It’s Oscar night tonight, and Brendan Fraser is up for best actor for his role in the mind-numbingly terrible, unforgivably harmful film, The Whale—of which Lindy West has written the definitive takedown; see also her genius longer commentary. (I hope to heaven he doesn’t win. Otherwise, I wish the man well, and simply hope he comes to reconsider his choice to wear a fat suit.)

Fraser’s Charlie may be the main character in the film, and Fraser its star performer. But let’s get one thing clear: The Whale is not a film centering the perspective of a very fat man (whose weight, at 600lb, is supposed to be unfathomable). The Whale’s perspective throughout is different, and singular: it is that of his cruel, thin, profoundly immature, troubled teenage daughter, Ellie.

We first encounter Charlie in The Whale through the lens of a laptop: a black square, lecturing to his students at an online college, where he teaches expository writing. He lies to them throughout that his webcam is broken. This to spare them the monstrous indignity of having to look at a fat person’s face, much less their body.