LINDY I LOVE YOU. Here's a fact: I actually weigh 600 lbs! I do have some difficulty getting around, and a complicated relationship with my body (you know, like most humans do!). I also have things that would BLOW THESE DUDE'S MINDS, like an active love life, friends, hobbies. I'm smart and funny and talented. I was recently told by multiple medical professionals that my heart looks very healthy! Holy shit, you mean I'm not dying of superfatitis???! I have even left my house, recently seen the sun, AND I know what broccoli looks like! Amazing. Thank you so much for taking one for the team and watching this awful piece of shit movie so we didn't have to. You really are the best. <3
Oh my God. Thank you so much for saving me from ever having to watch this.
I purposefully avoided reading about this movie because I estimated a 0% chance of a Hollywood film involving a fat suit generating any interesting or non-hurtful ideas about fat people. I obviously knew "the whale" was a cruel double entendre, but I didn't realize that the ENTIRE plot revolved around the protagonist's weight.
*No joke*, I genuinely thought the plot of this movie was about a literal whale and that the shots of Brendan Fraser staring into his monitor were him working at sea as a marine biologist. And he lives onboard a submarine/at a remote arctic research outpost and has a modern Moby Dick adventure while fat.
Okay re. the “go ahead and stab me bc it won’t reach my organs” thing. When I was going through fertility treatment because I have PCOS, my actual doctor told me that I couldn’t have ovarian drilling (Google it; awful) if I needed it because the giant needle they use wouldn’t be able to penetrate all the way through my horrible fat to reach my ovaries. Which, A) if only we had the technology to make things longer, perhaps someday, and B) fuck you.
Anyway, I look forward to my kid one day blowing weed smoke on me while I die moistly in a sad apartment. Sounds fun.
LINDY! This essay was a JOURNEY! I haven't seen the movie and have never wanted to. I do love ol Bren Bren Fraish, but you articulate so clearly and with such humor how wrong this movie gets it all. May all the whales rise up and destroy the boats of those who would hunt them only for the parts that serve them.
Your writing brings me joy and I appreciate you so much.
DUDE who keeps giving Darren money to make shitty movies that exploit boring clichés??? Like are the Koch brothers and Disney's Jafar his main investors?? Like, somebody saw the movie MOTHER and was like, yeah, this guy knows how to make movies! We like this! We learned things!
THANK YOU for reading to filth this terrible traumatizing "movie." Looking forward to the piece in the Guardian. Maybe some convos about this shit "movie" can offer more money to people who could, IDK, make real movies about real fat people having real lives? Something that might speak to actual empathy, actual connection? LOL! I'm silly. Thank you again. Being subscribed is a joy.
I hate this movie on principle. I'm legitimately angry AF that the library I work for will have to purchase this absolute shit show when it comes out and that I, a fat lady, will probably have to hear about it from patrons. Fuck. This. Movie.
I definitely read this while eating a shit ton of pizza and laying in bed because I just worked 6 days in a row and I'm tired. I regret nothing.
Genius essay with added bonus of skewering the lazy clueless assumptions about Melville's masterpiece! The whale in Moby Dick is BADASS, and Lindy has worthily emulated his righteous revenge on the Pequod by ramming this dumbass movie with her powerful forehead till it splits apart and sinks under its own weight. <3
Thank you for writing this. Since I haven’t seen or read the movie or play, this was my first experience with a lot of the specific plot points and dialogue and...wow. I gasped and groaned so many times that my husband was like “should you stop reading that? Are you okay?”
No. Definitely not okay. But thankful that I am re-affirmed in not watching this movie.
I love you for doing this because seeing people I thought were NOT shitty side with this movie and put their Brendan Fraser Nostalgia Goggles on has been... *insert Zoolander "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!" gif* I've just been in a despair hole lately with feeling like both fatness and disability are two things people will never care about in the ways they should, and since I'm *both* of those things, it makes me ragey to say the least! Anyway, thanks for making laugh (as always) and taking one for the team here by watching this. You do deserve $120k indeed!
I love me some BF, but I knew this movie was suspicious the moment I heard him do a whole ass media tour of “the fat suit is a work of art because we made it obey the laws of physics” and practically crying while talking about putting on the fat arms like sleeves. BOY NO WTF. Thanks for taking one for the team. I will not even Hate Watch this garbage. And I love Hate Watching shit!
This review confirms my sense that Darren Aronofsky is a renowned filmmaker because he takes awful cliched ideas about the world and remixes them in a twisted way so they seem intriguing (to some people). I'm still mad at the friend who made me watch Requiem for a Dream. I hope Darren reads your Guardian review and feels at least a tiny portion of the shame he associates with fat suit guy. I was never going to watch this movie but now I can speak confidently about the specific ways it's awful!
"having watched The Whale in a moment when, coincidentally in my personal life, I’ve been recognizing anew how violently I’ve been robbed of any natural relationship with food and my body. I am angry right now—about the way that fat people are treated, about the way that I’ve been treated, about the vanishingly small likelihood that I will ever recover." — I am going through something very similar in my life right now, and with all the articles glorifying ozempic et al. as the long-awaited miracle drug that's going to cure society of people like us, it feels like everything is in full-on regression (including my own mental health). Thank you for writing this and for writing about The Whale in The Guardian. You've given me and I'm sure countless other readers our own cathartic release in a time when it feels pointedly shitty to exist in a larger body.
As a certified Fat Person, I’m too exhausted by this to even be that angry. Like, thanks, Hollywood, for adding to the giant pile of garbage media that makes me feel bad about myself daily.
But I mean, I DO feel good that this movie sounds like genuine horse pucky, regardless of how totally fatty fat fat the protagonist is. Learn how to write a good movie.
Thank you so much for making me laugh and also making thin people aware of the fact that this movie is NOT. GOOD. It’s not humanizing. Leave fat people alone!
LINDY I LOVE YOU. Here's a fact: I actually weigh 600 lbs! I do have some difficulty getting around, and a complicated relationship with my body (you know, like most humans do!). I also have things that would BLOW THESE DUDE'S MINDS, like an active love life, friends, hobbies. I'm smart and funny and talented. I was recently told by multiple medical professionals that my heart looks very healthy! Holy shit, you mean I'm not dying of superfatitis???! I have even left my house, recently seen the sun, AND I know what broccoli looks like! Amazing. Thank you so much for taking one for the team and watching this awful piece of shit movie so we didn't have to. You really are the best. <3
Oh my God. Thank you so much for saving me from ever having to watch this.
I purposefully avoided reading about this movie because I estimated a 0% chance of a Hollywood film involving a fat suit generating any interesting or non-hurtful ideas about fat people. I obviously knew "the whale" was a cruel double entendre, but I didn't realize that the ENTIRE plot revolved around the protagonist's weight.
*No joke*, I genuinely thought the plot of this movie was about a literal whale and that the shots of Brendan Fraser staring into his monitor were him working at sea as a marine biologist. And he lives onboard a submarine/at a remote arctic research outpost and has a modern Moby Dick adventure while fat.
Okay re. the “go ahead and stab me bc it won’t reach my organs” thing. When I was going through fertility treatment because I have PCOS, my actual doctor told me that I couldn’t have ovarian drilling (Google it; awful) if I needed it because the giant needle they use wouldn’t be able to penetrate all the way through my horrible fat to reach my ovaries. Which, A) if only we had the technology to make things longer, perhaps someday, and B) fuck you.
Anyway, I look forward to my kid one day blowing weed smoke on me while I die moistly in a sad apartment. Sounds fun.
LINDY! This essay was a JOURNEY! I haven't seen the movie and have never wanted to. I do love ol Bren Bren Fraish, but you articulate so clearly and with such humor how wrong this movie gets it all. May all the whales rise up and destroy the boats of those who would hunt them only for the parts that serve them.
Your writing brings me joy and I appreciate you so much.
DUDE who keeps giving Darren money to make shitty movies that exploit boring clichés??? Like are the Koch brothers and Disney's Jafar his main investors?? Like, somebody saw the movie MOTHER and was like, yeah, this guy knows how to make movies! We like this! We learned things!
THANK YOU for reading to filth this terrible traumatizing "movie." Looking forward to the piece in the Guardian. Maybe some convos about this shit "movie" can offer more money to people who could, IDK, make real movies about real fat people having real lives? Something that might speak to actual empathy, actual connection? LOL! I'm silly. Thank you again. Being subscribed is a joy.
I hate this movie on principle. I'm legitimately angry AF that the library I work for will have to purchase this absolute shit show when it comes out and that I, a fat lady, will probably have to hear about it from patrons. Fuck. This. Movie.
I definitely read this while eating a shit ton of pizza and laying in bed because I just worked 6 days in a row and I'm tired. I regret nothing.
If I had $120K, I would actually give it to you for watching this motion picture (?) so that I didn't have to.
Recommendation: Everyone just watch "The Mummy (1999)" instead.
Genius essay with added bonus of skewering the lazy clueless assumptions about Melville's masterpiece! The whale in Moby Dick is BADASS, and Lindy has worthily emulated his righteous revenge on the Pequod by ramming this dumbass movie with her powerful forehead till it splits apart and sinks under its own weight. <3
Thank you for writing this. Since I haven’t seen or read the movie or play, this was my first experience with a lot of the specific plot points and dialogue and...wow. I gasped and groaned so many times that my husband was like “should you stop reading that? Are you okay?”
No. Definitely not okay. But thankful that I am re-affirmed in not watching this movie.
I love you for doing this because seeing people I thought were NOT shitty side with this movie and put their Brendan Fraser Nostalgia Goggles on has been... *insert Zoolander "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!" gif* I've just been in a despair hole lately with feeling like both fatness and disability are two things people will never care about in the ways they should, and since I'm *both* of those things, it makes me ragey to say the least! Anyway, thanks for making laugh (as always) and taking one for the team here by watching this. You do deserve $120k indeed!
I love me some BF, but I knew this movie was suspicious the moment I heard him do a whole ass media tour of “the fat suit is a work of art because we made it obey the laws of physics” and practically crying while talking about putting on the fat arms like sleeves. BOY NO WTF. Thanks for taking one for the team. I will not even Hate Watch this garbage. And I love Hate Watching shit!
Just became a paid subscriber! Been on the fence for awhile but the B-side 30 Rock reference pushed me over the edge.
This review confirms my sense that Darren Aronofsky is a renowned filmmaker because he takes awful cliched ideas about the world and remixes them in a twisted way so they seem intriguing (to some people). I'm still mad at the friend who made me watch Requiem for a Dream. I hope Darren reads your Guardian review and feels at least a tiny portion of the shame he associates with fat suit guy. I was never going to watch this movie but now I can speak confidently about the specific ways it's awful!
"having watched The Whale in a moment when, coincidentally in my personal life, I’ve been recognizing anew how violently I’ve been robbed of any natural relationship with food and my body. I am angry right now—about the way that fat people are treated, about the way that I’ve been treated, about the vanishingly small likelihood that I will ever recover." — I am going through something very similar in my life right now, and with all the articles glorifying ozempic et al. as the long-awaited miracle drug that's going to cure society of people like us, it feels like everything is in full-on regression (including my own mental health). Thank you for writing this and for writing about The Whale in The Guardian. You've given me and I'm sure countless other readers our own cathartic release in a time when it feels pointedly shitty to exist in a larger body.
As a certified Fat Person, I’m too exhausted by this to even be that angry. Like, thanks, Hollywood, for adding to the giant pile of garbage media that makes me feel bad about myself daily.
But I mean, I DO feel good that this movie sounds like genuine horse pucky, regardless of how totally fatty fat fat the protagonist is. Learn how to write a good movie.
Thank you so much for making me laugh and also making thin people aware of the fact that this movie is NOT. GOOD. It’s not humanizing. Leave fat people alone!
This is a perfect piece of writing.
And I ate chocolate while I read it.
Which I think is the way to do it :)
Thank you!