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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment

Why The Whale ends up dehumanising us all

Brendan Fraser in The Whale
Brendan Fraser in The Whale, for which he won the best actor Oscar. Photograph: A24

I had already decided to pass on watching The Whale before reading Lindy West’s take on it ((The Whale is not a masterpiece – it’s a joyless, harmful fantasy of fat squalor, 10 March). But I was shocked to see the director’s implicit claim that the film “humanises” fat people. How do you humanise someone who is already human?
Marco Livingstone
London

• Re your article (Rishi Sunak has electricity grid upgraded to heat his private pool, 12 March), it’s good to know that Rishi Sunak has personally paid for the extra equipment for the grid to power his heated pool. He could show solidarity and opt to have a prepayment meter fitted too.
Chris Sumner
Waltham Abbey, Essex

• It is probably unrealistic to expect a government of, or in hock to, plutocrats to take measures to restrict corporate greed (Editorial, 12 March). In any Venn diagram, the overlap between “rich” and “moral” portrays the eye of the needle through which the camel hopes to pass.
Richard W Russell
Bowmore, Islay

• When first visiting Highgate cemetery I was tickled pink (red?) to see that the graves of Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer face each other (Letters, 6 March).
Phil Rhoden
Kidderminster, Worcestershire

• Now the wheels really have come off everything. Our Guardian newspapers did not make it across the Pennines last Friday – they were stuck in the snow on the M62. We read the paper online, but it means we can’t cut out the Martin Rowson cartoon and stick it on the kitchen wall.
Sarah and Bill Sheils
York

The last brief letter was amended on 14 March to correct the name of the cartoonist Martin Rowson.

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