Muriel's Wedding

Muriel's Wedding

Recently, when I watched the quirky 1994 Aussie film Muriel's Wedding for the first time, it was just what the doctor prescribed. I wanted to watch it because I am always looking for positive representations of plus-size women. However, I was initially put off by the lackluster and downright offensive descriptions HBO has given the film. From HBO's website: "Toni Collette ("The Sixth Sense") is the "ugly duckling" of this "romping, bittersweet comedy" (The Hollywood Reporter) about an ugly, overweight and often inappropriate young woman who yearns to walk down the aisle...even though she's never had a date! It all leads to an adventure that is both funny and poignant." I, as well as many others take offense to the false notion that fat and ugly are synonymous, which a lot of thin people seem to mistakenly believe. Toni Collette in Muriel's Wedding (and now) is not ugly just because she doesn't look like the barbie doll clones the film (and Western societies at large) posits as beautiful. On HBO On Demand, the film describes Muriel as an "overweight outcast" trying to get out of her hometown. Both of these descriptions undersell the film and do not do it nor the character justice.

I loved Muriel's Wedding from start to finish; it felt like a romp all the way through. But it also feels very realistic, like it is real life, set in 90s Australia. From the very beginning, viewers are made privy to the social circumstances that deem Muriel undesirable and a "loser." She is overlooked by everyone in her small town, including her so-called friends, who berate her for catching a bouquet at one of their weddings because she's "never even had a boyfriend." Later, we are introduced to Muriel's family, headed by her verbally abusive and bullying father. Not long after the wedding, Muriel is getting drinks with her barbie doll clone friends, when they tell her they don't want her hanging around them anymore because she dresses weird, doesn't do her hair right, listens to 70s music in the 90s, and is fat. This really resonated with me, because I have always been friends with people that are smaller than me and have often been mistreated. Naturally, I blamed myself and internalized this hatred when I was younger and more impressionable (from high school to college) and sometimes, on a bad day, I still do. However, reading memoirs and articles by other plus-size women (especially Black women) about how the world has mistreated them too, including their friends and partners, soothes my psyche and reassures me that it isn't just me. Two such articles are "Being the Fat Friend" by Simone Mariposa and "The Unbearable Weight of Fatphobia: a Conversation with Samantha Irby" by Sherronda J. Brown. Lindy West's memoir "Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman" is wonderfully written and in a similar vein. 

After following her bad friend group on a repurposed honeymoon, Muriel meets the love of her life - and not a guy or a romantic relationship. No, she meets her best friend, Rhonda. Rhonda adores Muriel, stands up to her bad friend group and runs off to Sydney with her to start a new life. Muriel's friendship with Rhonda is her first good relationship after enduring an abusive family (her Dad) and barbie clone friend group that she was never fully a part of. It is an indictment of the film industry that the positioning of Rhonda and Muriel's friendship as the most important relationship in the story, is so unique and rare. Muriel's Wedding drives home the difference between bad friendships and a real friendship; I learned that one good friend can make all the difference in the world. Unlike the bulk of other films, which have taught me and society at large that the one relationship that matters in the end is a romantic relationship. At the end of the day, society puts a premium on romantic relationships and ignores the importance and significance of platonic friendships entirely. However, based on the writings I've seen on the subject, there is a consensus that friendship breakups are much harder than romantic relationship breakups. That's because romantic beaus can come and go, but our friends are supposed to be a constant in our lives. According to this video, the average friendship lasts 10 years. The only other media that I've seen center female friendships in recent years is HBO's Insecure. The show's fourth season (airing right now) is about the demise of the main characters' friendship. It didn't come to my attention until recently that the one plus-size woman in Insecure's friend group is the butt of the jokes, a collection of fat tropes and solely comedic relief. Kelli does not have a fully-developed story line or character growth like the smaller women do as detailed in this wonderfully written article. 

Due to the hate Muriel received from her family and bad friend group in her hometown of Porpoise Spit, she longs to get married and show everyone that she is a success and not a so-called loser. It is important to note here that Muriel doesn't necessarily want a partner or a marriage, just the appearance of one through a wedding to improve her social status. There is a scene in which Muriel watches Princess Diana's wedding on the TV monitor at her job at a video store. This scene highlights Muriel's motivation for getting married - nothing says social status gained through marriage like marrying into Britain's royal family via a Royal Wedding. I discussed the visual significance of Meghan Markle's Royal Wedding in my blog post about living in England for a year. I noted that a woman's marriage (or any kind of partnership, especially with a man) is not and should not be considered her only value and that representation matters. It was uplifting to see a woman from a historically maligned and "undesirable" group (Black women) be celebrated as a bride on such a huge and international scale. 

The climax of the film occurs when Muriel has a huge public wedding to an Olympic swimmer, complete with press and news coverage. However, for Muriel, this isn't a love marriage but rather a publicity stunt. The South African swimmer paid Muriel $10,000 to marry him so that he can become an Australian citizen and compete in the Olympics after a controversy surrounding apartheid in his own country, South Africa. The use of apartheid as a plot vehicle was done frivolously and therefore does a disservice to the issue. Australia itself is a settler-colonial nation that has displaced native Aboriginal peoples. This ensures that societal ideals about women's value will always affect and harm Aboriginal peoples the most, as Australia has harmed them in so many other ways. As part of the deal, Muriel must live with her new husband for 4 months to ensure that the government doesn't become suspicious, after which they are both free to go their separate ways. Muriel loves every second of it - the press coverage and fame from being in magazines, becoming the toast of the town and pride of Porpoise Spit, and of course the big day itself, which resembled a Royal Wedding. Muriel loved these things because she felt they assigned her value and made her desirable and good in the eyes of people that saw her as a loser, i.e. her family and bad friend group. She even allowed the bad friends to be her bridesmaids at her wedding when they came crawling back after her catapult to fame. However, she abandoned a newly paralyzed Rhonda in the process, who was forced to give up their apartment and move back in with her mother in Porpoise Spit: her worst nightmare.

It was heinous and selfish of Muriel to abandon her only true friend, Rhonda, for fame and money. She was always obsessed with how people saw her and wanted so desperately to "be someone" and valued that she would marry and live with a total stranger for 4 months (although the $10,000 payoff isn't bad). Although it would be easy to write Muriel off as being as shallow and self-obsessed as her bad friend group, the film gives viewers the sense that there is more to it. Muriel was judged very harshly and treated poorly by the people in her life and at the end of the day, social status and how people perceive us translates directly to how they treat us. Muriel didn't make this world, but she is living in it and making it possible for her to thrive in it. The imagery of a plus-size woman getting married to a conventionally attractive and coveted male athlete is satisfying to me in a way that is similar to how Meghan Markle's wedding was. Everyone loves an underdog or Cinderella story and everyone wants to be seen and adored. The most glorious part of the film is when Muriel leaves her conventionally attractive husband (just as he is developing feelings for her) to switch the roles and rescue Rhonda from the bad friend group and being stuck at home with her mother. The scene where Rhonda and Muriel ride off into the sunset (back to Sydney) to the sound of ABBA's "Dancing Queen" is sweeter to me than the ending of any romantic film.