One of the biggest advantages of being an editor is that sometimes you can use your voice to comment on what you consider to be an injustice or a blunder, and today is one of those days for me, because I’m going to play a theme that has been in my head since the moment I saw one of the most acclaimed films of this year on the big screen: The whale.
A little warning before getting down to business: if you have any kind of eating disorderI strongly recommend that you avoid watching this movie and given the content of this article, you may not want to read any further either.
This film directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Brendan Fraser has managed to sneak into the favorites at the Oscars, finally winning two statuettes: a well-deserved award for Fraser rescued from oblivion and for best makeup. And this is where all the alarms have gone off, because among other things, we are talking about reward the use of a fatsuit in full 2023.
Of course, we do not want to detract from the creators of this very realistic characterization, it is a great job (objectively speaking) but if alreadythe message of this film is tremendously fatphobic -as I will analyze later- including this type of costume is quite discriminatory. I’m sure there are plenty of fat actors who could play that role without resorting to disguise, waiting for an opportunity in an industry where they have virtually no opening.
I’m sure there are plenty of fat actors who could play that role without resorting to disguise, waiting for an opportunity in an industry where they have virtually no opening.
And it is because he fatsuit has been used throughout the history of film and television mockingly or even violently, ridiculing and spotlighting all fat people as an easy target. Something that has increased since social networks are part of our lives, directly affecting the mental health of many people in this group, already punished for years.
Why we should leave behind the use of the fatsuit
The sad reality is that we have seen the fat suit many times, especially in movies and comedy series. Examples from years ago, which are still in our retina, like Monica Geller’s in Friends – to which this image of uncontrollable gluttony was associated and which Chandler rejected solely because of his physique – or even more recently in the controversial case of The one that is coming with a humiliating representation of fat people, which viralized protests of all kinds on twitter.
Freaking out that in 2022 a fatsuit will be used to continue making the joke with the fat. I thought this level of fatphobia was in the past (Monica on Friends) and we agreed it was wrong, but no, once again fatphobia is still a joke. pic.twitter.com/ABWY2I5syk
— 𝔸𝕤𝕙𝕝𝕒 𝕎𝕖𝕒𝕤𝕝𝕖𝕪 🪄 (@AshlaHeartfilia) November 19, 2022
The actress and the crew justified this use of the fatsuit with Miren’s pregnancy but the truth is that there are a thousand and one ways to hide it, without resorting to this disguise (especially taking into account scenes as humiliating as that of the character crying on the ground unable to get up, perpetuating the ableist cliché that considers fat people lazy and weak).
just what we have seen The whalea film that tried to make us aware of the lives of people with obesity, but which has finally turned out to be a violent story, with little tact and with a rather reductionist picture of an eating disorder. It focuses on blaming the patient, in this case Charlie, whose binge eating disorder increased as a result of a very painful loss, without taking into account the psychological factor.
We see this clearly in the use of close-ups when he eats, the sweat, the friend’s or daughter’s faces when they see him swallow, are examples of a very harsh approach that confirms that what the director wanted was not to raise awareness about reality, but rather to create repulsion. We do not imagine this type of faces or behaviors with other disorders, nor the load of culpability towards the person who suffers it, without the slightest compassion.
The opinion of experts and activists on the subject
When the movie ended, I wasn’t able to verbalize why or what was wrong, but I knew something was wrong. I felt sad, terrified and very upsetas if they were insulting me in some way – I didn’t even comment on it even with my friends when I was leaving the cinema – and it wasn’t until a few days later, when Andrea Compton described the same thing on her Instagram profile that I felt I could put words to my feelings.
The youtuber and podcast creator was so sensitive to the subject that went to the Idolo awards themselves with a skirt that denounced precisely the use of this type of costume as if it were a disguise. Like me, at the time she could not express what she felt when watching the movie and she did it through the opinion of a psychologist fatophobia expert, Ana Pau Molina, in which she explains quite clearly why we should stop wearing this type of suit on television.
Ana, among other reflections, dismisses the film (and the director, to whom the inspiration came after suffering a “bad streak” in which he gained some weight) of little empathy. She affirms that more than raising awareness about the lives of people like the protagonist of the film, what it pursues is to generate disgust and fear (to gain weight of course).
It does not seek to have a new look at fat people, what it achieves is perpetuating the myth that fat people are fat out of sheer weakness and justify -once again- violence against them, for not having self-control. Already the very choice of the name of the film falls on one of the insults that we have received the most over the years, fat people: whale.
Precisely along this line, one of the anti-fat phobia activists The most important on the national scene also signed up for the dress-protest with that word -among others- on her dress. We are talking about Croquetamente, nominated for the Ídolo awards who attended the gala with this vindictive design.
Having seen what has been seen, although thanks to activists like Mara, specialized psychologists and the new guilt-free diets that are gaining more followers every day, much remains to be done to end discrimination against fat people and their representation in the world of cinema, television and life in general.
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Photos | The whale