Miss Trunchbull's formidable figure returned to our screens as Emma Thompson in a fat suit, and Brendan Fraser played a fat character in a film. This is a big suit. The suit is not a fat suit. It isn't a fat suit. It is a fat suit worn by Brendan Fraser because he is larger than 300 pounds.
The movie world highlighted fat narratives in 3000 Years of Longing and The Banshees of Inisherin and this can be explored in films without fat narratives at all.
What can we learn from the way fat people are portrayed in films over the past year? Is there still more work to be done to end the dehumanising representations of fat people on our screens?
The porn of the whale.
Activists have spoken out against people going to see the whale. The film shows the life of a fat person as a result of trauma as well as a slow death, making it a body horror and misery porn.
The story follows Charlie, an English teacher who works from home, lecturing via a video call where he never turns the camera on, who is suffering from binge eating disorder after the death of his male lover. After suffering a heart attack due to his weight gain, Charlie turned to food in order to get over his depression.
This film isn’t trying to empathise with the horrors of having an eating disorder, but instead looks to shock its audience with fatness
Multiple characters in the story berate Charlie for letting himself get to this point and for killing himself with his fatness. In the movie, Charlie's daughter, who never forgiven him for leaving her mother for a man, hurls fatphobic and homophobic abuse at him, but instead of reacting with anger or sadness, he accepts the attacks. Many in the audience would agree with the comments that Charlie believes his fate is death.
The morality of being fat is a constant issue for fat people online and off, and when films like Aronofsky paint fatness as a symptom of depression, being fat becomes associated with not only being morally wrong but spiritually wrong as well. The idea that fat people are unhappy because of their fatness is perpetuated by The Whale.
Barely leaving the tiny apartment that Charlie lives in, the camera angles emphasize the size of Charlie in a way that makes his mass a spectacle. The movie was shot in a 4:3 aspect ratio in order to highlight how big Fraser's fat suit is, dehumanizing the character from being sympathized with and alienating the audience from relating with Charlie. The film doesn't try to empathise with the horrors of having an eating disorder, but rather looks to shock its audience with fatness.
3000 Years of Longing shows fatness as a weakness. We focus on two brothers in a small part of the film. One of them is a dictator who is prone to violent rages. His younger brother Ibrahim is shown to be debauched and this is exemplified by his fat obsession. Ibrahim is often seen with a shroud of naked ladies around him. In Ibrahim's pursuit of pleasure, the more flesh, the better, according to the narrator of the story.
The younger brother has a lot of physical comedy and puns about his sexual preferences. The narrator of the movie says that Ibrahim has to be dragged to the throne after his brother dies.
When fat people’s bodies aren’t being used for physical comedy in cinema, they are used for shock factor.
He brings his harem with him as he ascends to power and they are mocked by the narrator and the storytellers. The only time one of them speaks is when they are angry with the film's narrator, who is portrayed as an angry, stupid fat woman. The thin women in the film are often called beautiful and wise by the Djinn.
"Sugar Lump", Ibrahim's favourite character, is shown as clumsy, which is a fatphobia. Sugar Lump has a slip and a fall that is large enough to break the floor's tile in half. The shot is shown in a slow motion in order to make the audience laugh.
Fat people's bodies are used for shock factor when they aren't being used for comedy. Since the opening sequence of Tom Ford's Nocturnal Animals, I haven't seen so many naked, fat women in a movie. Similar to 3000 Years of Longing, these women don't have a name, they don't speak, and they don't have a personality. The fat women of 3000 Years of Longing used for shock factor and removed of their agency are the same as the plus size characters in the Nocturnal Animals.
There is a disturbing connection between decadence and fatness and it is implied that there needs to be something wrong with the person who desires fat people. Fat women are often oversexualised because they are seen as only being used/useful for sex. In the case of 3000 Years of Longing, fat women are either reprehensible or eroticised, and both are used to demean us.
Fat characters have been a part of the year. The Banshees of Inisherin gave us a complex and intriguing lead with Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty, a musician on an island just off the coast of Ireland who decides one day to stop speaking to his best friend Pdraic. The drama focuses on telling a sad and smart story about two friends and one of them is fat. If either Pdraic or Farrell were fat, the story would be the same.
Credit: Jonathan Hession / Searchlight Pictures
The screen needs fat characters in roles that have nothing to do with fatness as exemplified by The Banshees of Inisherin and Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.
The actors in Everything, Everywhere, All At Once are all thin. You may be under the mistaken impression that Jamie Lee Curtis wore a fat suit for her role as IRS manager Deidre in the movie. The opposite is true, and that's because she requested to be allowed to let go and not be told how her body looks. In Halloween Ends, which was released this year, she has a slender and athletic frame, but this is not the case with her.
There is a billion-dollar, trillion-dollar industry about hiding the physical attributes of our bodies. There are things that make you look better. It is possible to wear shapewear. There are more than one type offillers. There are procedures that need to be followed. There are items of clothing. There are hair products. Products for hair. We need everything to hide who we are. I told everyone that I wanted there to be no hiding of anything.
Credit: A24
When you start being conscious of boys and bodies, and the jeans are super tight, you start sucking your stomach in. I decided to let go of all the muscles that I used to clench to hide. My goal was to get that. I've never felt more free in my life.
When a celebrity is near fatness and seen on screen as such, viewers assume she is wearing a fat suit. The director said, "Everyone assumes that her belly in the movie is a fake, but it's actually her real belly."
Jamie Lee Curtis rejecting spanx and Brendan Gleeson getting cast in a movie made barely any progress in a world that is giving fatphobic films six minute standing ovations.
Every year there is no fat representation in the films that are released. It struck me halfway through Glass Onion that if they were larger, it was because of their muscles and not their weight. The story of these characters would have remained the same if we had had fat actors play them. It isn't hard to imagine a cinematic universe with a cast made up of Queen Latifah, Jack Black, Craig Robinson, and more.
The issue with fatness in cinema is twofold: we are either never shown on screen or when we are, and it makes invisibility feel like the better option.
Where are we going from here? The answer doesn't just lie in the casting rooms, but requires the employment of fat directors and fat writers, adapting from fat positive texts or writing entirely new fat positive script with a focus on ensuring that when our stories are told, they are so much more than a fetishist's As well as casting fat actors in roles that don't require a character to be thin, fat audiences and fat actors deserve more detailed parts that analyse and amplify our stories with an equal point of view.
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