Comments on: Fat Pig

By: Zilontub

Zilontub — Fri, 22 May 2009 00:36:31 +0000

I read the play too, it was a bit too sweet for me but still It is true, and most people dont notice that there is a clear prejudice and recuring theme in fiction concerning fat characters, they have to be broken, or just be a villian and that is just wrong. over the years i have been looking for fiction, movies and stuff with fat people in them portrayed in a good light and the the truth hurts, i did liked “The hanging garden” as a movie but it is very hard to find. Maybe at amazon? I did came upon a very nice novel called Sodom’s x a song for the end by K.R.COLUMBUS nice sci-fi apocaliptic novel with religios overtones. Mind you it has more than 4 fat characters in it and they are all unique including a girl. It can be found here….

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/sodoms-x–a-song-for-the-end-/7182389

Apart from that it is very hard to find anything that isnt self help or just a joke.

By: Ashley

Ashley — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 14:45:10 +0000

Funny that you mentioned there not being a song a dance routine in “Our Town,” because it was recently turned into an opera by Ned Rorum. Not sure if I spelled that right…anywho, I was in the premier…it was interesting, to say the least. Lots of singing about death, so I guess it’s perfect for opera!

By: Mia

Mia — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 15:27:38 +0000

Ahh, me again, sorry but I’m hooked.

I haven’t read ahead but I’ll forget. One great book I read that was super fast reading was Good In Bed, by Jennifer Weiner. I found it very inspiring.

By: PastaQueen

PastaQueen — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 11:58:41 +0000

M – I haven’t read/seen any other LaBute’s plays, but I agree that he highlights the meanest qualities in the lead male’s friends. There is one point in the play where they send a picture of the fat girl to everyone in the office as a joke and I kept wondering “Aren’t there any fat people in this office? Surely the sedentary lifestyle of cubicle work has produced some other fatties who should be offended by this.”

I don’t really have a problem with it in the play though because it’s used to explore the theme of how people are treated based on their looks. Character traits are frequently exaggerated in literature to make a point. So while I would assume people in general aren’t as nasty as the ‘friends’ in this play, I excused it since it exacerbates the main characters crisis and forces us as the audience to think about it too. I would assume it also makes for some very interesting conversations after the play too, which I think is a sign of a good work of theatre, it doesn’t end when the curtain goes down.

By: M, the fat girl

M, the fat girl — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 22:26:20 +0000

I have mixed feelings about Fat Pig. On the one hand, a lot of people really do feel that way about fat people, obviously, and I like to see that stuff addressed in the open. I also, like the reader above, missed the play when it was playing in NYC, but I heard wonderful things about Ashlee Atkinson, who played the role there, and I heard that the character is presented dynamically and sexually—things that fat people and especially fat characters are often denied. That sounded pretty cool to me. But I have seen (and not seen but read or read about) lots of LaBute's other work, and he's interested in the meanest things that people think and say and do. It's a form of highlighting, sort of. And obviously this stuff really happens, and men who go crazy over fat girls in private will slag the same girls to their friends, and "sweathogging" exists, and I once knew a girl whose boyfriend wouldn't introduce her to his friends because she was "too fat," and I'm rambling, but the point is...all this stuff happens. But my other point is that it's not the only thing that happens, and I think that LaBute's oeuvre loses track of that sometimes. Sometimes I wonder if my ("normal-sized"—I prefer "unfat") boyfriend is ashamed of my fatness, and then again, sometimes I wonder why I wonder that. It's certainly not because of anything he says about me. It's that sometimes I have a sort of conviction that he must be ashamed, because he is normal and I am not.

By: PastaQueen

PastaQueen — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 12:35:55 +0000

Anna – Thanks for the link! That was a good article.

By: Anna

Anna — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 14:43:10 +0000

This is currently playing in DC and there's an interesting interview with the woman who plays the lead role in the Post. Enjoy!

By: I Can't Fit

I Can't Fit — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 10:08:16 +0000

Or maybe the author felt so disgusted with her ownself for being fat that she took it out on her readers.

By: little miss ess

little miss ess — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 08:58:15 +0000

Now you’ve made me want to read this. I was tempted to see it last year when it was playing here in NYC, but never did.

I wonder if the author of that romance novel with the nasty portrayal of the fat character was a self-hating overweight woman?

By: hilly

hilly — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 22:33:29 +0000

Gah, wasn’t there a movie with Ricki Lake and Craig Sheffer that had almost the same prefac????

Hold while I go to imdb.com….

Oh yeah….Babycakes.