The Top-10 Incidental Fat Characters
There he is. He’s a fat guy. Not just bulky or beefy, but fat. Kind of bilious. He talks about food nonstop. He sweats and cackles. He’s the funny sidekick. He’s the cantankerous judge. He’s the cigar-chomping capitalist swine. He’s the chubby army General. When he’s not falling over for comic effect, overeating, or sweating profusely, he’s scheming to overthrow some underdog.
I’m surely not the first critic to point this out, but fat people get the short end of the stick when it comes to popular entertainment. When they’re not buffoons or sidekicks, they are villains or perverts. It’s so very rare that you will see a fat character whose weight is incidental. There are so few fat heroes. Every once in a while, you’ll find a show about a chubby woman who learns to celebrate her body, but those are shows where her weight and image are the subject of the drama. Rarely will you find someone who is fat and the rest of the world seems o.k. with it (You’ll be equally hard pressed to find characters that are incidentally gay, but that’s a whole ‘nother essay).
In that spirit, I have trawled the trenches of my mouldering pop culture imagination, and come up with a list of the top ten incidentally fat hero characters in movies and TV. Not one of them wears Hawaiian shirts.
10. Hugo “Hurley” Reyes
from “Lost” (2004-2010)
Hurley (Jorge Garcia) is listed low on the list because he served as “Lost’s” comic relief character. What’s more, he was often mocked for his weight, and was seen as a comic object. But, I am assured, Hurley was given a surprising amount of backstory for a previously comic relief character.
More importantly, Hurley was the pragmatist of the series. Whereas all the other characters in “Lost” were constantly brooding on a beach, deciphering magical codes, or fighting Smoke Monsters and whatnot, Hurley seemed like the only one aware of the practical mechanics of being lost on a desert island. Locke may be out there hunting beasties and unlocking multi-dimensional razzmatazz (I never made it very far through “Lost”), but Hurley was fishing, playing games, and doing ordinary things to keep his sanity. If it was any of us on that island, I think we would behave more like Hurley than we would Jack.
He makes a vague show relatable, and it’s rare for the fat character to have that power.
9. Mario
(1982 – present)
Mario is a chubby little Italian plumber who actually is more like Mickey Mouse than an actual dramatic character; he serves as an image and as a mascot more than he does a human being. His wide-eyed smiling face has graced our video game consoles for decades now, and his side-scrolling exploits educated us on the social mechanics of video games – a mechanic that has grown into its own subculture.
Mario is not a manly hero type. He does not have bulging muscles and big weapons. He is not the typified masculine ideal. He is friendly and colorful. His most devastating weapons are flowers and mushrooms. He wears a cap, and has a comic mustache. Here is an image of purity and goodness. An image of action and heroism. And he’s a little fat guy.
What a boon to fat little Italian guys the world over. Mario may not have much to say in terms of humanity, but that a fat man became the central icon of all thing related to video games is a hugely progressive step that is too often ignored.
8. Silent Bob
from “Clerks” (1994) and others
Silent Bob (Kevin Smith) is a fat sidekick and a stone loser who hangs out in front of off-brand convenience stores in New Jersey to chain smoke and deal marijuana. He seems to be the enabler for his hyperactive friend, Jay (Jason Mewes), who chatters at strangers, begs, and invents new ways of being profane.
But, here’s the thing: When Silent Bob does speak, it’s to give some practical advice. All of a sudden, this previously quiet, glassy-eyed fat stoner revels himself to know something about love and life. Kevin Smith is funny, but when he gets down to the emotional stuff, he starts to resemble Richard Linklater. If you haven’t seen the films of Kevin Smith, I don’t want to reveal what he says, but the story he tells at the climax of “Chasing Amy” provides not only the title, but the emotional center of the film.
He is mocked for his weight, but, thanks to his calm silence, he is seen as a laid back and almost Zen character. A grunge Buddha, if you will.
7. Ghost Dog
from “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai” (1999)
Jim Jarmusch’s “Ghost Dog” is a weird, weird movie. Forest Whitaker plays the title character: an assassin for hire who lives on a rooftop, communicates by carrier pigeon, and is constantly quoting from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. He calls himself Ghost Dog, and often stops the movie to give lessons on The Way of the Samurai. He’s a fat man with wicked sword skills, and a careful, intelligent demeanor.
He’s also clearly off his rocker. Ghost Dog’s only friend is the man who sells ice cream at the park, and neither of them speaks the other’s language. The bad guys want to hire him, and are baffled by his appearance and his insistent peculiarities. He can talk to children, though, and even lends his copy of Ryunosuke Atukagawa’s Rashomon to a 12-year-old, in order that they may learn some lessons.
Usually when a movie character has this many idiosyncrasies, and they’re fat, they’re seen as a freaky, basement-dwelling expert who aids the hero. In the case of “Ghost Dog,” he’s the main character, and we get to see what a weirdo badass he is. I admire the filmmakers with the courage to stay with the freaks.
6. Max Bialystock
from “The Producers” (1968)
Max Bialystock (the indispensable Zero Mostel) skirts the line between buffoon and villain. On paper, he does indeed resemble the typical comic fat guy, obsessed with sensual matters, wealth and food. But, here’s the thing, thanks to Mostel’s brilliant comic portrayal, and director Mell Brooks’ insistence that he’s an underdog, Max Bialystock comes across as a guy we want to be around. He’s a cheat, a criminal, a lech, and he’s frequently sweaty and greasy, but he still comes across as lovable. He’s the guy we want to win.
Max is a fat guy. He has a double chin and a big ol’ gut. His sidekick Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder), though, never brings up his weight. The film never usues his fat as a crux for jokes. He is incidentally fat. At one point Leo becomes enraged, and calls him fat. Later, he apologizes for doing so. It’s rare that a fat character get so much screentime, so much brains, so much character, so much sympathy, and so much villainy. “The Producers” is one of the best comedies ever man, and it’s largely thanks to Zero Mostel’s performance as the funny fat guy.
5. Roseanne
from “Roseanne” (1988-1997)
“Roseanne” was a notable sitcom in many small ways. For one, it took the characters seriously, and didn’t reduce them to shrill cartoons (a la “Married with Children”). Another, it was about the trials of blue-collar working-class types without reducing them to heroic archetypes or depressing wastoids. It featured some stellar comic actors (including John Goodman), and a funny – if little known – fat comedienne in Roseanne Barr.
Roseanne was seen as a wise mom and an open-minded person with her cross to bear. Andshe was a big fat woman. This was not a chintzy Hallmark version of female empowerment that you see infecting all corners of the feminist movement. This was a story about a smart woman who used her mind and her attaitude to move forward in life. She was incidentally fat.
Roseanne may have been annoying to many people (the parodies and complaints are numerous, and perhaps not all illigitimate), but she served to open a lot of doors in terms of incidental fat visibility.
4. Buck Russell
from “Uncle Buck” (1989)
John Candy is probably one of the exemplars of the funny fat sidekick characters. His roles in films like “Stripes” and “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” almost codified the goofy, blubbery whack-job for a generation. I admire Candy and think he is a hugely talented comedian, but, when looked at in the right light, the bulk of his roles were devoted to cute, fat visual gags.
But then came John Hughes’ “Uncle Buck,” and he set that persona on ear. Uncle Buck was indeed a buffoon; He had been ostracized from his family, and was seen as the noisy, obnoxious one that everyone dreads having over for Thanksgiving. But, when set the task of looking after his nieces and nephews, he became one of the best protectors that a child could ask for. When a clown shoes up drunk for his nephew’s birthday party, Buck punches his lights out before he can talk to the children. When his niece’s teacher picks on her, he takes the niece’s side, and badmouths the principal (“Here’s a quarter. Go downtown and hire a rat to gnaw that wart off your face!”). He even happily threatens to circumcise a badgering boyfriend.
But despite the tough actions, Buck is always seen as lovable, and I buy it when he makes pancakes that are four feet across. Uncle Buck is a fully-realized fat guy with gumption and power and a sense of humor.
3. Fat Albert
from “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids” (1972-1985)
“Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids” may be shoddily animated, and very occasionally poorly written, but it still does stand as one of the first children’s shows to feature black characters in something other than a “token” role. It had kids who were able to use their smarts and resourcefulness to have fun with the garbage at hand. These kids were sort of a dark mirror to the blueblood snottiness of shows like “Richie Rich” and Johnny Quest.” the Cosby Kids could – and did- make their own fun without extreme wealth or fantasy gadgets.
And the hero of the bunch was an enormously fat guy named, well, Fat Albert. He was called fat, but none of the kids used the word pejoratively. He would usually be the saintly, angelic character who would interject with worlds of wisdom, and perhaps some life lessons. He was not used as a comic foil, nor as a tyrant. Fat Albert was a funny, friendly teacher.
2. Marty
from “Marty” (1955)
Marty (Ernest Borgnine) serves as the archetypal hope object for hopeless fat man everywhere. Sure TV is overrun with dumpy guys who have hot wives (“The King of Queens,” “According to Jim”), but I always saw those pairings as visual juxtapositions more than comments on the fat guys’ romantic savvy. Marty is about a guy who lands a sweethearted young woman through his charm and his honest need for love.
Marty is a funny looking fat butcher. He calls himself ugly. “I don’t know what women want, ma,” he says at one point, “but I know I ain’t got it.” I think most of us awkward geeks can relate to that sentiment. When he and Clara (Betsy Blair) manage to go on a date, they are, of course, drawn to each other’s mutual loneliness, but, more than that, are genuinely drawn even more to each other’s mutual charms and goodness.
Marty proves that even lonely fats guys can find love. This is required viewing for every outsider in the world.
1. Tracy Turnblad
from “Hairspray” (1988)
Most comedies about freaky people take on a objective quality that distances us from the comic subjects. What I like about John Waters’ films is that he has a very clear, very open, and very forceful love of eevry single one of his freaky characters. John Waters is not trying to find shocking things to present to you; he has a vested interest in shocking things. There are those of us in the world who just have less popular intrests, and John Waters is the pop of such thinking.
In 1988, John Waters made “Hairspray,” which was a PG-rated tribute to his favorite dance programs of the early 1960s, all lived through the eyes of a spunky fat teenager named Tracy Turnblad (Ricki Lake). Tracy is obsessed with fashion, hairdos, and The Corny Collins dance show, which she would race home from school to see. She dreamed of being on the show, and would work hard to get on it. And, here’s the thing, she actually did get on the show because she’s a good dance. She attracted the eye of the hot young stud because she’s cheerful and smart. Her weight is brought up, but, just like Max Bialystock, by a bitter character who has resorted to cheap shots.
And if Tracy wasn’t enough of a fat empowerment object for teenage girls everywhere, Waters also treats us to a scene in which Tracy and her equally fat mother (Divine) go to a big-and-tall women’s clothing store, where they can be dressed like plus-size queens, all the wihile being lavished with attention and donuts by the store’s enthused owner. This is a universe where placating phrases like “big is beautiful” are jettisoned, and big actually becomes beautiful. Finally, finally, finally, fatness can be an incidental descriptive term, and not the center of some dramatic phoniness.
Honorable mention: Sammo Hung
Sammo Hung is one of the best kung fu action film stars of the ’70s and ’80s. His filsm never hit as big here as they did in his native Hong Kong, but, watching them, you finally see what a talented athlete and funny comedian the man is. He’s also a fat guy. He has a double chin and a round face. He’s often cast as the buffoon, but still manages to be the center of his films, and, most importantly fights well along with the bad guys. His weight is often a comic point, but he squelches that by being such a badass.
Witney Seibold is a hard-thinking writer living in Los Angeles. He has worked in movie theaters most of his life, and has probably seen more movies than you. He reads old books, and talks about them perhaps too much. He has written over 700 film reviews and essays for his website, which can be accessed here: http://witneyman.wordpress.com/
