Why the Oscars battle between The Substance and Anora is so ironic

The film has garnered widespread acclaim, with the Academy announcing this afternoon (23rd January) that it has earned six nominations at this year's Oscars – with Madison tipped by some to win for Best Actress.

You’ll understand, then, why I had high expectations going in to this film. A feminist triumph that flips the classic Cinderella story on its head? Count me in.

However, when I settled in to watch Anora – feet up, popcorn in hand – and the opening scene consisted entirely of a voyeuristic long shot of stark naked women strip-dancing to a cheesy Take That song, I realised that the film wasn't quite the feminist statement I'd been led to believe.

Immediately, the film fails to analyse its protagonist. Ani’s character feels shallow and lacks nuance. Yes, she's a 20-something, hot-headed, naive sex worker – but what else is she?

Despite its 139-minute runtime, of which there are some painfully long, not-very-much-happening moments, we somehow get very little exploration of Ani herself. She is seen in the strip club, she is seen in bed with Ivan, she is seen mourning the breakdown of her month-long marriage.

We know very little of her history (past one brief mention), how she found herself in sex work, what she thinks about her job, what she does on her off days. What we do see, though, is Ani having sex. Lots of it.

Perhaps we don’t need to know everything about our protagonists, and it’s their mystery that makes them interesting. But it remains almost laughable that we learn ostensibly more about Ivan’s life than our titular character’s.

It also seems an odd decision that the character of Igor, who spent the first half of the film tying Ani up while she screamed "rape" (hilarious, am I right?), is the one who facilitates Ani’s eventual realisation, not herself.

There are one or two saving graces in the first and final acts, though, and if it wasn’t for Mikey Madison’s remarkable performance (the great saviour of the film), these scenes would likely have lacked any real impact. Madison shines when she’s actually given material to work with, rather than being stuck as the punchline of a rich man’s joke.

It’s a shame that Ani couldn’t have been a fully realised character throughout Anora. While the film holds potential, the problem with Anora is that it is ultimately self-destructive.

Director Sean Baker has long been known for his preoccupations with sex workers and his exploration of the misconceptions surrounding them. I cannot and will not speak for his other films, having not seen his entire filmography, so it’s possible that his other movies effectively and respectfully destigmatise sex work, but in the case of Anora, it feels like yet another case of a male director designing his underdeveloped female characters primarily for the male gaze.

I’ve been told that to tell a story about sex workers we simply must include scenes of eroticism. "But sex workers take their clothes off! It makes sense. How else could it have been done?" And yes, in some cases, that might be true. But it doesn’t have to be done in such a male-centric, voyeuristic way – and Janicza Bravo's 2020 black comedy Zola stands as a prime example of how to approach the subject of sex work without resorting to that lens.

I have long been vocal about how I think Zola is a well constructed tale of sex workers. In Zola, sex workers are not superficial – they are interesting, funny, fully-rounded, distinctive individuals that, despite the short runtime (40 minutes shorter than Anora), we grow to care about.

Even the borderline villainous Stefani (Riley Keough) has emotionally charged nuances, despite her unfavourable actions.

Unlike Anora, Zola features nudity that is exclusively male – it's only Stefani’s clients who are shown undressed. In the brief scenes where Zola (Taylour Paige) and Stefani engage in sexual acts, these moments are framed as expressions of power for the women involved. Zola was clearly designed by Bravo with a female-centric gaze in mind, not a male one. (Because, yes, Anora, men get naked too.)

Indeed, it appears now, with this year’s Academy Award nominations officially confirmed, that Anora's lead is going head-to-head with the other critically-acclaimed female-fronted film of the year – The Substance.

For those who somehow managed to miss this wildly surreal, culturally significant film, it follows Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), an ageing Hollywood actress who discovers that she can relive her youth and maintain her fame by taking a black-market drug aptly named 'The Substance'.

In The Substance, writer and director Coralie Fargeat reflects poignantly on Hollywood’s treatment of women over 50 – women with wrinkled foreheads and sagging skin, women who've been told so often that they are no longer beautiful that they tragically start to believe it.

Yes, there is nudity. Yes, there is sexuality. But Fargeat does not waste time open-mouthed, drooling over the bodies of her female characters – nor does she invite her audience to.

Instead, she comments explicitly and expertly on how women’s bodies have been relentlessly overanalysed, overshamed and oversexualised by society, specifically the entertainment industry, while infusing her characters with intricate personalities, deep imperfections and vivid distinction.

Moreover, it is also a quiet stroke of brilliance that Fargeat chose to cast Demi Moore, a woman who has long been scrutinised under a microscope of misogyny ("a popcorn actress," as Moore recently revealed she was called by an unnamed producer), in the lead role.

As someone who understands Hollywood's disparity between youth and ageing better than most, Moore's performance only deepens the meaning of The Substance – not that it wasn’t already powerful. (The scene where Elisabeth hysterically puts on and wipes off her make-up is one particular moment that even I have lived through, and haven’t been able to shake since my first viewing.)

It’s striking that the two films vying for Best Actress in a Leading Role are, one, a borderline pornographic tale of a young, beautiful woman, and the other, a commentary on how women shouldn’t have to be young, hot and naked to get a job. The irony is glaring.

Now, this isn’t at all to pit Madison and Moore against each other, for it would be a huge disservice to do so. Both women were magnificent in their roles – and both are deserving of kudos. But if Madison is to triumph over Moore at this year’s Oscars, Hollywood is doing little more than proving every last point of The Substance right.

This discourse is nothing new, though. In fact, just last year, Emma Stone won her second Oscar for portraying Bella Baxter in Yorgos Lanthimos's Poor Things – a child-brained, female Frankenstein's-monster-turned-sex-worker disguised as a figure of feminist liberation.

While Stone received widespread acclaim for her performance, many seemed to overlook the fact that her journey to 'liberation' is almost entirely defined by sex. That’s not to say there’s anything inherently wrong with sex scenes – in fact, if they are done right, they can at times be crucial to a film’s storytelling – but by the time the fifth, sixth, or seventh raunchy scene flashes on screen, it’s hard not to view it as gratuitous.

In a disturbingly similar fashion to Anora, Poor Things' male creators conflate the reality of feminism with the male illusion of feminism, and the film suffers from a serious lack of understanding of the female experience.

At its core, this discussion reflects a broader issue within the Academy itself that has long been posited – the male-centric, anti-feminist mentality that shapes how we view media, rooted in the belief that 'if a girl likes it, it’s probably bad'.

Society’s obsessive focus on female sexuality and women’s bodies is entrenched, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that this is a deeply ingrained problem, one that may be impossible to fully change – sex will always sell.

However, it’s important that we continue to scrutinise so-called "feminist" media and hold it accountable for its shortcomings.

It remains to be seen who will take home the coveted golden trophy on 3rd March – only time will tell. But I, for one, will be sat on my sofa at 3am with my fingers crossed on the big night, praying that the Academy will "respect the balance". (Though there's always a chance Fernanda Torres might bag the award, and all of this will be futile...)

Anora is available to rent or buy on Apple TV and Prime Video. The Substance is available to watch on Prime Video.

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