{"id":1774190,"date":"2022-12-13T17:03:37","date_gmt":"2022-12-13T22:03:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1774190"},"modified":"2022-12-13T17:03:42","modified_gmt":"2022-12-13T22:03:42","slug":"critics-blubber-over-the-whale-rejecting-narrative-that-obesity-is-healthy-and-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/critics-blubber-over-the-whale-rejecting-narrative-that-obesity-is-healthy-and-normal\/","title":{"rendered":"Critics Blubber Over \u2018The Whale\u2019 Rejecting Narrative That Obesity Is Healthy And Normal"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fcritics-blubber-over-the-whale-rejecting-narrative-that-obesity-is-healthy-and-normal%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1774190&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Mainstream critics are furious that a director would dare to portray obesity as a negative.<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019ll never come out and say that explicitly. Instead, their reviews of \u201cThe Whale\u201d starring Brendan Fraser are full of evasive criticism, claiming director Darren Aronofsky\u2019s passion project is a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/12\/10\/opinion\/the-whale-film.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">cruel spectacle<\/a>\u201d and that it helps to \u201creinforce the dehumanizing ways in which many people understand fatness.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The movie portrays Fraser as a homebound 600-pound English teacher named Charlie who is slowly eating himself to death. It\u2019s revealed that Charlie is depressed following the death of his partner and copes with his emotions by binge eating. Like the director\u2019s previous effort \u201cRequiem For A Dream,\u201d the film explores the subject matter with an uncomfortable intensity.<\/p>\n<p>But while Aronofsky insists he handled the character of Charlie with compassion, that\u2019s not enough to assuage the critics who fear some viewers will see overeating as a vice and morbid obesity as less than ideal.<\/p>\n<p>Fraser wears extensive body and facial prosthetics for his role. Aronofsky, who resists the use of the term \u201cfat suit,\u201d explores the reality of Charlie struggling to perform simple tasks while fat in a way that\u2019s deemed \u201cexploitative\u201d and \u201cvoyeuristic.\u201d Roxane Gay of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/12\/10\/opinion\/the-whale-film.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The New York Times<\/a> called it \u201cgratuitous, self-aggrandizing fiction\u201d that was barely a step above the films of decades past that used fat suit clad actors as a punchline.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe disdain the filmmakers seem to have for their protagonist is constant, inescapable,\u201d Gay writes in her review. She recalled being personally offended by the subject matter considering that she too is gay and fat. For that reason, the NYT writer resents how obesity is portrayed as \u201cthe ultimate human failure, something despicable, to be avoided at all costs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA movie like this will only reinforce the dehumanizing ways in which many people understand fatness,\u201d Gay concludes. \u201cIt\u2019s a carnival sideshow. Come look at the freak, the movie beckons.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Some critics also took issue with the intimate depictions of Charlie binge eating. They couldn\u2019t believe Aronofsky would dare to explore the specific actions that led to the character\u2019s health failure and eventual death.<\/p>\n<p>In one scene, Charlie is shown gorging himself on greasy pizza that\u2019s smeared all over his face even as he flings open the refrigerator door searching for more. Another clip shows the character wolfing down a bucket of fried chicken. His clothing is described by one reviewer as \u201ctent-like \u2026 threadbare, perpetually soaked in sweat\u201d only highlighting \u201cthe rolls of his stomach spilling over his thighs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A reviewer from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buzzfeednews.com\/article\/elaminabdelmahmoud\/the-whale-brendan-fraser-darren-aronofsky-review\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Buzzfeed News<\/a> criticizes the binge scenes as well, writing, \u201cthe score swells while Charlie reaches for a pizza and candy bars, and we\u2019re forced to watch him wheeze, sweat, and beg for forgiveness for his mistakes \u2014 the foremost of which, the film illustrates, is his obesity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They chastise Aronofsky for \u201ctreating [Charlie] like an imposing monster in his own horror film rather than a human being.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can\u2019t really make a feel-good body-horror movie,\u201d David Sims of The Atlantic declared.<\/p>\n<p>Podcaster Aubrey Gordon, who is fat, also laments the reality that \u201cThe Whale\u201d forces audiences to face, namely that being obese can be a symptom of deeper psychological issues and that it\u2019s statistically likely to lead to an early death.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe number of people who describe this premise as \u2018humanizing\u2019 is so disheartening,\u201d she <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/yrfatfriend\/status\/1567919961787740169\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">shared<\/a> on Twitter. \u201cIf the only way you can \u2018humanize\u2019 a very fat person is to watch them humiliated, terrified, ashamed &#038; killed off in a stereotypically stigmatizing way, it\u2019s time to do some serious reflecting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The controversy of actors wearing fat suits also came up during most reviews. While this tactic was often employed for comedic value in the past, (think \u201cThe Nutty Professor\u201d and \u201cShallow Hal\u201d), it\u2019s since become a lot more thoughtful and intentional if it\u2019s used at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Besides some mainstream actors coming out against fat suits, the Buzzfeed News writer said \u201cthe major Hollywood studio roles for fat people, or queer people, or trans people come along so rarely that it feels doubly insulting to then have actors of those communities miss out amid a drought of those roles.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The director has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/makes-no-sense-the-whale-director-responds-to-critics-of-brendan-fraser-wearing-a-fat-suit\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">addressed criticism<\/a> over his selection of Fraser for the lead role rather than an obese gay actor that would match the character he created.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cActors have been using makeup since the beginning of acting \u2014 that\u2019s one of their tools,\u201d Aronofsky told Yahoo News. \u201cAnd the lengths we went to to portray the realism of the make-up has never been done before. One of my first calls after casting Brendan was to my makeup artist, Adrien Morot. I asked him, \u2018Can we do something that\u2019s realistic?\u2019 Because if it\u2019s going to look like a joke, then we shouldn\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople with obesity are generally written as bad guys or as punchlines,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe wanted to create a fully worked-out character who has bad parts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mainstream critics are furious that a director would dare to portray obesity as a negative. They\u2019ll never come out and say that explicitly. Instead, their reviews of \u201cThe Whale\u201d starring Brendan Fraser are full of evasive criticism, claiming director Darren Aronofsky\u2019s passion project is a \u201ccruel spectacle\u201d and that it helps to \u201creinforce the dehumanizing &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":345,"featured_media":1774193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[541],"tags":[6962,8701,4365,6202,8700,4166,8699,8702,6336,8618,6195],"class_list":["post-1774190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-daily-wire","tag-the","tag-blubber","tag-critics","tag-daily","tag-healthy","tag-narrative","tag-normal","tag-obesity","tag-rejecting","tag-whale","tag-wire"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1774190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/345"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1774190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1774190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1774193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1774190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1774190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1774190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}