Says Engber, "the 'satire' it draws is simple-minded. It plays off the easy analogy between obesity and ecological catastrophe, pushing the notion that Western culture has sickened both our bodies and our planet with the same disease of affluence. According to this lazy logic, a fat body stands in for a distended culture: We gain weight and the Earth suffers. If only society could get off its big, fat ass and go on a diet!"
Sure, the connection between obesity and the downfall of American society is a tenuous one at best, but Engber's claims that this is Pixar's intent is just as superficial.
He goes on to defend obese populations noting that genetics are often more at fault than poor food choices. Still, I don't see the trend of meat-as-a-condiment isn't shrinking waistlines.
He links to other examples of stories in The Washington Post and New York Times that purport a connection between pounds of CO2 and pounds on the scale, but I'm not really interested enough to read them, and honestly, those stories probably would not do anything to change my opinion of Engber's article. Which, I'm sure you are by now wondering, is this: Sure, obese people may not be able to avoid their physical condition and maybe blaming them for global warming is misinformed, but more than anything, that's not what Pixar was trying to prove.
Watching the all the red-suits whizzing by in their barca loungers, eyes glued to the screens in front of them made me feel guilty. I too spend inordinate amounts of time exposed to media-music or podcasts on my iPod and to a lesser degree, television. The very nature of my day job mandates that I plop myself in front of a computer for hours which inevitably leads to my reading articles like Engber's day after day and posting my reactions on blogs like this one instead of talking about it around a water cooler. A quick Google search of the terms "fewer people reading" (ok, it's not quite Pew Reserach caliber information, but this is a one-person show right now) shows that it's been happening for a while. So it's no secret that America's upcoming generations are oversaturated with media and information and possibly in danger of morphing into the blobs of the movie. But that doesn't mean they'll be fat, and that doesn't mean fat people are bad. More than anything, I think Pixar wanted to depict a certain mental laziness/lethargy by manifesting it in an image of physical "dough-iness," for lack of a better word.
Also, I hope Engber's parenthetical "Fat people tend to have shorter life spans, for example, thus reducing their lifetime carbon footprint" is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, otherwise I might seriously question Slate's editorial aptitude.
Let it be said that I'm not a fan of alienating a certain group based on their physical appearances in any way, so I can see why he would bring up the story of a young girl who wrote a note to complain to Pixar. But Engber writes, "It's easy to imagine how they might respond to Pixar's dystopic vision of our fat future, in which puffed-up bodies are played for cheap laughs." But hasn't he heard of Shallow Hal? Or seen Mickey Rooney's Mr.Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's? Groups have been played up for their physical appearances since the beginning of time, so if he wants to start fighting the battle of the bulge, he should be prepared to open a can of worms.
Engber attempts to bring drive home his point saying, "What happens when the movie ends and the lights come up? Does the rest of the audience stare at the lone fatty as she waddles her way toward the theater doors? Do they see in her body a validation of the film's "darker implications"—a signpost for what we might become if we don't change our ways? Or do they just scowl at her, convinced that she's part of the problem?"
Really, Mr. Engber? If the latest reconstructive efforts at Disneyland's It's a Small World are any indication, I highly doubt that the theater consisted of a "lone fatty."
