With the glamour and glitz of the prestigious movie award season now truly faded, another year of spectacular performances, incredible films and undeniable accomplishments have been celebrated. And rightfully so; the amount of hard work and dedication that go into making our favourite movies of the year deserve to be acknowledged. The most prestigious of these awards being the famed Oscars. This year’s show was surprisingly uneventful when compared to last year’s infamous slap (looking at you, Will Smith), but there was one thing that didn’t sit right with me.
Let me break it down for you. Brendan Fraser won best actor for his performance in The Whale, and it’s clear to see why. According to IMDB, the story highlights a “reclusive, morbidly-obese English teacher (as he) attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter.” His weight has at this point reached a number that has become harmful to his health, and we see the physical, emotional and mental struggles that he faces. When I watched the movie, Fraser made me sob (and I mean sob) not once but twice during his portrayal as Charlie and I truly believe that he was the best actor in his category. But my problem is not with Fraser’s brilliant performance or the heart-breaking father-daughter story. My problem is one thing – the fatsuit.
A fatsuit, also known as a fat suit or a fat-suit, is a bodysuit-like undergarment used to ‘thicken’ the appearance of an actor of a smaller build into an overweight or obese character. Think stuffing a pillow in your shirt to give you the appearance of a large belly. But Hollywood has perfected the art of this, using heavy prosthetics and makeup to make it look hyperrealistic. The Whale’s makeup artist, fellow Canadian Adrien Morot, actually won the Oscar for best makeup and hairstyling for his work transforming Fraser from a slimmer man into a 600-pound reclusive English teacher. He did a great job convincing me that physically, Fraser was in fact this man. I just want us to be past all this, you know, using a straight-sized man to portray a fat one.
First off, I need to say this, for the sake of this column and for general knowledge, fat is not a bad word. It’s a descriptive word. Like tall is. Like short is. Like having brown eyes is. It’s a word to describe a physical trait. Fat, intrinsically, is in no way derogatory. However, it has become so misconstrued through the media and fatphobic Hollywood, that when you call someone ‘fat’ it is supposed to be an insult. Fat people face challenges due to the fatphobic rhetoric being passed generationally and funneled at us through the media. Our internal unfair biases towards others who are fat have been learned, and therefore, need to be unlearned. I could go on about this forever, but back to the problem at hand.
It’s no secret that Hollywood has an issue with accurate representation, and the word ‘issue’ is saying it politely. Hollywood is racist, sexist, misogynistic, fatphobic, among a myriad of other things. But historically Hollywood has always been late to the game. If you look back over 60 years, Breakfast at Tiffany’s portrayal of an Asian man is atrocious. Who ever thought that casting Mickey Rooney to play an Asian man was a good idea? It was a racist and an unrealistic stereotyped portrayal of what Hollywood thought an Asian man was in the 1960s. But my thought is that over 60 years from now, the portrayal of a fat person in The Whale will be atrocious.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Hollywood’s diversity problem has come a long way since Hepburn’s trip to eat breakfast at a jewelry store, but I think we can do better. Much better.
I know the job of an actor is to put themselves in someone else’s shoes and convince us that they are in fact that person with the help of a good hair and makeup team. But I think we should be diligent in casting someone who accurately reflects the person who is being portrayed. No one can do justice to the experiences that others have had unless they’ve been experienced first hand. Not just what living in a 600-pound body looks like physically, but mentally and emotionally. I argue that no one could have played that role better than someone who faces those struggles in reality.
My point? I would like to see a real 600-pound man play the role of Charlie. Not only does this bring a more accurate physical representation to the screen, but the story being told would have more authenticity. The actor could be an advocate for fat people during the filming process and help to eliminate any misconceptions and falsehoods being portrayed. For too long, fat people have been oppressed and discriminated against due to a physical characteristic.
We owe it to ourselves to see authentic and accurate representation of fat people and the struggles they face. And hopefully through this, we can gain an understanding of what fat people experience and work to rewrite the harmful narrative currently surrounding fat bodies. We deserve to see fat bodies accurately represented on the big screen.
I just wish Hollywood would get the memo.
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Melissa Dunphy is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter with Midwestern Newspapers.
