{"id":32697,"date":"2023-01-24T02:07:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-24T02:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=32697"},"modified":"2023-01-31T23:05:17","modified_gmt":"2023-01-31T23:05:17","slug":"the-whale-is-a-horror-film-that-taps-into-our-fear-of-fatness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/the-whale-is-a-horror-film-that-taps-into-our-fear-of-fatness\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Whale\u2019 is a horror film that taps into our fear of\u00a0fatness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Beth Younger<\/a>, Drake University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Editor\u2019s note: This article contains plot spoilers for \u201cThe Whale.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew before seeing \u201cThe Whale<\/a>\u201d that it was a movie about a man named Charlie who weighs over 600 pounds, is grief-stricken over the death of his partner, and is effectively trapped in his apartment due to his weight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also knew that \u201cThe Whale\u201d had attracted a great deal of criticism, provoking anger<\/a>, disgust<\/a> and accusations of exploitation<\/a>. Despite the controversy, Brendan Fraser\u2019s performance has been widely praised<\/a>, and he\u2019s been nominated for best actor<\/a> at the 95th Academy Awards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what I didn\u2019t know was that this film would make me cry. As I left the theater, I found myself hyperaware of my own fat body moving through the parking lot, and I started to feel the way I often do when I see a reflection of myself in a mirror: monstrous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my research<\/a> on fat characters in popular culture, I point out how the fat character usually must lose weight in order to gain acceptance or to be loved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cThe Whale,\u201d however, Charlie does not lose weight; the transformation goes in the opposite direction: he gets bigger and bigger, suffering a slow and painful physical breakdown. As I watched the film, I started to understand, with a looming sense of dread, that \u201cThe Whale\u201d had no plans to recuperate this character. The fatness was the subject and the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I began to realize that this movie was not a melodrama, nor an uplifting tale about redemption; to me, \u201cThe Whale\u201d is a body horror film that exploits the fear and disgust people feel toward fatness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The body as a monster<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Body horror<\/a> is a subset of the horror film genre that depicts the destruction, degeneration or mutation of the human body. These films are designed to gross out viewers, and the protagonist often becomes the monster of the story as their body becomes more and more repulsive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Director David Cronenberg made the subgenre famous in films such as<\/a> \u201cThe Fly<\/a>,\u201d \u201cShivers<\/a>,\u201d \u201cVideodrome<\/a>\u201d and \u201cRabid<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Fly,\u201d a remake of the 1958 film<\/a> of the same name, tells the story of a scientist named Seth Brundle who merges his DNA with that of a common housefly. Over the course of the film, he gradually degenerates into a disgusting creature nicknamed \u201cBrundlefly<\/a>.\u201d Another particularly disturbing body horror film is \u201cTusk<\/a>,\u201d in which a man obsessed with walruses ends up kidnapping a cruel podcaster and dismembers him in order to turn him into a walrus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Split
David Cronenberg\u2019s \u2018The Fly\u2019 is a standout of the body horror genre. 20th Century Studios<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In body horror films, there is something viscerally disturbing about seeing the human body distorted, whether it\u2019s due to a parasitic alien<\/a>, a mutated virus<\/a> or the sadistic compulsions of a mad scientist<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Whale\u201d suggests that although Charlie deserves pity, he is nonetheless a monstrosity<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Seth Brundle, who experiments on himself while drunk, Charlie regularly gorges on fried chicken, pizza and subs \u2013 the implication being that Charlie is directly responsible for his morbid obesity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seeing Charlie\u2019s gradual physical disintegration is like watching a slow-motion car wreck; you cannot look away even though you know you should. He\u2019s barely able to stand, and he loses the ability to perform the most basic of tasks, like picking up an object from the floor. In some scenes, the camera rests on Charlie\u2019s distended gut, his swollen calves or his sweat-soaked clothes, inviting the audience to be repulsed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In body horror, there is no return from being transformed; the damage is done. And although not every transformed body horror character dies, many do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, Charlie\u2019s body ends up destroying him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Till flesh do us part<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Film critic Robin Wood famously argued<\/a> that \u201cthe true subject of the horror genre is the struggle for recognition of all that our civilization represses and oppresses.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a thin-obsessed culture<\/a>, fatness has become its own kind of monster. Despite the body positivity<\/a> movement, fat people are still often viewed as unattractive and abnormal<\/a>, and are more likely to be discriminated against<\/a> at work, stigmatized by physicians and convicted by juries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2012, sociologist Francis Ray White wrote that<\/a> \u201cfatness is increasingly being figured as anti-social\u201d \u2013 something that \u201cmust be eliminated in the name of a viable future.\u201d White points out that when obesity is talked about as an \u201cepidemic,\u201d it reinforces the idea that fatness is an illness that must be cured, and that fat people are not people but carriers of a contagion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the final moments of \u201cThe Whale,\u201d viewers witness Charlie\u2019s life ending: He vividly remembers a time when he was blissfully happy, on a beach with his daughter and the love of his life. As he is dying, he levitates, at last free from the monstrous burden of flesh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is the only time in the film where he seems weightless; indeed, it is the only moment of freedom for this character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the monster itself \u2013 fatness \u2013 lives on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Darren Aronofsky, the film\u2019s director, has said that his film is \u201can exercise in empathy<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, why was I left with the idea of my own body as an irredeemable monstrosity? I\u2019m not alone in this unease; critic Roxane Gay<\/a> called The Whale a \u201ccarnival sideshow,\u201d and \u201cemotionally devastating.\u201d To Gay, \u201cThe Whale\u201d depicts fatness as \u201csomething despicable, to be avoided at all costs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She could have been describing a monster. She could have been describing me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beth Younger<\/a>, Associate Professor of English & Women’s and Gender Studies, Drake University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beth Younger, Drake University Editor\u2019s note: This article contains plot spoilers for \u201cThe Whale.\u201d I knew before seeing \u201cThe Whale\u201d that it was a movie about a man named Charlie who weighs over 600 pounds, is grief-stricken over the death of his partner, and is effectively trapped in his apartment due to his weight. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":32698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8025,42],"tags":[13380,3771,8874,13076,407,935,13381,2805,1929,8805],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32697"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32697"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32769,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32697\/revisions\/32769"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}