In case you didn’t know, the film is about a 600-pound gay man who decides to eat himself to death. Gawker writer Olivia Craighead is pointing to certain red flags that might irk critics and audiences to no end. I get what Craighead is saying here, and I’m certainly not going to be one of the people offended by the “fat shaming” or “queer blind casting.” However, she does have a point, the Samuel D. Hunter stage play the film is based on was already the target of certain critics, receiving four different write-ups from the New York Slimes, err, Times. Primarily, this specific representation of a fat person on screen. Charlie (Fraser) has gained weight following the death of his partner, a process that Hunter described to the Times as a “a long-form suicide.” On stage, the role is usually performed by a thin man in a fat suit, which is its own bag of worms. In this adaptation, Aronofsky has cast a relatively big guy in Fraser, but also put him in a fat suit. People are already mad about that. What I don’t think people realize yet is that Fraser is also playing a queer man, which will probably spark another round of “Who gets to play queer characters?” discussion. I’m sure that will be awesome. This certainly is a provocative statement from Aronofsky, despite it, supposedly, being a chamber piece that takes place entirely inside an apartment. The fact that the main character is being played by Brendan Fraser is a positive, but all this talk about him wearing a 300 pound prosthetic fat-suit is … interesting. I’ll be catching “The Whale” next weekend when it screens at the Toronto International Film Festival. Contribute Hire me
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