the fat comic sidekick (and that’s it)

Videos of Bianca Bonafede

What is the fat character trope?

The attic Melanie Lynskeywho initially became famous above all for the role of the neighbor in the American sitcom Two men and a halfshe got bored of the ‘typecasting‘. The term ‘typecast’ means the process by which actors or actresses are selected on the basis of their physical appearance and for that directed to very specific roles, stereotyped over time and which have by now become categories and archetypes never nuanced and indeed, always rigorously attentive to the protocol that describes them. In fact, the actress told in a recent interview for the New York Times that she has always happened, in the end, to be chosen for the role of the fat friendor of the “nice guy” a bit fleshy. She even tells of a time when, in the script, she read that in every scene her character was supposed to hold a candy, “a candy bar”. And here comes the dilemma: for how much controversial the representation of these characters is, it is however necessary that there is at least one representation. However, typecasting generates one stereotype and then we ask ourselves: can a stereotype be ethically representative of a group? According to Lynskey, no. “I would love to be on screen and represent a interesting person who doesn’t care about the appearance of his belly. But if there were more people like me on the screen, I wouldn’t even have to talk about this issue so much.”
From the representation of fat people there has been a lot of talk about the cinema especially recently, when, following the nomination for the Oscar awards of the film The Whalecritics have joined in a chorus of protest against the use of a fat suit to artificially fatten the body of the lead actor, Brendan Fraser, rather than preferring, at castings, an actor whose body conforms to that of the character represented. But about this typecastingespecially when we see it used in the spheres of comedy, there is also a second side of the coin, which allows us to fully enter into the discourse of fat character tropei.e. the archetype of the fat character who is also, and basically only, one comedy tool just according to his body.

Disney Channel and the Curse of the Fat Girlfriend

Rebel Wilson she became famous mainly following her role in the saga Pitch perfect, in which she plays the funny, funny and fat friend. “I had been stereotyped into that kind of character,” he said in an interview for Insiders. “Even though I actually love playing these kinds of characters, I decided I wanted more space, and as a big girl I could only be pigeonholed”. But once she made the decision she wanted to shed a few pounds, Wilson found that she contractually couldn’t: in short, his character could only exist in a fat body.
Observing the fat character trope from a body positivity and/or body neutrality point of view, it is the representation of how the portrait of bodies on film can negatively affect one’s perception of oneself and put limits on the viewer with respect to his own identity. If we have been used to seeing the fat character only as the comic sidekick, it is probable that, when we are fat, we will convince ourselves of the inaccessibility on our part of having access to some characteristics: intelligence, courage, sensuality, empathy (to name a few non-exhaustive examples). The fat character trope represents just that, the stereotyping of a very large and varied category of bodies into a single and unchanged personality. It was done with Fat Monica in Friendsfor example, but also and above all in writing products for children: Disney Channel, in a certain historical period of his career in television, has fully represented, and negatively, the fat character trope within his shows. Since these programs are essentially aimed at people between 10 and 14 years old, one could say that the aggravating circumstance of never having understood the power and influence of one’s choices on malleable and young minds is added to the guilt.
Wizards of Waverly was a very successful children’s sitcom: it followed the story of a family of wizards in disguise, who had to learn to use their powers and, at the same time, hide them from the rest of the world. Alex Russo, played by a very young girl Selena Gomez (with a small physique) was always accompanied by her best friend Harper, played by the actress Jennifer Stone. It is often referenced in the series how Harper is the friend weird, weird: this is another typical feature that is saddled with fat actors or to the actors who have to interpret “the nice friend”, and therefore fat.

They have never been fat: they made us believe it

Remaining in the Disney Channel area we could also mention Trish, Ally’s friend in the sitcom Austin & Ally; even in recent cartoons, which should be more attentive to these dynamics, we find the fat character trope that exists only to give way to the script of filled with jokes about his physiqueas they do with Owen in Total Drama. What is even more shocking about Disney Channel, beyond stereotyping, is that the “fat and funny” characters they created, they weren’t even fat most of the time: they only pushed us to convince us of the veracity of the fat – nice binomial, so as to make us believe that those actresses had non-compliant bodies. See also the episode in which Raven, the protagonist of the children’s sitcom That’s so Ravenbeing told Chen can’t wear her fashion creations because too much fat, for example. She has never been seen as the fat character but, at a time she wants to feel other than nice character (and with visions of the future, of course), is prevented by the script.
It is a process that has a double impact on the way we see how the our body fits into society: not only did they make us believe that a body fat could not be the protagonist or “alive” and human beyond its size, but also that being fat meant don’t be extremely thin. Which, along with fashion of heroin chic on the runways, to Kate Moss who tells us that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” (nothing tastes better than the feeling of being thin”) and the media bouncing photos of Demi Lovato in a bathing suit calling her lewd, she definitely had serious consequences on the relationship with one’s body of those who, in those years, were growing up and faced adolescence.

The new fat characters who are also (much) more

What is certain is that in recent years, especially TV series for adults (or for the whole family) are undertaking, with more or less success, to put a twist on the fat character trope, in order to eliminate it forever from the shortcuts of lazy screenwriters: we are talking about those programs that tend to be aimed at today’s adults who were teenagers and children when the stereotype reached its all-time high. There are, for example, several fat characters in Orange is the New Black; although they are sometimes insulted for their appearance (we are inside a prison, and the narrative coherence requires that the language adapt to the characters of our story: it fits), they are anything but just the pretext for a joke. Wrestler Carmen (Glow) and student Claire (Derry Girls) are two other examples of characters who, although very distant from each other, represent a step forward in creating more nuances that the personalities of fat characters can finally possess.
The same happened with a series more aimed at teenagers and with even more impact: let’s talk about Euphoria and, specifically, of the character of Kat. It is a girl with an ultra multifaceted personality and who does not represent her classic friend (let’s repeat it: fat and nice) to refer to: far from it. Kat is full of flaws, often self-absorbed and inattentive to the people around her, even in love. A novelty for the fat character trope, which is seen tinged with new characteristics which, in their negativity, create a human framework of the person. It’s not there “best friend of” (in this case Maddy, whom she blatantly ignores or doesn’t support on many occasions), but an individual in her own right who follows her own life path and who, among other things, brings to the screen an attitude towards sexuality very free and without inhibitions: she is a cam girl and sex makes her more self-aware. That a first step has finally been taken towards the official farewell to the seemingly indissoluble bond between body type and characteristics of the individual (which applies to fat people but also to other “categories”, as the partial censorship of Roald Dahl’s books explains)? Only time, and upcoming movies, will tell.

Graduated in Arts, Entertainment, Cultural Events at the IULM University of Milan, she is pursuing a Masters in Storytelling Arts. She is passionate about storytelling in all its forms, from narrative to…