“The Whale”: How a sad, pathetic, and emotionally devastating story about a good teacher and a frustrated teacher, can the viewer really understand what she has to say?
To me, the best thing that could come out of all the publicity surrounding “The Whale” is the centering of the opinions of fat people on the film. Are they planning to see “The Whale”? What else are the people saying about the movie? How will this affect them, and the way we all think about fatness? And shouldn’t those of us who haven’t had that lived experience maybe just… shut the F up?
Branum shared that he hoped the play was good and insightful about his life, as it was based on the film. It was a sad, pathetic story of a sad, pathetic man. I got sad for the main character, Charlie, and how little the author’s imagination offered his life, trapped in a bad apartment, eating fried chicken endlessly,” Branum wrote on Instagram, following it up with a description of taking the play on trips with him so it might enjoy a little happiness for a change.
” The Whale” is a two-hour film that is emotionally devastating. Charlie’s grief and inability to find the will to live is utterly crushing. He was a good teacher, but he hid his camera from his students, and his daughter felt that he abandoned her because he did not want her to know why. I suppose that’s the point of this particular adaptation from Sam Hunter’s play of the same name.
Shallow Halo: A Bad Thing About Fat? The Film’s Sensitive Story About Charlie, Moby-Dick, And The Other Guys Who Think He Is Fat
Editor’s Note: Sara Stewart is a film and culture writer who lives in western Pennsylvania. The views expressed here are solely the author’s own. View more opinion articles on CNN.
The film has been a flashpoint for controversy since it debuted at the Venice Film Festival this summer. While critics and the public seem nearly unanimous in their desire for nice guy Fraser to get all the awards for his dedicated performance, a mounting chorus has described the film’s tone and content as fatphobic.
When Charlie is eating, Aronofsky plays the foley audio to emphasize the wet sound of his lips. The music under these scenes is ominous, and we know that Charlie is doing something very bad. “In case viewers still don’t get that they’re supposed to find him disgusting, he recites an essay about ‘Moby-Dick’ and how a whale is ‘a poor big animal’ with no feelings.”
For me, Gordon and her co-host, Michael Hobbes, have been instrumental in evolving the way I process stories and information (and misinformation) about weight, “wellness,” and the loudest cultural voices speaking about health and lifestyle. Their episode on Dr. Oz is a smart, hilarious jumping-in point.
The filmmakers of Shallow Hal said that the film’s heart is in the right place when they were accused of being fatphobic. Gordon said on his twits that that is beside the point. “It’s deeply telling & extraordinarily disheartening that so many people take thin creators saying ‘we didn’t mean to hurt fat people’ as saying they somehow DIDN’T or CAN’T hurt fat people. It is profoundly sad that after more than 20 years, that still works.
The film was reviewed by a man who identified as fat and queer and he was not happy with the storyline of Charlie’s stubbornness to not seek medical care so that he could keep all his money.
Donovan’s assertions are backed up by Scientific American, whose weight stigma reporter Virginia Sole-Smith has covered the many ways in which medicine is tainted by anti-fat bias, from doctors who admit they’re “disgusted” by overweight patients to the “obesity paradox,” which refers to findings that in some cases, “fat people [are] not dying of heart disease like we’re always told they will,” and that in fact being physically active is more important for heart health than how big your body is.
“This is what’s behind this entire thing—it’s not about ‘health,’ it’s about ‘eeeewwwww.’ You think fat people are bad. There is a chance that a fat person will touch you on the plane. With their fat!… I reject you, sorry.