# The Substance

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/don-t-you-dare-to-think-out-loud-6458124/the-substance
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/don-t-you-dare-to-think-out-loud-6458124/the-substance.md
Podcast: [Don't You Dare To Think Out Loud!](https://stenobird.com/podcast/don-t-you-dare-to-think-out-loud-6458124)
Published: 2025-11-02T12:26:54+00:00
Episode link: https://javiertruben.substack.com/p/the-substance
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/177789606/c8359390c421e7a5f84ea2558d55846e.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/don-t-you-dare-to-think-out-loud-6458124/episodes/the-substance
Duration seconds: 598

## Resource

Physical beauty must be the most bitter of gifts because it carries the seed of its own destruction, and its absence mortifies more than any. We all more or less know how the young and handsome Dorian Gray had problems to deal with this, and whoever does not should stop listening this literary podcast right now, shake off the mental sloth, and dust off the master of paradoxes, the great Oscar Wilde, who remains still undefeated a century later, so unparalleled and unique was his genius. Some French film director has lifted a big fuss with a movie that shamelessly pinched that character from Wilde–they call plagiarism now to be inspired by–changed the gender in order to cater to a feminine audience and moved Dorian Gray from Victorian London to the show business in LA. Coralie Fargeat, the director and writer of this satirical film, had the audacity to convince one of the most iconic movie stars of the 90s, Demi Moore, to take on the lead role. This meant portraying her as an old, broken toy of cable TV, but not in a way we’ve ever seen before. No, this was a fresh take on Demi Moore, one that showed her naked, humiliated, and degraded in front of the last of the nepotistic babies, Margaret Qualley, the daughter of curly Andie MacDowell—remember Sex, Lies, and Videotape ? I forced myself to watch twice this true horrorshow, this cinematic nightmare, and the only thing I missed were those eyelid clamps that a young Malcom McDowell was forced to wear in A Clockwork Orange . Because the first act is just brilliant and highly recommended. Instead the lavish beginning of Dorian Gray, we see a conceptual episode: a raw egg and a hand with a syringe with a magical substance in fluorescent yellow that it infuses in the egg yolk. Then, after a second, the yolk duplicates with a…

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## Transcript

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