Wide Screen: Sideways
In Wide Screen, our newest feature, your BFD film analysts (read: me) will be reporting on the portrayal of fat (or "fat" if we're talking about Toni Collette in In Her Shoes) people in films, starting with one from the archives, Sideways. Suggestions for future installments of Wide Screen are very welcome!
[Disclaimer: this edition of Wide Screen contains mature language. Cover your eyes, kids!]
Character: Cammi the waitress, played by Missy Doty.
Credits: A relatively modest list of other roles, including a role in an episode of Shasta McNasty called "Chubby Chick." Her character had a name, though. Whew.
Plot points: Cammi recognizes Jack (played by Thomas Hayden Church) as a soap opera star, takes him home and has sex with him, and then turns out to be married. Hilarity ensues.
Stereotypes: None, really, unless being a waitress, watching soap operas, or ending your name with an "i" is considered a fat stereotype.
Sex/Romance/Attractiveness: Although she's dressed down in unflattering waitress garb, hair pulled back, face shiny, Jack still finds her attractive, and she has sex with two men during her brief on-screen appearance.
Fat jokes: Before making a play for her, Jack says "I bet she'd be tons of fun... you know, the grateful type."
Overall: I started with this film because I'm somewhat conflicted about it. I don't much care for the "grateful type" remark, but Jack, the lothario, does find her attractive and sleeps with her, thus putting her on par with the unquestionably hot (and thin) Sandra Oh. However, one of the jokes is that they have anal sex, possibly buying into the notion that "fat chicks will do anything in bed." Her sex scene is played for laughs, but then again, so is Sandra Oh's. And she is shown enjoying very vocal (and hilarious) sex with her husband. I just wish the husband weren't butt ugly! Sorry dude, that knit cap isn't doing you any favors. Then there's the Giamatti issue: Paul Giamatti's character, although also pudgy, ends up sleeping with Virginia Masden.
The bottom line: It's nice to see a naked fat chick on screen enjoying herself in bed.
Rating on the offense-o-meter (10 being Shallow Hal): 2
But how's the movie?: One of my favorites, which is how I typed this whole thing from memory.
[Disclaimer: this edition of Wide Screen contains mature language. Cover your eyes, kids!]
Character: Cammi the waitress, played by Missy Doty.
Credits: A relatively modest list of other roles, including a role in an episode of Shasta McNasty called "Chubby Chick." Her character had a name, though. Whew.
Plot points: Cammi recognizes Jack (played by Thomas Hayden Church) as a soap opera star, takes him home and has sex with him, and then turns out to be married. Hilarity ensues.
Stereotypes: None, really, unless being a waitress, watching soap operas, or ending your name with an "i" is considered a fat stereotype.
Sex/Romance/Attractiveness: Although she's dressed down in unflattering waitress garb, hair pulled back, face shiny, Jack still finds her attractive, and she has sex with two men during her brief on-screen appearance.
Fat jokes: Before making a play for her, Jack says "I bet she'd be tons of fun... you know, the grateful type."
Overall: I started with this film because I'm somewhat conflicted about it. I don't much care for the "grateful type" remark, but Jack, the lothario, does find her attractive and sleeps with her, thus putting her on par with the unquestionably hot (and thin) Sandra Oh. However, one of the jokes is that they have anal sex, possibly buying into the notion that "fat chicks will do anything in bed." Her sex scene is played for laughs, but then again, so is Sandra Oh's. And she is shown enjoying very vocal (and hilarious) sex with her husband. I just wish the husband weren't butt ugly! Sorry dude, that knit cap isn't doing you any favors. Then there's the Giamatti issue: Paul Giamatti's character, although also pudgy, ends up sleeping with Virginia Masden.
The bottom line: It's nice to see a naked fat chick on screen enjoying herself in bed.
Rating on the offense-o-meter (10 being Shallow Hal): 2
But how's the movie?: One of my favorites, which is how I typed this whole thing from memory.
posted by mo pie at 1:56 PM
24 Comments:
I will admit that I've only seen the trailer, so it may be, as Gwyneth Paltrow claims, a "love letter to fat people." But the trailer is nothing but a lot of horrible fat jokes, and there's Gwyneth in a fat suit. Ugh, ugh, ugh. Anything with Gwyneth in a fat suit automatically gets a 10. Knee-jerk reaction.
I will rent it one of these days, though, for the sake of science.
I was actually shocked at how much I liked "Shallow Hal," maybe because, based on the trailer, I was expecting to hate it with the fire of a thousand hot, burning suns. The whole movie *is* one giant fat joke, the joke being that this deluded guy thinks the fatass is a hottie. There are tired jokes, like the collapsing chair, the public pigout and the big, BIG pool splash. However, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jack Black's performances were both SO good, and some of the dialogue written for them excellent. There were a couple of scenes that made me, as a fat girl, cry, because they actually hit very sympathetically on what's so awful about the way men treat fat girls, and the way they are taught to judge women in general. It's not that deep, and it's not that sympathetic, but it's more than I expected. In an odd way, I think this movie could make someone at least feel a little guiltier than they did before about treating a fat girl like shit.
Then again, I am probably wrong. The jerks of the world probably just laughed at the fat jokes and considered the ending (with Jack Black and fat Gwyneth Paltrow getting together) laugh-out-loud funny, because 'who would EVER???'
Honestly, the whole thing is sort of like department store fat clothes - you see a simple black dress that could be just perfect, but someone has mucked it up with cowboy fringe, or a teddy bear holding a heart, or a hemline that hits smack in the middle of your calf. If they'd resisted putting in the hy-larious cheap shots, it would have been a really good film.
Also, I fricking HATE the word 'cankles,' which I heard for the first time in this film.
MG
Hey now! Muriel's wedding is only one of the best "fat" movies!
The point isn't that the fat girl (Muriel) has to settle for a cute guy who is using her for a green card, it's that she comes to learn her own self worth and that she doesn't WANT the relationship based on using/obligation/pity. She realizes that she ISN'T happy with the cute-guy-who-is-using-her, and that all her fantasies of what it would be like to have a perfect life pale in comparison to her friendship with Rhonda.
Because, as Muriel says, "When I lived in Porpoise Spit, I used to sit in my room for hours and listen to ABBA songs. But since I've met you and moved to Sydney, I haven't listened to one Abba song. That's because my life is as good as an Abba song. It's as good as Dancing Queen."
Like I said, I feel I should probably rent Shallow Hal so I can argue with some kind of authority. Right now I'm like the people picketing the Last Temptation of Christ without ever having seen it! But yes, in essence, what Byrneout said. The idea that he sees "inner beauty" which means that "beauty" = "not fat" bothers me as a premise. And if they do get together at the end, I'm not sure I buy it. They don't make her look very good in the fat suit, and does she really want to be with someone who isn't naturally attracted to her?
Then there's the issue of the fat suit itself--part of it is that instead of hiring a large actor, they put a skinny actor in a fat suit. I would have loved to see a fat girl playing the "fat Gwyneth" role who was at least allowed to be pretty instead of frumpy. (Although maybe it's less "realistic" or something... but it's more realistic than that awful, fake fat suit.)
And the fat jokes aren't any less offensive because Gwyneth Paltrow looks normal when we see her sit on one end of the boat and send someone shooting off into space.
But like I said, I defer to those who have seen it.
I actually had a dream last night that you had multiple copies of Shallow Hal, and it was secretly your favorite movie, and you gave me a copy and told me I had to watch it. I guess I'll have to rent it, though!
I think "Heathers" should be a 10 on the offense-o-meter. Heck, they only bring on the fat girl to kill her.
I hated how in the theater, everyone went "ewwww" when the waitress and her man were having sex. Come on people.
Is it "tons of fun"? Because I remember it as "a ton of fun", or possibly even "two tons of fun", either of which I think is more offensive (although, why? Maybe because "tons" has become a meaningless synonym for "lots", as in "I have tons of work to do").
On the other hand, I took it as a marker of Jack's insensitivity, not the views of the filmmakers (and then felt vindicated when it turned out Cammi wasn't a desperate spinster).
I also completely missed that it was anal sex, because I am an innocent.
Regarding Muriel's Wedding, I agree with Rhonda. Please, everybody who hasn't seen this? Go and get it. Watch it with your sister if possible. Take the phone off the hook.
I have to tell you that no movie has ever made me sadder than Muriel's Wedding. The mom reminds me so much of my own mom that I was actually traumatized by seeing the movie. So painful.
You know, I really had to comb my brain for a good contribution, but what about when no one says a word in either "Somethings Gotta Give" OR "About Schmidt" when we see Jack Nicholson's butt au naturel, but we get the collective "eeewwwww" again to which K.C. refers when we see Kathy Bates get in the hot tub, nude, with Jack -- and his butt -- in "About Schmidt"?
The fat thing, the old thing, the double standard thing.
I'm beginning to wonder even more than I was wondering why Sandra Oh and her ex, Alexander Payne, who directed both "Sideways" and "About Schmidt", got divorced.
Loooooove to be a fly on that wall.
Quotes from imdb.com:
Jack: Bet ya that chick's two tons of fun. You know, the grateful type?
Jack: Fucking chick's married, man.
Miles Raymond: What?
Jack: Her husband works a night shift or something, and he comes home and catches me on the floor with my cock in his wife's ass.
Miles Raymond: Oh, Jesus Christ.
Cat's fluffy take on Shallow Hal:
Well...yeah. Fat=ugly, skinny=beautiful, inner beauty is inner skinniness, feh. Fat Gwyneth is made so unattractive that it's really pretty offensive (why couldn't it be Camryn Mannheim or any of a host of very pretty fat women?) Stupid fat jokes definitely so old they creak and so dumb they hurt.
But. But the not-so-hot guy has to learn to love, and desire, the even less attractive woman for what(ever) she is. There are probably a thousand movies in which a conventionally beautiful woman "marries down", i.e. learns to love/appreciate the guy for what he is even if it's not dazzling, rich, whatever. In "real life," I've seen more smart, beautiful, cool women with very unappealing guys than I can shake a stick at. Women are culturally pressured, nay, bludgeoned, into marrying down, looking beyond male appearance, and not being shallow.
Right off hand I can't think of another movie that even raises the premise that men ought to do the same for women: love and desire them for what they are, look beyond appearance. There was that one James Bond flick, the second with the beauteous Timothy Dalton (slaps self for being shallow!) where he winds up with the smart and slightly more plain woman rather than the dumb beautiful woman, but even the plain woman was beautiful, so you can't do much with that. Throw me a bone here: can somebody think of one single other movie where a guy learns to appreciate and love and desire a plain woman and where the message (however horrendously presented) is that men should look beyond women's appearance? In which, in fact, women are subjects to men and not objects? There may well be one, but I sure haven't seen it.
I think "The Truth About Cats and Dogs" was kind of going for this. I personally think Jeanene Garafalo is all kinds of cute, but her character in this film is incredibly insecure. The other girl is the magnificent Uma Thurman. So it's like tall, blonde, thin goddess vs. shorter, more normal-sized, brunette, insecure chick. It's an awesome movie, actually.
"Dogfight," with River Phoenix and Lily Taylor, or "Hairspray" are good examples too. I wish I could think of more movies that, like Hairspray, have a fat girl on screen for some reason not at all related to her fat - sort of the way every sit com casually pairs a fat, ordinary-looking man with a thin household goddess.
I had a really hard time with "Truth About Cats and Dogs" because Janeane Garofalo is both charismatic and really beautiful. It was hard to like that stupid guy for not at least being suspicious when JG, in person, seemed so much more like the cool girl he was in love with than UT. I think it would have been a lot more interesting if he had found himself falling, in person, for JG and suffering horrible guilt over having to break it to Uma, who he liked so much over the phone.
I'm with Cat on "Shallow Hal." It would be nice to have the luxury of flat out hating this movie because so many others had done it better.
Thanks for this interesting discussion, mo!
MG
Yeah, the dude in Truth About Cats and Dogs was a total idiot for not catching on.
"Truth about Cats & Dogs". Ben Chaplin. Mmmmm.
What, no one wants to talk with me (see above) about Jack Nicholson's butt?
(And about Kathy Bates?)
Well, except that in the real world, nobody would care if a model's toes were two different lengths. It's not like a whole segment of society consisting of models with weird toes is going to have their own insecurities reinforced by the movie. Fat=ugly isn't an idea shared only by extra-shallow people. It's shared by many people!
Jen - the word "cankles" is a prime example of what went wrong in the chemical reaction between "Hal" and its audience: nobody seems to remember the positive message of the film, but a lot of people thought "cankles" was a scream. It's entered the lexicon, and now many, many people bludgeon women with it just as proudly as the before-Hal did.
I happen to agree with you as far as the message of the movie goes, but there *was* some nasty pleasure evident in the filming of those tired old fat jokes - the kind of thing the filmmakers would never have felt comfortable applying to the disabled character they included as another instance of "don't judge a book by its cover." Fat jokes could have been turned to account if they'd been managed in a way that made the average viewer first laugh, then think about why they are laughing and then, hopefully, feel guilty for laughing - but they weren't played that way. They were played as straight cheap shots, and that seriously undermined the film's positive message, especially from the standpoint of people who aren't already in sympathy with it.
Anyway, just my two cents (or two more of them). I think it's still well worth seeing. But I also think the boys that made the film would have been seriously uncomfortable if they hadn't made good and sure their audience knew they were no chubby chasers, and that was cowardly of them.
littlem - that flap drove me crazy too! I love Kathy Bates. She should be in a new movie every three weeks.
MG
I would really encourage the people who haven't seen the movie to watch it before they judge. Yes, the movie has some rather tasteless fat jokes. It was created by the Farrelly Brothers, of 'Dumb and Dumber' and 'Me, Myself and Irene'. They specialize in tasteless humor. And while this may be a somewhat tired explanation, they do truly make fun of everyone and everything. I would argue that their movies generally have heart though, and 'Shallow Hal' is no exception.
Hal is not supposed to be an average Joe. He is portrayed as pathologically shallow. The movie also explicitly says that Hal is NOT deluded when he thinks Gwenneth is beautiful - that in fact, he sees her as beautiful because he has been de-programmed from the messages he's gotten about beauty his entire life. The movie also explicitly says that if you think someone is beautiful, you won't care what the rest of the world tells you.
Was the movie designed to cause a social revolution? No. It's a light comedy with a nice message. I suppose F Bros could have made a movie that made most people feel horribly guilty about their prejudices and the fact that they don't eat enough vegetables, but guilt? Not that entertaining.
One other thing - some characters in the movie ask Hal why he's always going after hot women when he himself is not that attractive. He and his friend are also shown making fools of themselves pretending that they're players.
Anonymous,
I agree with most of the points you made about what was good about "Hal," but disagree that the Farelly brothers "make fun of everyone." They don't make fun of the disabled guy in the movie (in fact, they present him as an ordinary character, not going out of the way to emphasize his disability or make it the thing that justifies his presence in the movie, which I thought was cool). I think their audience would have been really uncomfortable if they had made fun of him, in the cheap-shot way they made fun of fat people. If they were going to make a joke at his expense at all, they would probably have tried to walk that really tight line of making you laugh and squirm a little for laughing at the same time - the way John Callahan's cartoons do (very funny paraplegic cartoonist whose stuff, mostly about various disabilities, is considered REALLY distateful by a lot of people. His autobiography "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot," is a really terrific read).
What I was saying was not that the Farelly brothers owed us a moral homily on how we should be ashamed of hating fat people, but that if they were going to make fat jokes, they should have made THAT kind of fat joke - the kind that is hysterically funny, but that makes you just a tidge uncomfortable. Based on how the brothers themselves promote their envelope-pushin' shtick, I think that is what they're generally going for. With the fat jokes in "Shallow Hal," they got lazy.
Er - sorry, Mo, for spending so much time talking about this old movie on your "Sideways" thread! I wish I had seen "Sideways" so I could comment.
MG
When I said the F Bros make fun of everyone, I was considering their entire body of ... well, I guess I can call it work. They make fun of the mentally disabled, the mentally challenged, gay men, the Irish, fecal matter, and so on. They're not into sharp, sophisticated humor. I mean, one of their biggest moments features Cameron Diaz using semen as hair gel.
While 'Shallow Hal' does poke fun at the obese, it never says, "fat people are grody." The canoe joke seems pretty harmless to me - heavy people are in fact heavier than than less heavy people. I don't see any shaming there, just some gentle fun.
Humor is fairly personal, so I don't claim to speak for everyone. I have a pretty black sense of humor that regularly freaks people out, but I find 'Family Guy' too harsh. Go figure. I just think that no one can claim immunity from mockery. I agree that people are often unfairly cruel about weight, but that doesn't mean that nobody can EVER make fun of us in any way whatsoever.
Anonymous who quoted imdb: Yup, that's pretty unambiguous! I must have an oddly selective memory ;)
Mo: Yes, that part of Muriel's Wedding made me cry too. On the other hand, one of the reasons I like that movie is that it doesn't give you easy happy endings.
Just letting you know that I blogged this for the Big Fat Carnival over at Body Impolitic because I loved it!
Can we use that movie review format?
I know that I'm literally months late, but Shallow Hal didn't exclusively make the beauty = skinny point. One character that we first see in Hal's "deluded" state is a ultra-skinny, dried-up old prune. When we finally see her as the rest of the world sees her, she's young and gorgeous.
I adore Muriel's Wedding.
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