Note – I wrote this post for my my blog so it is written for an audience who haven’t even heard of Huge (which hasn’t aired in New Zealand yet). But I thought I’d post it here, so we can talk about the awesomeness of Huge.
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Regular readers will know that I’m a fan of television. I have in fact written an ode to television.
I have also written about the problems of television – the ways how it is produced limits what we can see
For one brief shining moment this winter I was proved utterly, utterly wrong as I watched 10 episodes of Huge.
Then I was proved right again, when they cancelled it.
But I thought I’d write about Huge anyway. For a NZ audience who probably won’t have seen it – so no spoilers – just general raving about awesomeness. This is how it begins:
Huge aired on ABC Family a US cable network that I hadn’t even heard of until a few months ago, that apparently makes a TV version of 10 Things I Hate About You and sells airtime to Pat Robertson when it doesn’t have enough programming of it on. It’s set in a fat camp – where teenagers are supposed to lose weight.
So far so avoidable right? But it’s by the Winnie Holzman, the creator of My So Called Life (New Zealanders of a certain age may remember My So Called Life’s run on IceTV), and her daughter Savannah Dooley. (who I know next to nothing about, but think is unbelievably awesome – she is threatening my decade long commitment as a one-showrunner woman).
I want to explain what’s so amazing about Huge, because I think it’s important. It is the most closely observed show I’ve ever watched. This is not a show where the main character has to stab her boyfriend to save the world – this is the world we live in, or close to it.
I’ve always loved bangity-flash big moments on TV. But there is another way, instead of metaphors Huge delivers us the fine details of people’s life.
The show appears not to take a side. For weeks the big question as I was watching it was – what is this show saying about fat? Will, played by Nikki Blonsky was fierce about not hating her body. But she was surrounding by people who normalised dieting. Where did the show stand? And it didn’t appear to stand anywhere. Then at the 8th episode the kids had a weigh in and it showed, without judging, the effect that had on them. That’s when I realised that standing nowhere can be a much more radical place to put the camera
Many things that are normalised in the world are shown on Huge without the appearance of judging: slut-shaming, body-hatred and adults bullying children. But in this light they appear as grotesque as they actually are.
While things that we are treated as something to be ashamed of like fat, but also asexuality, anxiety, live action role-playing, disability, queerness and many other aspets of the character, also appear differently when observed closely and without judgement. The things we’re supposed to be ashamed of are not the same, so they don’t appear the same on Huge. But collectively they are seen as ordinary, joyous, ok, real and a source of strength.
That is, in the end, what made Huge so beautiful.
It’s been cancelled in America (because American TV executives enjoy stabbing anything that is beautiful or true to death). At the moment it is only available on youtube (or through other even less legal means), although it will come out on DVD.
I really do recommend that you watch it, and if you have older kids, show it to them. Because I think they’ll probably get something they need out of it.
Just wanted to clarify something in defense of ABC Family. Pulling this from Wikipedia because it’s easy, but it’s absolutely accurate:
So, you know. Can’t blame them for that.
The clip is clever and funny, and I like the filming style, but I did cringe a little at the casting–black best friend (or so it seems), black tough-mother figure, and no one in the camp who is neither black nor white.
That might change during the series, though.
Medea – I’d suggest giving the show a go – a lot of the assumptions you’ve made from this clip are not born out in the show as whole. Two of the main characters are latino, although it’s not clear from this clip (or really until the second episode). And while Becca and Dr Rand may appear to be stereotypical in this clip – those stereotypes are firmly undercut the show as a whole. Dr Gina Torres is many things, but she is not a tough-mother figure. And Becca bears no resemblence to sassy black best friends of TV shows gone past.
However, I found their portrayal of native american culture pretty problematic. Most of the time I read it as commentary on appropriation, but at one point (in the only bad ep of the show) it took a nose dive over into actual appropriation.
To expand on Maia’s defense of Becca — I wasn’t sure what to think of Becca at first, but over the ten episodes I came to really love the character. Becca is an amazing character — a black, fat, best friend character who avoids virtually all the tropes I associate with black, fat, best friend characters. She isn’t sassy (has there ever been a fat, black, female character on TV who wasn’t sassy?), she has a life and history outside of being Will’s friend which the show treats as important, and what she needs out of Will in order to make the friendship worth her while isn’t taken for granted.
(And yes, the “let’s appropriate native american culture” episode of Huge was extremely cringemaking.)
I’ll keep watching on YouTube. I wonder how far I can get before it’s pulled down…
Huge was so amazing. When Wayne (adult love interest) lifts his shirt, that was the first time I ever saw someone with a body like my partner’s shown as sexy on television. I’m privileged in a lot of ways (white affluent cis het USian), in theory I’m not marginalized in media, but that tiny moment of identification and representation still took my breath away. I’m just crushed that we don’t get a second season (with lots more Wayne, and Becca, who is *so excellent* – she writes in her diary in *runes*, people, and Alistair and Poppy and Will and Trent and Piznarski and… I just want MORE SHOW). People in the US can watch it on Hulu, btw.
I loved this show. I am going to miss it. Will was one of the best female characters there has ever been on TV.
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