Monday, July 23, 2007
Subconsciously or not, it's easier for the audience to laugh at the fat person if they know that the actor underneath is actually trim. Eddie Murphy in "The Nutty Professor" remakes; Julia Roberts in "America's Sweetheart"; Martin Lawrence in "Big Momma's House"... But to the overweight person sitting in the audience, the experience must be similar to a black person watching an old blackface minstrel show. When the character is presented as mean-spiritedly as Mike Myers' Fat Bastard character from the "Austin Powers" movies or scary-thin Courteney Cox-Arquette's Fat Monica from flashback episodes of "Friends," it becomes outright torture.
