[ SECRET POST #5923 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5923 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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[Buck from 9-1-1]



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04.
[City of Light]



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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 56 secrets from Secret Submission Post #848.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[tabaqui]

How was it offensive, though? I'm still not getting 'offensive' beyond 'didn't have a morbidly obese actor in the role'.

[philstar22]

It wasn't a remotely accurate portrayal of fat people. At all. It tried to be respectful, but it really wasn't.

[tabaqui]

Well, your opinion is valid for you; I don't agree with it, but that's how opinions go.

[philstar22]

Yes, I realize that. I was expressing my own personal feelings.

[(Anonymous)]

Do you personally know all the fat people in the entire world?

[(Anonymous)]

That's also a valid question for Tabaqui's pov though.

[philstar22]

Nope. But nearly every time fat people are portrayed on screen, they are portrayed as being fat because they eat a lot. There is never any nuance to it. I don't see why the role got an oscar when it was the exact same portrayal of fat people we always get.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, that.

Also, I find the title "The Whale" pretty offensive as well. Can't count the times I've been called that to make fun of me.

[tabaqui]

It's not a great title, but to be fair, he's fairly obsessed with an essay his daughter wrote about 'Moby Dick', and that essay figures rather prominently in the story; one line in particular about the storyteller 'telling us about whale facts to hide the actual sad story from us for a little while....'

[(Anonymous)]

Here's an excerpt from The Irish Times review that I think touches on why dome people find it offensive:

'Every now and then we do get a moment of properly cinematic unease, but even those successes are tainted by the film’s unseemly disgust at Charlie’s body. Ranking up the droning minor chords on Rob Simonsen’s orchestral score as the protagonist tucks into another pizza succeeds in making something mortally sinister of an everyday act. Yet that only heightens the sense that The Whale – alert to every crease of Fraser’s simulated fat – is dealing in incongruously maudlin body horror. '

[tabaqui]

Hrmmmmmmm...that's really pretty semantic though. I mean - he wasn't sitting around nude for most of the movie, and his eating was mostly just - eating, until one particular scene when he's basically having a breakdown/angry and terrified and guilt-stricken, and then he does eat in a way that's fairly unsettling to watch.

But I don't feel like the camera gaze or the music was focusing on his body so much as what he was doing to himself, his state of mind, and his refusal in the face of a friend and nurse telling him he was dying to do anything at all.

[(Anonymous)]

Man, it feels like that review missed the point, too. Of course it's body horror! He's deliberately eating himself to death. There's nothing beautiful about it. People as obese as the character is aren't inhabiting a body people outside of frankly disgusting* fetishist circles find beautiful and attractive.

*Disgusting because the fetishists find even a person's inability to move because of their weight hot and desirable. They delight in other people's health problems and helplessness in a way that horrifies me. It's one thing to think that a fat person is attractive. It's another thing to think a morbidly obese person is oh so hot and should stay that way to provide wank fodder.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I was gonna say - it's horror because he's causing himself immense amounts of harm with what he's doing. He's taking an ordinary, everyday activity to the extreme and the movie isn't shying away from showing what happens when you do that.