Windmill Books)

Patti Smith - Just Kids (Bloomsbury)

Morrissey - Autobiography (Penguin Modern Classics)

Pete Townshend - Who I Am (HarperCollins)

Kathy Burke - A Mind of My Own (Gallery UK)

Benjamin Myers - Jesus Christ Kinski (Bloomsbury)

Zawe Ashton - Character Breakdown (Vintage)

I recommend the above books (well mostly, although maybe skim read the court case section of Morrissey's book).

                                                                                    Barry Watt - 8th February 2026.

Photo.

     

    

An image from my life.  

Make of it what you will.

                                                                         Barry Watt - 8th February 2026.

    

  

The Whale Bone, The Theatre and Your Father's Reality.

I was at the Barbican Theatre the other day watching an excellent production of Moby Dick (produced by Plexus Polaire).  Prior to the production commencing, the audience could see what appeared to be a whale bone at the back of the stage.

One row behind me in the audience, a boy asked his Dad (I assumed based on the conversations I overheard and their degree of familiarity that their relationship was father and son) if the whale bone was real.  His Dad responded, "don't assume that anything in the theatre is real".

If you know me at all and even if you don't, let's just say that this statement has acted as a red rag to a bull.  So let's begin...

Reality and realism are two of the most hotly contested philosophical concepts.  Almost as popular and open to debate as existential concepts exploring the meaning of life.  Well, for the purposes of this blog, I am going to summarise reality as any experience of any given moment by either a living, dead or inanimate person, creature or object.

So if we accept my admittedly basic summation of reality as lived or unlived experience, the young man's Dad is attending the theatre and experiencing its possible delights and offerings in a way that may detract from his future memories of the theatrical experience.  This could be his reality.  I am not assuming that will always be the case but for some reason, he has chosen to somehow differentiate his theatrical experience from his walk to work or his experience of a plate of corn flakes.  I don't think that you can.

For me, theatre is as much a part of my lived experience and reality as brushing my hair or reading a book.  In fact, theatre is more of a rewarding experience than many aspects of reality because it is a communal experience, even though as is the case with every other aspect of life, we experience it in our own way.

Let's use the example of Plexus Polaire's production of Moby Dick the other night to explore how if anything, theatre can even heighten our sense of reality.  It can transport us from the mundane to the sublime.

I arrived in the theatre and sat down.  On this occasion, I didn't see the safety curtain/barrier open (the Barbican Theatre's safety curtain/barrier is arguably the most impressive one I have seen.  It's a metal reflective surface that separates, half of it goes to the top of the stage and half of it descends into the front of the stage), but I did get to experience the sensation of gazing at the stage, taking in the details of the 'whale bone' at the back of the stage and the musical instruments to either side of the stage, which included an electric guitar and a double bass etc.

The audience behind me chatted happily and the person alongside me complimented me on the fact that I had the most central ticket in the front row as it offers the most immediate sight line of a production.  It's not always the best position, particularly if the stage is higher, but for most theatres, if you want to feel as though you are engaging with the proceedings on stage, it's a good place to sit.  Just watch our for the actors' saliva if you are watching a play by Shakespeare or even an angry scene from a play by Tennessee Williams.

When the play started, music, movement, puppetry and song were framed by the narration of a character who in many respects served the role of an 'Everyman' style figure; a point of connection between the audience and the future action on stage.

The whale bone in the shape of a horseshoe became the symbolic basis for Captain Ahab's ship and also the central focus for other theatrical devices.  Also Captain Ahab (as represented by a puppet) was alternately huge in size or much smaller depending on his proximity to the audience and his perceived sense of omnipotence.  

Puppetry was an intrinsically important aspect of this production and there were several beautiful and memorable scenes including the scenes involving the whales swimming against a constantly changing backdrop, conveyed by lighting and projection etc.

My favourite scene and I hasten to add not because of its horror but because of its emotional tenderness, involved the visceral image (represented by puppetry) of a whale being stripped of its flesh, whilst a young whale swam around, possibly its mother or father.  The scene depicted the fact that the whaling industry was (and I guess occasionally still is) dependant on processing the whales at the point of the kill.  It's an industry like any other and the sperm oil was very valuable and used in perfumes etc.

When the performance ended essentially after another narration, the audience applauded and the performers came out a couple of times acknowledging the positive engagement from the audience and gesticulating towards the other people involved in the making of the production.

Okay, that was my remembered experience.  There were a lot more details that I have chosen to keep to myself, in case you get to see the show if it tours, but let's return to my original summation of reality as any experience of any given moment, in this case by an individual, me.

For me, theatre at its most rewarding can engage on an emotional, philosophical, physical and visual level.  

By its very nature, theatre is sensory.  It engages all of the senses of perception.  If you experience any issues with your senses, it won't make your experience any less enjoyable but it will change how you engage with the proceedings on stage.  My sister and I once saw a performance in the dark (Tutto Bene, Mamma? at the Print Room in London), where we were led to our seats and were not aware of the physical mise-en-scene until the lights were turned on at the end of the play.  We could hear and even smell the events as they happened on stage (the audience were seated around the performance space) but we could not see them.  Also it made our experience of the actors entirely different as we couldn't see them and they didn't come out at the end.  But we could feel their movement in the air and their vibrations.

Our sensory perceptions are augmented by the lighting on stage, regularly directing your attention to what the director and production team want you to focus on.  Of course, as an audience member, you may be drawn to something else.  This is your experience.  If you want to focus on a detail, as it may bring back a memory of something else, you go ahead and do this.

Emotional engagement is another crucial aspect of the reality of the theatrical moment.  I saw a production of Lorca's Blood Wedding at the Young Vic in 1996 and was held mesmerised by scattered flower petals that covered the stage area at the end of the first half and for the majority of the interval.  For me, they encapsulated the sense of loss and emotional damage that pervades the play and also helped me to explore my own lived experiences around this time.

The theatre can also be highly educational, philosophical or moral.  The theatre troupes or companies are trying to convey a message.  In the case of Moby Dick, the reiterated idea that obsession can be very unhealthy.  To try to conquer or destroy from a position of anger and rage will undoubtedly leave you ruined.  The complexity of the human condition can be represented on stage in a way that allows the audience to feel more or less safe in its engagement with the events unfolding before it.  

As is the case with other artistic forms, the reality we experience when we sit in the dark or light is ultimately, our reality.  We can be shocked if something in the production incites or arouses a reaction from us.  For example, The Years at the Almeida Theatre in London resulted in a number of the audience members experiencing sickness etc throughout the production's run because of certain aspects of the play, most notably, a fairly graphic depiction of the aftermath of an abortion.  Also the highly intelligent, detailed and mature exploration of the emotions and sensations that a woman would experience in the situation could be triggering if anyone has gone through the same experiences.

It intrigues me these days, how trigger warnings are added to the theatre websites to give the audience an idea as to what they can expect to experience when they see a play.

Theatre may be mediated reality at times, but what it does and on many occasions does so well, is to offer an alternative way to view the world.  It can translate memories, imagination and lived experiences into a pure and immediate form.

Your theatrical experience, young father with your child is not mine.  Your experience of reality is your own, but next time your son asks you if the whale bone is real, the answer is yes, someone has made a symbolic representation of a whale bone or jaw as you chose to perceive it.  It may not be an actual bone formed of calcium etc but it stands for a whale, a ship and an industry that resulted in mass extinction.  It symbolises death, yet also in this theatrical experience, a new beginning, a hope that through this theatrical moment, a lesson can be learnt.

I am at the theatre and I am living my best life.

                                                                                                    Barry Watt - 27th January 2025.   

Afterword.

Plexus Polaire are an amazing theatre company.  Please see their website below for photos from their version of Moby Dick and other productions.  It's in French but you can translate using Google etc:

Plexus Polaire

Moby Dick was originally a novel by Herman Melville.  It's available in so many editions.  Any references to characters etc from the novel are copyright and are used for illustrative purposes.

The other productions and plays referenced in this blog are copyright.  The Years has transferred to the West End of London for a short season and is well worth seeing:

The Years | Official Box Office | Harold Pinter Theatre

                                                                                                                                           BW.

Photo (My photo of the whale bone in Plexus Polaire's production of Moby Dick).

Whale bone in Moby Dick.

                                                                               BW.

'What are veins for?' - A Gentle Appreciation of Nurses & Nursing.

Yesterday, on my way home, I overheard a little boy asking his sister (probably) a question as they clambered up the stairs of my local station.  The question was 'What are veins for?'  She thought about it a bit and he asked her some other questions such as 'Where are the veins in your body?' 

The initial question was of interest to me mainly because I am lucky enough to have met and I continue to know a number of nurses through my work.

Nurses represent to me and I am sure the patients, the humanistic aspects of the health sector.  They are the empathetic life support when people are suffering or concerned with their bodies and minds.  They are both a balm for the illnesses that an individual may be suffering and for their minds.

Significantly, nurses take and they give.  As human beings, we rarely give as much as we do to nurses.  We give our life fluids, our blood and other substances.  They take them and begin to process them, ensuring that doctors etc can perform any future curative or preventative miracles with the aid of pharmacists etc.  Nurses also provide many of the treatments.

Nurses are to me the face of non-judgemental acceptance.  When someone is drunk or stoned, potentially aggressive or seriously upset, they are there for them.  They can be at risk, but they still place themselves potentially in harm's way to help another person.

During the early outbreaks of Covid, as the general public in the United Kingdom were clapping and banging kitchen utensils in honour of the NHS at various points, I was thinking of everyone working in the NHS but particularly the clinicians.  I ended up during Covid being lucky enough to be redeployed to a wellbeing hub where I got to see a number of staff and to talk to them.  Many of the nurses kept their own counsel, preferring to keep their feelings concerning Covid to themselves.

I regularly stand on the sidelines and wonder who cares for the nurses?  Of course, significant others, families and friends but what about within their working environments?  They are regularly underpaid, expected to pay for their own career progression and provide far too many hours of extra work, owing to principles of duty of care and their intrinsic giving natures.

I have seen nurses very stressed and I have wanted to hug them.  All I can do in my capacity within the hierarchical structure of the NHS is to do what I would hopefully do with anyone.  I try to empathise and would definitely gently suggest to the nurse that they give themselves a break.  One cannot continue to give without looking after your own wellbeing.  Human beings do not possess the ability to continue to help others without first satisfying our own needs.

But I also want to add that nurses are as varied as any other member of the healthcare profession.  Their characteristics and approach defined by their humanity, training and situation.  Not all nurses have to demonstratively convey their respect and love for the patients in an obvious way.  Sometimes, detachment is more necessary, providing the care continues.  For example, if a patient is aggressive and must still be treated, the safety of the nurse and/or healthcare professional is paramount.

The side to nurses I have been fortunate enough to see (other than the aforementioned empathy and compassion) is the sense of camaraderie that exists between them.  They can be like a group of friends getting lost together in an unthreatening environment far from home.  Giggling and sharing intimacies to relieve the stresses of their jobs.

Many of the nurses I have met are fiercely creative and I have spent many a quality moment in their companies both inside and outside of work.

This is a celebration of nurses, but it is also a reminder to look out for them.  Nurses are human beings, they live, love and suffer like everyone else.  They are subject to fluctuations of mood, physical ailments and mental illness.

If you see a nurse, ask how they are doing and smile at them if that's how you are feeling.  They grow through compassion and understanding.  We can all grow through feeling more connected and less isolated.

Nurses have helped me to understand myself a bit better.  They provide a metaphorical mirror to my personality and feelings.  They help me to safely explore my sense of self and I will continue to be grateful for everything they do.

So 'What are veins for?'  They help to move the deoxygenated blood back to the heart.  To me, they are a reminder that we are alive and that nurses can find them when they need to.

Nurses are the circulatory system of the NHS, don't hold them back or misuse them.  Their professional and emotional growth enables the treatment and care of others.

If I can be anything to the nursing team in my place of work, I hope that I am like a hug.  A point of human contact, an act of union, an acknowledgment of their qualities.  A mutual smile in an occasionally, dark place.

                                                                                        Barry Watt - 24th November 2024.

Photo.

This rose is for nurses everywhere.


                                                                               BW.

'The Substance' - A Lesson in Being Yourself with Someone You Half Remember.

The Substance is a film about the choices that we make and their physical and moral repercussions.

Elizabeth Sparkle (played by Demi Moore) is a well known aerobics personality on television who is liked by all.  This love is tempered by the fact that she is fifty years old and her age effectively renders her obsolete within a media industry that prefers their image makers to be young, sexy and pliable to suggestion.

Through a series of unfortunate events, she has an accident then ends up losing her job, she finds the substance of the title or more accurately, it finds her.  The USB stick being the seed for her future transformations (it provides information on how to obtain the substance after playing to the viewer's perceived feelings of inadequacy).

The substance effectively allows the creation of another perfect you, noticibly younger, but the one important lesson is that you and the other you are one.  Also you take it in turns to look after the other you as you are each allowed seven days to live your life, the other you ends up effectively unconscious for a week and has to be kept fed.

Now the first thing that the viewer notices is the location where the substance is picked up (refills also have to be picked up from there too).  On the outside, it is an alley which has seen far better days, but once the key card activates the entrance, the buyer enters an incredibly white and modern room with essentially lots of P.O. Boxes.  These are again accessed with the key card.  You take the box and follow the instructions when you get home but importantly, with one later exception, you go and pick up the drug (the later occasion involves a home delivery, the reason for this, I won't spoil).  It's always your choice.  Thinking back again on the crucial juxtaposition of the poverty and grime of the alley and the purity of the pick up point, the film is possibly reiterating the paradox of everyday life, we are always one step away from an infection, virus or disease of one sort or another, despite the rituals of cleanliness that we undertake.

Anyway, once Elizabeth begins the process after losing her job etc, Sue (played by Margaret Qualley) is born.

The birth of Sue is probably the most shocking sequence in the film.  She effectively emerges from Elizabeth's back.  An earlier sequence in the film involves a doctor after Elizabeth's accident effectively checking her flesh around the spinal area in the same way that you may assess the suitability of cattle or a piece of meat by pinching/massaging the flesh.  This act is clearly to ascertain her viability for the substance but we are not aware of this fact at that point.

I was curious by the decision to use the back for the birth.  Obviously, most regularly, births are vaginal with the exception of Caesarean and other births that may require surgery.  But from a narrative perspective, the speed of the metabolic growth of the perfect you results in the need for a large enough orifice to facilitate the emergence of an adult human being into the world.  I am sure that there is a symbolic significance to this idea.  From a religious perspective, Eve was apparently created out of one of Adam's ribs, but I strongly feel that the back marks the part of the body that you are least familiar with, the unseen (except in reflection).

Another idea that struck me is how similar the casting off of Elizabeth's body for Sue to be born resembles the imago stage when an insect metamorphosis into its final adult form (although, in this case, Elizabeth remains alive and it's not the final stage in Elizabeth's development as we shall later see).

Once Sue is 'born', Elizabeth who provides the matrix body in their symbiotic relationship at this point, is then effectively rendered semi-unconscious for seven days, so Sue has to suture the birth wound and then perform other clinical processes (lots of injections to make sure that Elizabeth doesn't die).  The same is true after seven days when the two switch (Sue becomes semi-unconscious and Elizabeth is responsible for caring for Sue). 

From a psychological perspective, it is interesting how the first time, Elizabeth in her semi-unconscious state sees Sue, is in a mirror.  In Lacan's psychoanalytic theory, the first time a child identifies that it is different from the world outside it and from its parents etc rather than maintaining the narcissitic belief that everything is part of the child's life revolves around the so-called 'mirror stage' in a child's development.  In this film, it's a literal mirror.

Sue is the perfect version of Elizabeth and effectively ends up replacing her in her television slot.  A new and intriguingly, even more sexualised version of Elizabeth's previous aerobics show.

Without giving everything away and returning this blog to the themes that interested me, the use of the substance goes very badly wrong.  The message, 'You are one' goes unheeded.

At its most pertinent, this is a film that questions societal assumptions about beauty and even more crucially, how we co-exist with our perceived notions of our past selves.  Throughout the film, Elizabeth is assailed by images of her past self looking beautiful and younger.  Even Sue, the new version of her is simply an idealised version of who Elizabeth once perceived herself to be.  The links between this film and 'The Portrait Of Dorian Gray' by Oscar Wilde are being liberally explored everywhere but let's return to one of the  underlying themes of the film, is it possible to integrate perceived memories of the younger you with the present you.  Are you the same person, despite the physical changes?  Do we ever really change psychologically?

I suspect that the lesson provided by the film is that the changes are possibly not as huge as we may believe them to be.  Our childhood needs still inform our adult desires.  Those attributes of Sue that the viewer may find despicable, such as the need to be the centre of attention even if Elizabeth has to suffer for the vanity, is probably no different to Elizabeth's past behaviour patterns.  After all, Elizabeth is 'one' with Sue.

The final transformation of Elizabeth and Sue into something so-called 'monstrous' becomes a metaphor for the importance of consolidating our understanding of our past sense of self with our current self.  The merged form is potentially the most beautiful because it has the greatest capacity for becoming something new.  A point of acceptance.  Reaching desperately for the past rather than allowing for the fact that our younger selves are still part of us, helps to instigate many a mid-life crisis (unfortunately, it doesn't work out in this film.  Elizabeth becomes something else).

Ultimately, like Elizabeth Sparkle, what will remain of us will be signs, signifiers and memories in other peoples' minds.  The star on the Walk of Fame may soon become an inscription on a piece of stone.

If this film has one coherent moral, it is to live your life freely without the need for external agents or objects of change.  Your mind is the focal point for learning and change; your body, a transient, ever mutating extension of the unknowable forces that drive us.  Respect your body but more crucially, nurture your mind.

If 'you are one', let one matter.

                                                                                                Barry Watt - 27th September 2024. 

Afterword. 

The Substance is currently screening in a number of cinemas and is definitely worth seeing.  It was directed by Coralie Fargeat.  This blog only touches the surface of the many subjects I could have explored in relation to the film.  Intriguingly, when I stumbled on the idea of the imago, in connection with the metamorphosis of insects, I also learnt that there is a form of relationship therapy called Imago Relationship Therapy developed by Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, which explores the notion that we may select partners based on childhood needs and views etc.  As such, this form of therapy explores present issues in relation to past memories and events etc.  In many respects, using this psychoanalytic model also opens up this beautifully constructed film, so off you go!

The quotes from the film and the ideas/plot elements are copyright to the individuals and companies connected with the film.

Lacan's 'mirror stage' is like many psychoanalytic concepts subject to continual debate.  Jacques Lacan first posited his theory at the Fourteenth International Psychoanalytical Congress at Marienbad in 1936.  He developed the theory throughout his life.  I am not an expert and I apologise if my distillation of the theory has simplified it.  Lacan is quite a difficult writer to understand, so possibly, get yourself an introductory book to his life and works.  I am working from memory and a brief scan of Wikipedia (Thanks, Wikipedia).  

'The Portrait of Dorian Gray' was written by Oscar Wilde and is well worth reading but does not offer very much in connection with this film.

                                                                                                                                               BW.

Photograph.

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The Substance promotional poster.  

Used to illustrate the blog but used

without permission).

                                                                                                                        BW