When Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale premiered at the Venice Film Festival last September, it received a six-minute standing ovation – largely for Brendan Fraser’s performance as the 600lb (272kg) Charlie, a man so enormous that he’s confined to his apartment and can only stand with the aid of his walking frame.
Not everyone has applauded The Whale. The film, adapted from the play by Samuel D. Hunter, came under fire before production even began – particularly for casting the straight, comparatively standard-sized Brendan Fraser as a gay man suffering from severe obesity.
Critics and commentators have since accused The Whale of being “fatphobic” and making a freak show-like spectacle of Charlie’s body.
There has been particular criticism for the film’s use of a 300lb fat suit – the kind of thing that’s usually reserved for mocking roly-poly comedy characters, such as Monica in Friends or The Nutty Professor.
But The Whale has also found support from advocacy groups and medical professionals. And from the perspective of a man with lifelong weight issues – pushing 17 stone (108kg) on a 5′8″ (172cm) frame – The Whale struck me as both powerful and confrontational. So, why has it been so divisive?
Dr Rachel Goldman, a psychologist who specialises in eating behaviours and obesity treatment, consulted on The Whale. “I spoke to the producers and the whole group about this,” says Goldman.
“From the very beginning I said, ‘You’re going to have people who hate this film and rip it apart.’ Honestly just because of the word obesity.”
Goldman explains that terminology alone – whether we’re saying “an obese person”, “someone suffering/living with obesity” (the preferred term), or reclaiming the word “fat” – can be problematic.
In the film, Charlie lost control of his weight after the suicide of his boyfriend. He teaches online writing courses but he’s so ashamed of his own appearance that he hides from his students, pretending that his laptop camera is broken. Charlie is just days from death himself, so tries to reconnect with his estranged, relatively unpleasant daughter, Ellie, played by Sadie Sink.
Dr Goldman was approached early in pre-production and reviewed the script for realism and accuracy.
“How he gets out of the couch, how he stands up, how he moves around,” she explains.
Goldman believed that it was impossible to make The Whale without some input from “lived experience”. She connected the filmmakers with the Obesity Action Coalition, a leading advocacy group in the US, which helped set up interviews with people living with obesity.
“That was needed,” says Goldman, “to talk to different people struggling in different ways to really understand what day-to-day life looks like. It added another layer.”
Brendan Fraser has spoken earnestly about raising awareness of real issues through Charlie. “Weight bias is one of the last frontiers of human beings finding ways to diminish one another,” said Fraser.
He added: “What I learned from talking with people is that, like everyone, they want their stories to be told, and they want to be treated fairly and honestly. And for me, that was another drive to aim for complete authenticity.”
Last month, Brendan Fraser received the Best Actor award for " The Whale" during the 28th Annual Critics Choice Awards. Photo / Getty Images
Talking to Yahoo, he discussed his conversations with people from the Obesity Action Coalition. “They gave me their whole life stories, and it was heartbreaking,” Fraser said. “And I learnt from them that they need this movie to tell their story with dignity and with respect, in a way that we haven’t seen this character portrayed ever on the big screen.
“And it’s their strong opinion, and I was really touched by this, that they believe that this character could actually save lives. And it’s not a public service message or anything like that you know... but it’s everyone’s story in some way, we all feel like we know this guy.”
Following the Venice premiere, criticism came from Aubrey Gordon, author of What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat. Gordon, who hadn’t seen the film, tweeted that The Whale had a “staggeringly anti-fat premise”.
Gordon continued on Twitter: “If the only way you can ‘humanise’ a very fat person is to watch them humiliated, terrified, ashamed & killed off in a stereotypically stigmatizing way, it’s time to do some serious reflecting.”
Not everyone feels that way. East Lothian dad Sean Crawford, who weighs 30 stone (190kg) , told the BBC that the trailer left him in tears.
“I couldn’t tell you the last time I wanted to see a film at the cinema but this one massively ties into my situation,” Crawford said.
“I empathise with him and it also gives a voice to people in my position. He is a teacher and is helping society. It shows people benefitting from his life, as normally overweight people are hidden away and are not given the credit they are due.”
Some criticism came from within the film industry. Daniel Franzese, a plus-size gay actor, told People that he was “conflicted” – happy for Brendan Fraser but unsure why Fraser would wear a fat-suit to play a gay man. It’s a role that would have been snapped up by “actors like me and my colleagues”, said Franzese.
He added: “To finally have a chance to be in a prestige film that might be award-nominated, where stories about people who look like us are being told? That’s the dream. So when they go time and time again and cast someone like Brendan Fraser, me and the other big queer guys, we’re like, ‘What the...?’ We can’t take it!”
Actor Guy Branum, who recently starred in gay romcom Bros, told LGBTQ+ website Pride that he thinks The Whale is “trying to use extreme fatness as a metaphor for gay pain” and “as an actual fat gay person, I feel like my life doesn’t need to be a metaphor for somebody else’s pain.”
"From a health perspective, it's prohibitive... it's an impossible role to fill with a real person dealing with those issues."
-Darren Aronofsky pointing out the very real concern that if you cast me in a movie I will probably explode from fatness on set. https://t.co/q1svif78WB
The issue for some viewers, perhaps, is that humanising Charlie is predicated on the idea that his obesity is somehow inhuman to begin with. Of that Charlie plays into a stereotype: that he’s to blame for his disease – slobbing on the couch and willingly gorging to death. It’s not only the film but the discourse around it. Reviews in The Guardian and Variety were called out for making references to Jabba the Hutt.
Some critics seem to think the film shouldn’t exist at all. Author Roxane Gay, writing in the New York Times, questioned the point of The Whale.
The film, wrote Gay, is “exploitative and at times cruel”. Gay thought it was “crystal clear” that Samuel D. Hunter and Darren Aronofsky “considered fatness to be the ultimate human failure, something despicable, to be avoided at all costs.”
Dr Rachel Goldman recalls being surprised at first hearing the film labelled as fatphobic. “Personally, I don’t know how it’s showing a fear of fatness,” says Goldman.
“Is it perfect? No. Is it showing what everyone experiences with obesity? Obviously not. This is one person’s experience – this is Charlie’s experience.” Goldman points out that this experience is partly inspired by stories from real people’s lives with the disease.
Nadya Isack has lived with obesity for 20 years. She’s a trustee of the Obesity Empowerment Network and a patient representative for the Obesity Health Alliance. Isack saw a preview of The Whale with a group of around 20 people living with obesity. She enjoyed the complexity of the character and performance – “It showed he was still a human being,” she says – but found the portrayal of Charlie’s obesity “stereotyped”.
“It was so stereotyped according to what a layperson thinks living with obesity is,” Isack says. “It’s problematic in how it shows a person of that size – all they do is eat and not move.” But was it fat-phobic? “I don’t like that word,” Isack says. “I don’t know what that means.”
Isack also thought that scenes of Charlie’s binge-eating play into the stigmas around obesity. She thinks that if Charlie was chugging a bottle of whiskey, instead of cramming two slices of pizza into his mouth at once, viewers would be more understanding. Because that’s how negative the perception of obesity can be.
“It’s reinforcing that same stigmatised stuff – words like sloth, lazy, pig,” says Isack about those scenes.
Goldman recalls the binge-eating sequence was one aspect that she suggested was toned down – that it was even more extreme in the original script.
The fat-suit has caused some controversy – along with similar criticism last year of Emma Thompson’s fat-suit in Matilda the Musical, in which she suited-up to play the ogre-like headmistress, Miss Trunchbull.
Darren Aronofsky did research potential actors with obesity who could play Charlie, but opted to cast Brendan Fraser. (George Clooney once planned to direct The Whale, but reportedly gave up after failing to find a suitable actor).
Film scenes of Charlie’s binge-eating pizza play into the stigmas around obesity, says Nadya Isack, trustee of the Obesity Empowerment Network.
The prosthetic body was created by Adrien Morot – designed digitally and 3D printed. “I know people are calling it a fat-suit but it’s not really, it’s a new technology,” says Goldman.
“It wasn’t done in a fun and hilarious way. It was done in a way that made it look as real as it could. When I was watching the film, I forgot Brendan was Charlie – I saw Charlie as a whole person, not a man in a fat suit.”
Fraser has also defended the prosthetic. “I think it’s one of the more exacting ways you can create a character and body,” he told People. Some critics have likened thin actors in fat suits to white actors wearing blackface, or the problems with non-trans actors playing trans characters.
But should only large actors play large roles? The Whale is a story about a 600lb man. Assuming there’s a lack of 600lb actors and the role went instead to a 300lb actor, surely they’d still need some kind of fat-suit to tell the story. Would their own lived experience justify wearing a fat-suit? Or are critics arguing that fat-suits should be ditched entirely? Would they say that films like The Whale just shouldn’t be made?
Nadya Isack is unimpressed by claims that there were no suitable actors with obesity to play Charlie. “Yes, the director wanted a good actor,” says Isack.
“But in the whole world he couldn’t find somebody? He didn’t have to find someone as big as Charlie. They didn’t have to go to the extreme.” Everybody at Isack’s screening agreed: the fat-suit is “a total no-no”.
For me – an overweight bloke – there’s no issue with Brendan Fraser playing the role in prosthetics. The film has a good heart. Though maybe I’ve never been big enough to weigh in on the issue. Just as it’s not my place to decide whether straight actors should be playing gay roles – I haven’t experienced life from that perspective.
While Roxane Gay slammed The Whale as being a spectacle – “a carnival sideshow” – the question is whether it’s voyeurism, or a means of confronting viewers with the painful reality of living in Charlie’s body: him trying to shower himself; struggling and sweating just to move off the sofa.
Aronofsky hasn’t shied away from such images before: see the physical deterioration of Ellen Burstyn in Requiem for a Dream or toenail-splitting agony of Black Swan.
“I didn’t think of it as a spectacle,” says Isack. “I don’t see it as disgusting. I see it as him – that’s the reality of him cleaning, of him walking. The physicality is very shocking for a lot of people. I thought that was good.”
Dr Rachel Goldman says The Whale, like any film, is “not for everybody” and understands that it will be triggering for some viewers. Goldman also believes it’s a step in the right direction. As well as the Obesity Action Coalition, medical groups that Goldman is involved with are also supporting The Whale.
“It’s a film that’s using what we like to call the correct language,” Goldman says.
“There are other films and TV shows that have characters with larger bodies. They are usually made fun of – they are not realistic. This shows the struggle that one person is going through. He’s not defined by his body – he’s a parent, he’s a teacher, he’s on this emotional journey. Individuals in larger bodies feel like they’re invisible – even though they take up more space, in their own words. But he’s being seen as a whole person. Maybe we can see beyond the body shape and size and understand the emotional struggles that we all go through. That was my hope when getting involved in this film.”
Nadya Isack admits that while she didn’t like the portrayal of obesity, she was moved by the character. “I walked out absolutely blubbing,” she says.
