Botox’s false hope: A film promising to make you your best self
“It’s kind of like that frog being boiled slowly, you don’t really know you’re in a cult until you’re like ‘whoa, what happened?’” says the creator of a new film project interrogating cult wellness trends.
Influencers and wellness movements are selling false hope behind Botox, exercise regimes and LED face masks.
This idea is at the crux of a new film project from the Adelaide Film Festival’s Expand Lab called 5 STEPS FOR BETTER LIVING, MAXIMUM GAINS AND MANIFESTING YOUR MOST OPTIMISED SELF!!
Much of the show’s content, as evident in its title – a riff on what you would find headlining podcasts and YouTube videos – is satirical, but creator Yasemin Sabuncu says it’s not making fun.
“It’s not that anyone is not smart for falling for these things; we’ve all fallen for it ourselves. The wellness industry has lied to us and sold us false hope,” she says.
“People look for answers and people look for meaning, and these sorts of industries and people prey on people’s insecurities and their problems and try to solve that by coming up with these philosophies and ways of being that are actually quite dangerous and unsustainable.
“It’s kind of like that frog being boiled slowly, you don’t really know you’re in a cult until you’re like ‘whoa, what happened?’”
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Yasemin and co-creators Nisa East and Anna Lindner conceptualised the project in the Expand Lab program – a professional development initiative for 30 creatives to develop film projects – and were awarded the Festival and Samstag $100,000 Moving Image Commission to bring it to life.
Until December 5, the 23-minute film is played on a continuous loop at UniSA’s Samstag gallery. Yasemin says you can join the non-ticketed screening at any time and take something different away from it.
Two screens are positioned opposite each other in the gallery with seating in between, meaning when viewers sit, they will have their backs to one of the screens.
Yasemin describes the project as a film installation experience to “create a space that feels like how it is online, there can be echo chambers and almost like a universe in and of itself”.
When Yasemin, Nisa and Anna began workshopping their idea in 2023, they were seeing a model of manhood held up and distributed by the manosphere – digital forums that promote masculinity and misogyny in opposition to feminism.
“We were noticing that men now have to live up to the false ideals of this perfection that women have been living with for so long,” she says.
“Not to say that alternative health and this stuff isn’t helpful, but for those kind of people in the manosphere, we wanted to show who stands to benefit.
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“Even though there is some dark humour – some of the things in the manosphere are a bit ridiculous – it’s dangerous for both men and women and the male gaze is actually turned back on men.”
The film follows characters like the winner man, the conspiracy theorist, the biohacker and the looksmaxxer, with Anna and Yasemin playing most of the characters in drag.
“We have the sovereign woman, which Anna plays, and then I’m the evangelical wife of the winner man.
“We wanted to show that the manosphere is not just men, it’s also women and their proximity to masculinity as well.”
Yasemin says she’s not surprised that in the time since they started the project the manosphere has been heightened.
“The ground was laid, it was just going to get worse over time because of algorithms, cost of living and living in a more destructive world,” she says.
Adelaide Film Festival CEO and Creative Director Mat Kesting says 5 STEPS FOR BETTER LIVING, MAXIMUM GAINS AND MANIFESTING YOUR MOST OPTIMISED SELF is “a fearless and darkly funny reflection on the pressures of modern life and the pursuit of ‘perfection”.
“Adelaide Film Festival is proud to support artists who challenge, provoke and expand our understanding of contemporary culture,” he says.
“We’re thrilled to present this ambitious work as part of our 2025 program and to invite audiences to experience it at Samstag Museum of Art.”
5 STEPS FOR BETTER LIVING, MAXIMUM GAINS AND MANIFESTING YOUR MOST OPTIMISED SELF is free and playing at Gallery 2, Samstag Museum of Art until December 5.
