#i do have to wonder how much anne being described as a 'girl' by cavendish and pole

[fideidefenswhore]

#re: the villain and choice aspects#kinda feeds into how the ableism and fatphobia always jump out#especially during the later years of Henry’s reign#his weight and disability are often presented as utterly repellent#and sometimes even treated like physical manifestations of his character/behaviour

[...]

#and it’s very sad but also interesting that his body - already often constructed as repulsive - becomes more so and he is dehumanised#when he is shown as a sexual being#‘he’s fat and disabled and I hate him and he’s having sex?? I’m gonna scream and cry and throw up!!!!!’#and the implication of course is that Katherine had it inflicted upon her#I mean later in the reign there are obviously Other Reasons she might not have wanted to sleep with him#and I’m not saying it was the easiest or best sex in the world#but she did marry Henry.. having looked at him?#his physicality wouldn’t have been a surprise to her?#so would be nice if we could just lay off the idea of his body as something to suffer through?#and presenting these things as karma for his actions#and just generally being ableist and fatphobic about him  

yeah, i think there’s a few things to address that they sort of allude to; what’s maybe the most pertinent question that no one seems to be asking in relation to ‘was there a body double for that specific scene’ (since i’ve now come across that turning up in two reviews); is, why cast jude law in a fat suit, and (possibly) a body double for his sex scenes, rather than...an actor whose body type is similar to henry viii’s in the 1540s? by the end of his life he was around 28 stone. casting/directors often hem and haw when presented with this question (i mean, i have yet to see anyone even ask it of him, unfortunately since the 2010s sycophancy and soft-ball questions seem to have become more the standard re: interviews); insisting there simply aren’t so many actors to choose from, which is ofc ridiculous, as there are certainly many in theatre and opera. 

frankly, unless you have scenes of that character in flashback and want them to be of the same face, different body type (and that’s affording benefit of the doubt), there’s very little in the way of credibly legitimate reasons to cast a thin actor to wear a fat suit. even that’s generous, because usually productions will just cast another actor to play a younger version of the character that resembles the original. 

and no, it wouldn’t have been such a shock to her; moreover there’s not really much by contemporary report to even suggest henry was considered ‘ugly’ in 1543 (i would liken this to modern celebrity culture...royals had access to the best in the way of clothes and medical care; probably some celebrities nowadays would similarly seem/appear more ‘average’, or more their age, without all their bells and whistles). there was reginald pole, and he might have heard it from others, but he had been gone from england for years by that point. those that wanted him dead or usurped would mention the injury to his leg in hopes it would hasten his death; but there wasn’t that visceral disgust and when there was (this is 1530s, but ‘better he would be buried in his swaddling clothes’) it doesn’t refer to his appearance or weight. there’s less contemporary praise of his appearance in the 1530s than there was in the 1520s and 1510s, but since there’s not much in the way of denigration, either, the context would suggest this can be more attributed to the schism, and earlier than that, as being from opponents of the great matter, as this was the last, caveated praise of henry (1531):

“tall of stature, very well formed, and of very handsome presence, beyond measure affable [...] learned and accomplished, and most generous and kind, and were it not that he now seeks to repudiate his wife, after having lived with her for 22 years, he would be no less perfectly good, and equally prudent [...] but this thing detracts greatly from his merits, as there is now living with him a young woman of noble birth, though many say of bad character, whose will is law to him, and he is expected to marry her, should the divorce take place”)

i would never go so far as to suggest 16c contemporaries were more ‘enlightened’ when it came to judging physical appearance, or weight (contemporary remarks about coa’s weight gain, for example, are pretty brutal and cruel), but there are suggestions that weight in particular wasn’t necessarily judged in ways that are compatible with modern judgements. chapuys made the bizarre remark that katherine howard, during her imprisonment, was “fatter and more beautiful than ever”, but this would suggest that the two were not necessarily considered mutually exclusive in contemporary opinion. de marillac referred to henry as “very stout and daily growing heavier, much resembling his maternal grandfather, king edward,” but edward iv was considered handsome by contemporaries. in 1543 (while kparr was queen), the secretary to the duke of najera, despite critcizing henry’s ‘false opinions’ of religion, referred to him as “a man of great authority and beauty”.

i’ve also unfortunately come across many reviews mentioning that this is a visceral portrayal of henry’s ‘gluttony’, and yet, as glenn richardson has pointed out, “there is only one specific reference to henry eating too much in all of the more than 20 volumes of the letters and papers of his reign.”

It’s a watchable piece of faux history, but the movie does not know what to do with its own heroine, content to leave her to the clutches of its villain: Henry.

yeah, i don’t think i’m going to be a fan of this one.