Brendan Fraser is The Whale
Cinema grants immortality, but at a price. It creates merely an imprint, as one was captured at that moment time.
While the organic source of the image is subject to gravity and corporeal deterioration, their two-dimensional likeness looks on, with implicit smugness and impartiality.
Our younger selves seriously doubt the brutal fact of time.
We’re all subject to the reminder of this fragile status as mortal creatures. Our likeness being distributed and replicated via the internet, which engulfs us like a fifth great ocean on this similarly decaying planet.
But Brendan Fraser has to deal with this on a far grander scale. He fought ancient evil in The Mummy, communed with nature in George of the Jungle and…what else?
Whatever he did, he did it handsomely, resembling the boy next door, if the boy next door was a Greek God.
But the truth is, now an older man, he doesn’t have much of an oeuvre to look back on.
That’s to say, recollect with pride. Not literally watch his cinematic output. Most actors don’t really do that; screen their own movies, unless your name is Nicholas Cage.
But if sweet Brendan was to take a trip down memory lane, he would see what we see - sagging face, hair retreating, and a rounder middle asserting itself.
That’s the fate of many; perhaps most. But celebs are held under a different light. An artificial one.
It’s a crime that Brendan Fraser got old. It’s unjust that his career stalled. Why? Because when he started to look a bit more like the common man, he revealed himself to be pathetically mortal. Just like you.
This tabloid impulse is indelibly part of the Fraser story.
His averageness got people thinking, he’s one of us. He must be saved. Our sweet baby boy must ascend Mount Olympus once more. We’re rooting for you, Brendo!
But if Brendan was to make a comeback, it would have to be big, right. How big? Try the most massive creature on earth. As big as a whale, baby. Remember those spammy ads on the edge of your webpage, beckoning you to click with the promise of uncovering the drastic decline of your favourite actor's looks? This tabloid impulse is indelibly part of the Fraser story.
While fans forgive Fraser’s perceived aesthetic shortcomings, they still want them to be addressed. They want answers. Contemporary critics might smugly refer to this as the elephant in the room.
And what better way to say sorry for being overweight than playing a 600lbs English teacher who pretends his webcam is broken so he doesn’t have to reveal his true form?
In Darren Aranofksy’s The Whale, Brendan Fraser is not, counter-intuitively, playing an aquatic superhero. He stars as a man who never leaves his squalid flat. He works from home, where he’s been slowly eating himself to death. Falling into a deep depression following the death of a lover, he also has an estranged daughter from a previous relationship.
This melodrama seeks to peel back his many layers, revealing the beauty behind the ‘beast’; the man behind the ‘monster’. He has a heart of gold (figuratively; he actually has a heart attack at the beginning of the film while climaxing over porn).
But what’s so bad about being obese, anyway? It has less than nothing to do with the content of one’s moral character.
He revealed himself to be pathetically mortal. Just like you.
Fraser is cocooned inside a vast prosthetic suit, which glaringly reminds us that there are indeed larger actors out there who could've made the role their own without a bodysuit - representing their community authentically. But we are expected to associate his artificially rendered physical difference with negativity, namely, the absence of humanity (appearing more like a whale, or something). This hasn’t stopped the mixed critical reaction being stuffed with fat-puns, albeit often accompanied by calls to GIVE THIS MAN AN OSCAR!
Of course, the film is aware of this, and it’s a central theme. The audience reacts, knee-jerk style, and then their judgement, their disgust, is dissected and levelled against them as we get to know the man we come to know. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah right.
Ultimately, our more bestial tastes win out, I think. Brendan becomes a sideshow attraction by virtue of his appearance, igniting a campaign of pity, to make Brendan great again.
Soon the underdog narrative will start to wear thin. Audiences will find a new golden boy to back.
Fraser is a genuinely lovely man. Truly grateful for what’s been marketed as a second chance. His sweetness has been well documented. He had to crouch and steady himself under the weight of an extended standing ovation at the Venice film festival.
There’s been a boatload of celebs, photographed hugging, kissing or simply touching him. One hopes it isn’t merely a symptom of yet another self-congratulatory, sickly Hollywood trend, mobilised by marketers.
Are they embracing Brendan Fraser, or merely making physical contact for good luck, thinking him a creature holy on account of his diminished status?