Loving Our Bodies: Why Hal is More than Shallow

I bought myself some gadget to transfer all my old VHS movies to DVD (and by the time I'm done I'm sure they'll be obsolete, too) and came across Shallow Hal, one of my ex-husband's favorite movies (another story for another day). Now I am old enough to have a good sense of humor about my girth, to laugh when I have to start at the edge of the seat in the theater and scoot backward, to laugh even harder when I stand up without using the reverse of this tactic and my thighs pop the drink holder right off the arm of the chair. I don't cry over such silly stuff (anymore). But this movie, Shallow Hal, just seriously gets under my skin. Clearly it was written, created, directed (etc) by skinny people. Shallow Hal is a sign of the times, a sign of a culture obsessed with physical beauty even though we know that we are shallow for loving what looks good rather than what is good.  This film tries to appreciate inner beauty. But its attempts are more shallow than Hal himself.   

           

For starters, the depiction of fat people is insulting and perpetuates a stereotype with the actions only an actual hippo with nostrils the size of a large pizza and a behind big as your Chevy Suburban could manage. Gwyneth Paltrow’s character breaks chairs, tips one end of a canoe down so far that the other end—with Jack Black in it—is nearly two feet out of the water, and cannonballs into a pool resulting in a tsunami that sends some little kid from the pool right into a tree.  The hyperbolized eating habits are similarly offensive as Paltrow’s character eats gargantuan amounts of food: she gulps down a huge milkshake while Jack Black turns his head for a moment, and sucks down a whole chicken in less than a minute.  This is meant to be a parody; these are stereotypes, and everyone knows it, so it’s funny because we know it’s not true.

But it doesn't matter that obese people don’t regularly break chairs, inhale banquets, and create tidal waves.  Viewers know these are exaggerations—but not as over-the-top as you might think.  The average person watching (if they are thinking critically about this film at all...) are likely thinking something like well, maybe not that much food, not that many chairs, not all the way into a tree...but these fatties must eat a hell of a lot.  They must break some furniture. Thanks Hollywood. So now I get to go  eat in public and have people worried I might steal their food or break their chairs. Awesome.

            

This film also suffers from its proliferation of fat jokes  (mostly made by Jason Alexander, who is just as shallow as his buddy Jack Black). They are funny but pretty offensive to fat people, and the chances that there are fat people in the audience are pretty good, especially considering the premise of the film.  (I wonder what average weight of people who viewed this film was as opposed to other similar films that weren’t emphasizing weight...).  Anyway, you really can take a joke—several of them—too far. I have a sense of humor. I know a lot about my size is funny. But this film overdoes it to the point of a cringe.

            

Another poor choice this film made was in the actor who plays Hal—Jack Black.  Yeah, he’s funny and crude and can easily be imagined as shallow.  But Jack Black is no slim Hollywood hunk.  He’s “overweight,” and, compared to much of Hollywood’s leading men, unattractive. Why is this a problem? Because the underlying message is this: someone can learn to love a fat girl, but he’s gonna be a fat man himself.  Don't get me wrong; I actually love Jack Black. But just the fact that Hal and his sidekick—another not-so-hottie himself—believe that they are stooping to unbelievable lows by considering anyone less than perfect is another message that says women have to be beautiful, but men can be fat, bald, hairy, crude, etc, and we’re lucky to have them.  This common stereotype diminishes women. 

If you're not sure what this stereotype looks like, it takes all but a minute to come up with examples. We have the (reality?!) show Ordinary Joe where a gorgeous, slim, tall model-type woman has to choose from a bunch of ordinary guys—ordinary in that they look less like Tom Cruise and more like Jack Black. And somehow I don’t believe that “Ordinary Jane” will ever come out. The stereotype of the larger man and slim woman dominates entertainment: from fat Jackie Gleason and this tiny wife Audrey Meadows in The Honeymooners to fat Peter Griffin and skinny wife Lois in the animated series Family Guy, the large man and small woman is an acceptable pairing, and one that adds to the problems with this film. 

            

The problems with this film, however, get worse. Throughout most of the film we see Gwyneth Paltrow—the “beautiful” girl Hal sees—and not Rosemary as she really is: fat.  Only in small, supposedly hilarious shots of a thigh or an ass-cheek or a pair of “cankles” do we see the 300 pound woman that Paltrow is supposed to be until the very end of the film.  Why?  Why do we need so much Paltrow and so little reality?  Of course, we are seeing what Hal sees: Hal’s “spell” makes him physically see inner beauty, and the audience knows that, so it’s okay.  Bullshit.  The directors know that the audience needs to grow to love this girl, to feel badly for the way she’s treated, to want Hal to love her.  And it’s funny when Paltrow breaks a chair and sucks down a milkshake.  But it would just be sad if it happened to a real fat person.  Would audiences fall in love with her if they saw her as she really was?  No, not anymore than Black would.  Neither Hal nor the audience would give her a chance if she didn’t look like Paltrow.

            

 But by far the WORST flaw of this film: the idea it perpetuates that fat people are only beautiful on the inside.  Shallow Hal makes no attempt to even insinuate that fat people—or people with webbed toes, dandruff, pimples or any other physical flaw—could be beautiful.  Fat, rather, is ugly and those who can see beyond the fat find that it is possible to love someone for her/his personality, despite appearance.  Inevitably, then, the message is to look beyond surfaces--but never to love flawed surfaces.  This is not a helpful message, nor a deep one.  Every fat person watching this film knows that Tony Robinson isn’t going to put a spell on someone for them, that magic vision won’t suddenly mean that others will see them for who they “really are” and decide to give them a chance.  The movie (without intending to?) says that fat people simply will not be loved for their looks and only by taking the time to really get to know a fat person will you discover that she can indeed be lovable.  So hey, folks, give us a chance.  The possibility exists that we’re not so bad.  Just close your eyes, walk around with blinders on, and after a few months or so you might get used to the fact that we’re not skinny and we might be worth the trouble.

Loving our selves--flaws, fat, wrinkles and all--is a challenge everyone faces. A movie that pushed the message that only a magic spell will make flawed bodies lovable makes loving ourselves just that much harder. Imagine a fat kid with pimples watching this movie, knowing her "insides" are beautiful but no one will ever know it, and wishing her outsides were beautiful so someone would take the time. What a screwed up way to treat the world. 

And I wondered why that movie didn’t make me feel very good about myself.