I haven't seen the movie and won't see it, either, Savala. Aronofsky is a great example of a certain type of privileged director. He will never "understand" your valid response and why, despite the praise he gets in his echo chamber of sycophants, the film is in reality, a horrible story upholding terrible and destructive cultural attitudes and stereotypes, doing the exact opposite of what he claims to do. I've always liked Brendan Fraser as an actor and I'm sure he did a good job with the role within the framework he was given to perform (a "fat suit"). I also know that Brendan's personal career was derailed for many years, because he may have started out as "Encino Man" in a loincloth and a comic action hero in the Mummy movies, he, too, was fat.

From my own perspective (I am adding) — Movies like “The Whale” fit this cultural imperative of the patriarchy:

It’s all made to funnel us all into somebody else’s world.

Either to funnel us away from our real world as in big European medievalistic fantasies like Brandon Sanderson’s, or into the type of worlds I consider very sad —

“We would all like to read stories about the struggles of Disadvantaged X” in dealing with “Fucked up social Problem Y.”

So when I get right-wingers saying, “Why aren’t yew a famous writter, yew must be a shitty writter,”

I think about this. I like myself and am proud of what I have done and who I am. If I were someone like Darren Aronofsky? I might tell myself I am awesome and rich and famous though the truth is very different.