‘The Whale’ Urged Us to Confront Our Own Fatphobia
And we, as a society, failed miserably. And we continue to fumble over our misteps.
Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale boasts, arguably, one of the greatest performances in the history of cinema by Brendan Fraser as a severely morbidly obese (a medical term used by the United States National Library of Medicine) man named Charlie, who suffers from major depression and binge eating; the performance recently nabbed Fraser an Oscar for "Best Actor" during the 2023 ceremony.
The film itself, as a whole, is spectacular, as well, and an unprecedented look at the link between these two disorders and how they can lead to severe morbid obesity. However, some critics have ignorantly misjudged this film as a misrepresentation of the morbidly obese, focusing solely on the film as a portrayal of the cond...