I’ll admit I have never fully come to terms with the idea of being represented in movies, or literature. It’s undoubtedly a feature of my various privileges.
I’m not sure I’d want to see a wobbly porker like me huff and puff his way through an action scene, and I’d definitely not want to watch me in a love scene too close after eating.
But I do kind of get that it’s possible to feel “left out” of the entertainment industry. My friend’s daughter (about 8 at the time) once complained there weren’t very many female superhero movies she could watch. Her brothers were happily beating the shit out of each other by being Thanos, Thor, or the Hulk, but she felt a bit unable to join in.
In my case, I’m more than happy to trade a significant amount of realism for the sake of entertainment.
I’m glad that the movies I watch aren’t faithful representations of reality. How dull would that be?
Have you put the garbage out yet, love?
Give me a few minutes. I’m nearly at the next level, and where the hell is my sandwich?
We enter a kind of bargain when we watch a movie or a show. We know the characters and situations aren’t going to be completely ‘true to life’. But we also don’t want things to get so far beyond reality that it’s distracting (even in Sci-Fi etc). It’s a difficult balance. I remember one season of 24 where they’d moved into a new HQ (the old one had probably been blown to bits in the previous season). It was the sexiest counter-terrorism unit on the planet. Everyone looked like they’d been recruited from some model agency. It was a bit hard to take seriously.
On the other hand, would Notting Hill have made quite the same impact with different leads?
In most rom-coms (but not all) physical attractiveness is a pre-requisite for the main characters. Weight is also one of those awkward elements of reality that we don’t really want to be faithfully represented on screen. A blobby Wolverine would not cut the mustard, even with his adamantium claws.
Which one of these, cast in a superhero movie, do you think would be more commercially successful?
It works the other way too.
I am afraid to say that I don’t find the “I’ve just been rescued from Belsen” look to be particularly appealing, either.
I have no idea why this emaciated, malnourished, look was ever thought to be the one to go for when presenting your new fashion range.
One wonders how much extra marble Michelangelo would have needed had he been born a few hundred years later and trying to be more “representative” of today’s David?
So how much cellulite do we really want on our celluloid?
There’s no doubt that the ‘western’ societies, and non-western societies who decide that things like MacDonald’s are the way to go, have blobbed out. With an estimated obesity rate of something like 40% in the US, and estimated rates of 26% in the UK, does this mean at least 1 out of every 3 or 4 people we see on our screens should look like they’ve consumed the nutritional resources of a small country?
What do we do about the rising tide of flab? Do we need to do anything about it? Is it, as the body positivity movement might claim, just a glorious, wonderful and healthy expression of beauty?
Well, my profound alternative way of knowing from my lived experience would lead me to suggest that carrying an excess amount of fat that would be difficult to bench press in a gym is more akin to a disability. I certainly didn’t feel particularly able when I struggled to tie my shoelaces and nearly gave myself a hernia or an aneurysm when doing so. I didn’t feel particularly able when I was out of breath walking up the stairs.
It wasn’t my fault. I was simply a victim of the pietriarchical society in which rampant capitalism forced me to eat copious quantities of donuts, Cinnabon and Big Macs washed down with the requisite amount of alcohol suggested by the Critical Beer Theorists. Locked in my house for months, what was I supposed to do? Stay healthy?
We can all make excuses, but for the vast majority of us bloboids, we’ve simply over-indulged. It’s also true that for many of us, once we’ve traded our skinny jeans for the XXL slob pants, it’s really not quite as easy as the slogan “eat less, move more” would have you glibly believe. We’ve eaten ourselves into a potentially serious metabolic fubar and it’s not trivial in most cases to reverse that.
But is our failure to regulate ourselves, something to celebrate or something to be ashamed of? More to the point, is it something we need (or want) to be accurately represented on our screens, in our artwork, or in the literature we read? Do we need proportional representation for something that has, by the magic of MacDonalds, led to an over-proportionate physical presentation?
According to Buzzfeed it’s important in at least one entertainment genre.
Presumably, wobbly whites are verboten - if you’re going to have Captain Lard being the next superhero, then he, she or it, must be black. They deserve it.
I’m not quite sure why they deserve such a singular honour, but rest assured they do, coz Buzzfeed said so.
And they need to be capable of anything. Here’s one AI generated character as an example of the new breed of super-sized hero
Capable of anything?
Well possibly not tying her shoelaces, or even being able to see her shoes, but I’m sure she’d give Wolverine a pasting. If she could only just catch him.
Distorting spacetime sufficiently to cause star ships to fall from the sky? Quite possibly.
The romantic elements to the story would have to include Reed Richards as he’s the only person who could actually give her a hug.
And she’d be able to impersonate Jabba the Hutt with no difficulty whatsoever - so that could be an interesting plotline as she infiltrates the villain’s lair without having to use any Jedi mind tricks.
One artist wasn’t satisfied with simply black and wobbly, and felt it was important to have black, wobbly and queer characters positively represented in Sci-Fi. The triumvirate of perfection.
I’m sure such characters will find a niche audience (although perhaps the word niche is wrong, because these characters wouldn’t fit in your average niche) but I can’t really see a mass appeal for such mass. And you’d definitely need a widescreen TV.
As someone who can do a half decent impersonation of Jabba the Hutt without too much extra padding I don’t want my rolls to be celebrated with roles. I’m not proud of them. I need to do something about them.
I don’t want some well-meaning prat to tell me it’s OK to be the size of a small frigate - because it’s not.
That’s my lived experience - so it has to be the truth, right?
Well I suppose all the supersize heros need to do is just roll over the enemy, who'll just end up looking like an old Tom & Jerry cartooon. Something else the supersize hero(ine) might have problems with in addition to shoe laces is wiping his/her/its bum.
I think it's time the concept of shame was resurrected and everyone started taking responsibility for their failings.
It was covid highlighting the dangers of obesity that made me take a bit of personal responsibility.
As for feeling represented, I'm much more concerned about my MP, well any MP, representing my views in government, which so far they have failed to do for many years with no prospect of that changing.
When crafting stories, the thing to remember is that you want credible characters. Credible inside the story's own internal logic, which is the second thing you take care to be meticulous about: internal logical consitency.
As soon as you put something else above those, your story will start to emulate a black hole, and you will feel a panicky compulsion to try and fill that hole by throwing cool-for-the-sake-of-coolness and more-sexy and other superficial bollocks in it.
That doesn't work. You'll get a spectacle all right, but unless sheer spectacle was the original point, the story a ssuch will be instantly forgettable or even get in the way of said spectacle.
Take the original Star Wars movie. The actual story about a political struggle is too abstract so it is relegated to background noise, while the characters carry the story we care about forward:
Leia, being the most important character, is shown to be equally willing to lead as she is wise enough to recognise the ability of others and let them take point - a good quality in a leader and her character is consistently shown being passionate about her beliefs, without being preachy, didactic or obnoxious about it. Instead, she is very practical, dealing with reality as-is.
Now compare her to virtually any female lead in any post-2000 US-made movie.