Maybe The Whale was doomed from the start. Darren Aronofsky’s mawkish Oscar-bait drama – starring Brendan Fraser as a morbidly obese man reeling from the death of his partner – seemed to break all the rules of contemporary good taste. And not deliberately. For the role, Fraser gained a significant amount of weight, and augmented this with prosthetics; The Whale is built entirely around his startling physical transformation. His character, however, is presented as an object of great pity, a viewpoint the film seems to find profound. Accusations of fatphobia have been rampant. (Eloise Hendy neatly explains the backlash in this piece about Hollywood’s problematic fat suit resurgence.) Critically speaking, The Whale has endured a pretty rigorous harpooning.
Yet while The Whale’s Best Picture hopes may have been beached by its polarised reception, Fraser’s own reputation has emerged from the film unscathed – and arguably even bolstered. The Mummy star is the bookies’ favourite to take home the Oscar for Best Actor, and is currently in the throes of a full-fledged career comeback. If he wins the award, it will, for many, be a moment of mixed emotions. On the one hand, the win would represent overdue recognition for a talented actor whom the film industry has treated very poorly. On the other, a blithe endorsement of entrenched fatphobic tropes. But can Fraser really be held responsible for the film’s ethical failings? I’m not so sure.
