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.
CNN
—
As Darren Aronofsky’s “The Whale” – which has been in select theaters – opens in theaters around the country this week, the film could become a powerful empathy generator. Just perhaps not in the way it was intended.
The film, which has garnered significant praise even as it’s prompted notable controversy, stars Brendan Fraser as Charlie, a 600-pound gay man slowly eating himself to death. It’s adapted from a play of the same name by Samuel D. Hunter, and one of its most-discussed features has been the fat suit Fraser wears.
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.
I have not yet seen “The Whale,” as I’m not located in one of the two cities it’s been playing in prior to its expanded release this week. Given the acclaim the film’s received and my desire to see Fraser thrive after what he’s been through, I had originally planned to see it when I could. But after spending some time reading and listening to how harmful fat people say the portrayal is to them, I’m taking another look.
By many accounts, the film plays Charlie’s weight as an absolute tragedy and a visual horror show.
“Aronofsky turns up the foley audio whenever Charlie is eating, to emphasize the wet sound of lips smacking together. He plays ominous music under these sequences, so we know Charlie’s doing something very bad indeed,” wrote Katie Rife in Polygon. “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.”
From the beginning, the film apparently humiliates Charlie abjectly: He’s shown nearly dying from a heart attack while masturbating to porn. “It was crystal clear that Mr. Hunter and Mr. Aronofsky considered fatness to be…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CNN.com – RSS Channel – HP Hero…