Fat, Fame, And Ricky Gervais
As you probably know, if you know anything about me, my favorite show is The Office, and you know I’ll take any excuse to mention it in this blog. I recently discovered The Office Alliance podcast, and have been listening to episodes during my long commutes. Having run out of new episodes, I recently started over at the beginning, and in one episode, they quoted from this interview with Ricky Gervais.
“I never knew I was fat until I got famous… Then I suddenly realised I was overweight. The papers can’t simply put ‘comedian Ricky Gervais’. They have to put ‘rotund comedian’ or ‘chubby fatster’.
“The other day, I was trying to keep fit by going jogging with my iPod, and the paparazzi leapt out a bush and got me. The headline the next day? ‘Ipodge.’ What can you do?”
Man, that bugs the hell out of me, too; certain celebrities often get some descriptive plus-sized adjective attached to them, even when it’s not relevant to the story. (I was Googling for examples and found this article where Nikki Blonsky not only escapes that fate, she gets referred to as “Golden Globe nominee” instead. She’s working on an album! Yay! Sorry, tangent.)
Anyway, Ricky Gervais pokes a lot of fun at his own weight in both The Office (him sucking in his gut for the benefit of the motivational speaker people) and Extras (oh god, the the girdle); in each case it’s not so much mocking the character’s weight, but his vanity. To sum up, Ricky Gervais is a genius. Wait, was that not the point I was supposed to be making here?
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Celebrities, Music, Nikki Blonsky, Ricky Gervais, The Office, TV
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Ricky Gervais is an example of healthy & awesome at any size. He’s perfect the way he is…
It’s so sad what they do to Phyllis on the American “Office.” It’s UBER toeing-the-line because the actors have slight characterizations, but otherwise they’re using their own names–it breaks down a lot of barriers between them and their characters. I mean, I wonder how the *real* Phyllis feels about all the major fat jokes that Michael makes? Like, when he’s surprised that the flasher attacks her?
Zaftige, you might be interested in my post about Phyllis, which is here.
Zatfiqe, I’ve always thought the opposite about Phyllis. The Office is the only mainstream sitcom I can think of that has a fat (as opposed to Hollywood fat) character that exists for a reason other than being the butt of fat jokes. She actually gets a personality other than “fat” and storylines other than “being a fat woman”. She even dates and gets married, with no angst about losing weight for her wedding. (And how much do I love that the office had two wedding storylines and no wedding weight loss storylines?) Yeah, Michael makes fat jokes about her, but I’ve always thought of those along the same lines of his racist and sexist jokes… they’re not supposed to make us laugh, they’re supposed to make us cringe over how Michael is such a clueless jackass.
‘chubby fatster’
Anyone else think that sounds like an awesome new breakfast cereal?
Ah, memories of “brother crash” lecturing Sarah from fatgirlonabike about how dumb she was for exercising while fat.
A friend of mine was at target looking at workout pants. She’d recently had her son and wanted to ease back into working out. A college age guy passed her with a young woman. He lowered his voice only slightly before telling his female companion: “That’s funny! A fat person buying exercise clothes!”
Bastard.
Cindy: I recently was in the grocery store and a group of teenagers walked by me in the vitamin aisle (looking at the garden frogs above the shelf, not even the vitamins might I add) and she said right into my ear “Jenny Craig”. People are A-Holes.
On Ricky Gervais:
I have a HUGE crush on Ricky Gervais. I have watched the Office (my sister sends me DVD’s from the UK), Extras and have just decided if I didn’t have an amazing boyfriend I would hunt him down and attack him. In a sexy way of course. He should have run that paparazzi over and kicked his head in. oh, maybe that’s Just what I would do.
It’s so true about every media mention having to express that you’re fat, as if that is the single identifying, or most important, factor. MUST REPORT THE FAT. You never see a review that says, “Skeletal singer So-and-So” … “Skinny bitch so-and-so”.
I totally love Phyllis on the office. Even though Michael is an ASS to her, she’s the only one with a normal, happy, regular sex life. PLUS, she’s had a one night stand with someone from the office, but we don’t know who…
I’m going to go against the grain here and express my disappointment and dislike of Ricky Gervais.
I always thought he was funny, and I’d seen his comments about how the media portrays anyone over a size 10 and absolutely agreed with him.
Then I bought his latest stand-up DVD and lost all respect for him. In it, he mocks people with binge eating disorders, claims that they’re not a ‘disease’ and therefore deserve no help, ridicules obese individuals, and targets a plus size comedian here in the UK called Dawn French.
His whole attitude is, “I’m a bit chubby but they’re all fat fuckers”.
So, no, Ricky Gervais is not my favourite person.
The DVD I’m referring to is his ‘Fame: Ricky Gervais Live 3’, if you’d like to see for yourself.
Seconding Gemma… I took my boyfriend as a treat to see Gervais’s stand up show in NYC last year. It was some of the most ugly, fat hating stuff. Yes, he makes fun of himself, but then he goes on a tirade about really fat people. It was the same bit Gemma describes about mocking eating disordered people. I very nearly got up and walked out, but didn’t want to spoil to night for my boyfriend.
Gervais is no friend to fat acceptance.
Wow, that sucks! Up into a few seconds ago, I LOVED Ricky Gervais. But mining that kind of comedy is just scraping the bottom of the barrel. Not cool.
And Dawn French is BRILLIANT and GORGEOUS!!!!!! I LOVE HER!!!!!
Apparently the reason he targeted Dawn French is that she and her comedy partner made a joke about him in their sketch show. Something about his ego, mainly, and so whilst he was berating her for almost the entire show, he kept saying, “She started it!” over and over again like a three year old. Because making a light-hearted joke about someone’s ego means that you deserve to be called ugly and disgusting and ‘horrendously obese’ during a live show.
Biggest disappointment ever. And mocking binge eaters? Disgusting. He did this whole “hilarious” tirade about how it’s not an illness, you should just “put down the fork”. And how charities that support binge eaters or overweight people deal with discrimination should be banned because we shouldn’t waste our time helping people who “create their own problems” by being “so greedy”.
This breaks my heart so much, you have no idea.
Maybe this is an example of how much we all internalize the cultures we live in. No excuse for Ricky, who really is a comic talent, of course.
Dawn French is sexy.
Looks like we have another classic case of “Well, I’m just a little bit chubby and that’s OK, at least I’m not hugely fat like all those other people.”
Fat is fat, Ricky. Accept it and grow up. Also, Dawn French is hilarious.
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I have never seen his stand-up routine, but I believe that it’s supposed to be a deliberately callous persona. (Last year at the Edinburgh Fringe, his show sold out long before the festival started. So he had a huge poster put up saying something like “Ricky Gervais – no tickets left. Ha, made you look”.
None of which would really encourage me to watch his act anyway.
I think he’s clever, but I think his range of acceptable targets is very broad, and there were many things in Extras that made me uncomfortable, so none of this surprises me.
People complaining about Ricky Gervais’ comments in his show either …
a) don’t understand the persona he has portrayed as “himself” since the very beginning of his career (which pretty clearly explains to those who consciously or subconsciously understand it that he absolutely does not believe these things and if you find yourself agreeing, you’re agreeing with the arsehole alter-ego — *you* are the arsehole — it’s about laughing at the sort of people he portrays and their ideas and ways of thinking)
or…
b) are, too “close” to the topic in question to receive the meaning of performance with objectivity.
As with most of his jokes he sets up a story, a scene, perhaps even lays a foundation of “normality” or accepted behaviour – for example he compliments both French and Saunders, seemingly genuinely, describes the joke they made at his expense, taking it with grace, then breaks the political norm with a “controversial” comment resulting in laughter, or here disgust, but usually laughter. It’s his M.O.
Don’t *deliberately* misunderstand public figures simply to create easy, remote for your bile.
Great post Tom, you hit the nail squarely on the head there.
I’ve found that people either love or hate Ricky, there doesn’t seem to be a middle ground. I fall in the ‘love’ category, to the extent I created a fansite about him…
Chicken and Mash
http://www.chickenandmash.co.uk
Check it out, you may even see that I describe him as rotund somewhere in there ;-)
Cheers,
Steve
I’m not being funny but Americans can’t take insults even if they are meant in a joking way.