Fat Actually: Love Actually's Peculiar Preoccupation
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 เม.ย. 2022
- This is a re-upload, with Kate Moss's cursed bosom covered, lest they turn all my viewers to stone! Or whatever TH-cam thinks will happen.
Love Actually is a credit to writer/director Richard Curtis's ability to create a lively and amusing world full of funny and memorable characters. Whether or not you really like the film (I am not its biggest fan), it's the reason it's so enduring. But why is Curtis so preoccupied with fat? It comes up so often, not just in the film, but in the script, the commentary, and his other writing. A lot has been written about the character of Natalie, played by Martine McCutcheon, a character who is called chubby, plumpy, and fat by three different characters in the film, not to mention multiple other jabs at her weight, when she is plainly not fat. But there are a lot more characters than just Natalie who get criticized for some extra (real or imagined) pounds.
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Fabulous work! As a recovered ED patient, I still, years later, hear every one of these kinds of jokes in entertainment. No matter how quietly they may be uttered in a scene, my brain will always, always hear them. I wish that part of my brain would die. Nonetheless, I would love to see this movie remade by some powerful, intelligent & influential women of Hollywood. Have you ever watched Friends? The treatment of young fat Monica by her horrendous mother is disturbing to watch, in addition to the other characters making her the butt of jokes.
Even when she is thin, the characters treat it as negative that she was ever fat, a blemish against her forevermore.
It's a Richard Curtis thing, yepp. In Bridget Jones's Diary, a book I read in 8th grade, in the midst of developing a long-lasting complex ED, Bridget is logging her weight and it's like in the mid 130s to maybe 140ish pounds. She is not even nearly overweight, let alone fat. Then Renee Zellweger is cast and a big hoopla is made of her having to absolutely "pack" on the pounds like it's a massive amount. Then, in the movie, it's a constant talking point... So our developing teenage brains were inundated with the idea that someone who is in the higher part of the "normal" range is considered fat and has to track their (normal!) weight as obsessively as they do their cigarettes, an objectively harmful habit. Crazy.
Richard Curtis has written a lot of really bizarre shit that I'm glad I didn't watch when I was a teenager, or it never really absorbed.
I didn't get the fuss over Four Weddings and a Funeral at the time and I still don't, so nothing from that movie ever registered.
Love Actually came out after I had passed the danger zone of being influenced by the film.
About Time has a dude go back in time over and over to get the exact right version of himself to present to the object of his affection.
Yesterday has the girl demanding the guy decide between her and stardom, with no indication that she liked him beforehand.
Curtis is a strange dude.
Notting Hill I saw at the time and liked it a lot, but it is the least problematic of his films. Thank god.
@@squamish4244 It's important to highlight these things because young people get sold this idea of what love is.
Because Four Weddings and Notting Hill were part of my childhood, we all loved those movies. When I rewatched them as an adult, though, it was striking how emotionally immature they are. They have the lovable crew of characters and some funny moments but both involve people falling for someone completely without knowing them, really. In Four Weddings he's hung op on a woman who turns around and gets engaged with another dude and then cheats on said dude with the main guy... And in Notting Hill, maybe there's some "chemistry" between them but it's not really shown. We're just told that he's now completely in love and cannot forget about this "goddess" and she sort of wants a normal guy she could love.
Not saying that chemistry "at first sight" doesn't happen. It's happened to me. But in that case it was followed by a long time of getting to know a person. It was not a "chemistry. one-night-stand. never see each other again. LOVE!!!" situation.
You gotta watch Bridget Jones Diary. The whole movie is just a character with an eating disorder made to be the butt of every joke.
The reason I actually ended up watching this video is that there was a recent interview with Richard Curtis where he expressed regret for all of the fat jokes. He called himself “un-observant and not as clever as I should have been”.
Excellent vid! Am subscribing and sending this to my sister; we have a shared contempt for this movie 😅 Best of luck with your channel mate x
I watched love actually before several times, but never was really paying attention to fat jokes. Today I've watched it after several years, and for two hours the only thing i was able to keep in my mind was "But natalie IS NOT FAT!". That breaks my heart to see clearly now where my weight and self-confidence problems grow from. I'm not blessed with a skinny type of fugure, and i always counted myself as fat, ugly and "second type of woman". Only now my eyes start to open. Shame for every of these creators with huge influence.
You know, I’ve always been bothered by that peculiarly British fondness for fat ‘jokes’ even in otherwise polite people, but hadn’t realized the breadth and depth of the awfulness in this particular movie, (which I generally very much enjoy), until your compilation and analysis. I take this as a horrifying sign that I have become inured though constant cultural repetition. Gaaaah.
Your clips also highlight how thoroughly this flick insults women throughout as only having value in relation to how they are viewed by men, and that view dividing women into worthiness based on a thin/fat dichotomy also holds that women are predatory or unfaithful (if only mildly to save a man’s ego) or insecure or there for men to pluck or discard, but never a whole person who gets to make her choices as a man does. Boo. Well, there still is ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ when I need a feel-good holiday movie.
For whatever reason I missed the original upload before, so I'm glad I got to see this one. First off, it's really well done. Nice work. Second, Love Actually came out during the notorious period of the late 90's/early 2000's when women (and even teens/tweens) were expected to be toothpick thin. Something seemingly achievable only by eating disorders. Fun times...not really. I suspect the standards of this time played a significant role in Curtis' vision of an ideal body type as well as contributed to the jokes in the film. Bringing up About Time, although I definitely heard the word "fat" in the McAdams line, the joke resonated with me a bit more and I didn't take it the same way as in the other films. To be a little cliche, if I had a nickel for how many times I complained about how big, fat, heavy, swollen, the pain that comes along with suddenly being that heavy, or the fact that my clothes wouldn't fit during my pregnancies, I would probably have thousands of dollars. So watching that film at that part, I was laughing more at me and not seeing more traditional crude humor. And finally, to agree with your initial point, Bridget Jones's Diary is basically just a movie about making fun of a fat girl. Like, the entire movie. It's the whole movie. If one thought Love Actually was bad, then Bridget Jones is easily 10x worse.
Thank you! For sure, About Time was pretty innocuous, and yeah, sounds like it's relatable to anyone who has ever been pregnant. I wish I had a better memory of Bridget Jones, I remember a little about the movie making fun of her weight, but I haven't seen it recently enough to remember the details.
@@theotherhalfoffilm You should watch it again for funsies. It's pretty ridiculous, but I think that's the point.
One thing I will say is that there ARE women who call themselves fat who are the last people you’d think of when you think “fat”. It’s an unhealthy mindset, but it’s not outside the realm of believability. The amount of times being fat is mentioned in this movie definitely shows a strange trend though, I agree.
As far as the pet name “plumpy” goes, I don’t know what’s typical in England, but I know in Spanish speaking countries, people will at times call overweight close friends or family “gordita” or “gordito” as a term of endearment.
I was almost wondering if the fact that everyone calls Natalie fat or chubby was supposed to be a joke since she isn’t really. But with some of your other observations about the script, I’m seeing that I’m probably wrong.
Being fat has never been easy and there is still tremendous stigma today, but man it's outrageous that this was totally socially acceptable just 15 years ago.
Man, he killed off the manager for Red Nose Day. I don't count this as canon, but the canon already sucks anyway.
I agree with everything and I despise this movie. But Aurelia's sister does not call her "skinny moron", that's an awful translation. She says "minha parvalhona", which means "my stupid" or "my moron", so whoever translated that must have felt like there were not enough "jokes" about weight
Can’t get enough of this shit
Thoughtful analysis. Makes me wonder what the scrip would be like if rewritten by a woman.
Not a bad question. However, it was Kate Moss who said "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels." I think for any one film, and regarding this particular issue, it may not have been all that different. Internalised misogyny is really powerful.
Annie was just being a right bitch just because she can. And yes it is not appropriate in the work environment. And it wasn’t until I watched this that I realised just how many references to weight there was in this film which is a shame as I quite like to watch it at Xmas.
I mean, they could have cut that whole card scene out, really.
Really great analysis.
Richard Curtis loves it when his beautiful thin characters call themselves fat.
I remember being 14 and mortified that Natalie was considered fat. If she's considered fat, then I'm a disguisting snorlax who has to go on a diet immediately
Holy shit I never realized how fat phobic Love Actually is. But Jesus I’ve internalized so many of those messages
I think the point of the recurring "she's fat" joke is kind of just British absurdism. The humour in people continually calling her fat for no reason is purely based in the irony of the situation of a beautiful woman being gaslit into thinking she's unattractive somehow. He's not calling the actress fat, he's calling fat people ugly. Otherwise great video, but I recommend familiarising yourself with the pacing of British comedy, because this is a very common type of joke, to keep hammering home the same point the audience is meant to see to be ridiculous.
But the actress who plays the sister does appear to be overweight. And her sister has stated she avoids treats out of her dread of ending up like her sister, who is not treated kindly, even by her own father. And it's meant to be a joke that she comes forward thinking someone wants to marry her!
Woke