When obesity becomes a monster

+ 2022's independent wave US Edition - Today's top story: 'The Whale' is a horror film that taps into our fear of fatness [View in browser]( US Edition | 28 January 2023 [The Conversation] [The Conversation]( When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released its Oscar nominations on Tuesday, Brendan Fraser’s nomination for best actor came as no surprise. The actor has received widespread praise for his portrayal of Charlie, a morbidly obese man who’s essentially confined to his home, in “The Whale.” Yet after seeing the film, Drake University English professor Beth Younger left the theater shaken. As someone who researches fatness in popular culture, she’s written about how overweight characters usually must lose weight in order to gain acceptance or to be loved. But Charlie, she notes, “does not lose weight … he gets bigger and bigger, suffering a slow and painful physical breakdown.” In “The Whale,” [she sees parallels to a subgenre of horror called body horror](, which depicts the destruction and degeneration of the human body. She wonders: What does a film that fixates on the horror of obesity say about our culture’s fear of fatness? This week we also liked articles about the [pope’s comments regarding LGBTQ people](, [California’s new climate plan]( and the role of [standardized tests in the college admissions process](. Nick Lehr Arts + Culture Editor Over the course of ‘The Whale,’ Charlie’s body gradually breaks down. A24 [‘The Whale’ is a horror film that taps into our fear of fatness]( Beth Younger, Drake University In a thin-obsessed culture, fatness has become its own kind of monster. 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