The reason to create a list and ranking of 'comic fat men' is because the 'comic fat man' persona is suddenly a simulacrum of a past that suddenly seems quite distant. Until roughly 2013-14, right or wrong, it was simply taken for granted that class was still a greater barrier to advancement than demographic identity. Whether one views the change as good, bad or neutral (and full disclosure: I'm very much inclined to the third belief) cultural discourse and iconography has changed more remarkably in the past ten years than at any point since the Hays Code was lifted in 1968. The figures represented in this are all figures whose dominant presence in our life was before Obama's second term.
What made the comic fat man distinct, aside from size, was the precariousness of the overweight man's position in a society that between 1968 and 2014 was transitioning from antiquated notions of social class to a world that promised absolute freedom to all, but bequeathed only a small bit of it, and almost all beholden to the cis-heteronormative white male. This appearance of freedom was an obvious lie to everyone not of that very particular demographic, but Hollywood's comic fat man was in a utterly unique position to demonstrate the blatantness of the lie because he was both a cisheteronormative white male, and also, thought by all an utterly inadequate exemplar of it, and therefore experiencing all the humiliations and rejections which everyone else was experiencing, but since they had had so little representation on screen, figures like John Candy and Chris Farley were in fact sublimated representations of the trials undergone by a much wider demographic swath.
The ultimate 'Comic Fat Man' role is Del Griffith in John Hughes's 1987 movie, Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Del Griffith is the ultimate low-class slob, continually treated by Steve Martin's Yuppie WASP character - Neal Page - with withering contempt. Del is benevolently well-meaning, but utterly oblivious to the encyclopedia of ways in which his manner puts off people of greater advantages, and being a person of low advantages, how was he ever in a position to learn? He was clearly scrambling for his whole life to make ends meet as a door-to-door salesman, and could not even take sufficient time off from his work to mourn the passing of his beloved wife. We are called to identify with Steve Martin's character, because his level of privilege is that to which we all aspire, and we laugh at John Candy's grossness. But the reason the movie is both funny and sad is that we all worry that we are much more like John Candy's character than Steve Martin's, and 99% of us are.
Comedies of identity were more rarely made in 1987, and those few which were were cast by good looking actors of color and good looking women, because casting two removes from society's normative ideal was apparently too much to ask. Eddie Murphy could headline comedies that were box office kings, but even Whoopi Goldberg had to star in movies surrounded by white actors or in dramas.
What changed in the life of the world was the definitive dominance of the internet in cultural discourse. In 2013 came the case of Trayvon Martin vs. George Zimmerman, and with it the dominance of Twitter as the ultimate motivator of American discourse: resulting both in the new focus upon identity over class, and our current level of ideological polarization - perhaps ironically, those who believe social class is still the #1 issue are now of the Right, and are fed their daily reminders by Fox News to keep feeling humiliated by upper class liberals.
To be sure, there were always comic fat black men, comic fat women, comic fat persons of LGBTQ identity, but they were cult figures, who articulated today's concerns to a previous era inconvenient to their hearing, and therefore whatever their current level of production, comedians like Cedric the Entertainer, Margaret Cho and Monique (and it says something for how out of whack beauty standards were in the 90s that Margaret Cho could even be viewed as plus sized...) are far more widely appreciated in our epoch than in the Era of John Candy.
The one exception to this is Roseanne Barr, who was very much a comedienne of class rather than identity, and proved it by her utter insuitability to understand the dynamics of race when she was so acute in understanding the dynamics of class. Her place in pre-2013 society was both unique to her determination to carve out a place for herself in Hollywood, and unique to exceedingly vast gifts. She therefore deserves a highly merited honorable mention.
Further thoughts:
Will Sasso is one of the most underrated Hollywood performers of all time who simply can't catch a break. He does everything - writes brilliantly, acts, sings, plays piano, mimes, he is a sleeping giant in Hollywood.
The idea of leaving out Wayne Knight is unthinkable. This would have been one of the greatest shows ever made....
Frank Caliendo is the bargain basement Comic Fat Man - a comic who made almost his entire reputation on his impression of John Madden, and cannot create a show of his own in which he does anything but mediocre impersonations.
Jeff Garlin, whatever the current news about him, is a very talented comedian, but he is ultimately small potatoes compared to the giants above him, and therefore a rather marginal and late-coming figure in the history of the modern Comic Fat Man.
Artie Lange's drug struggles have long since become more sad than funny - it's awful to watch as we can barely remember the period when he was funny, and his sadness is made almost more awful that he's now outlived both Bob Saget and Norm MacDonald.
The Comic Fat Man before 1968, still within living memory of 19th century notions, was another breed entirely; as excess weight was in some instances a circumstance in which people would take great pride, because it indicated material prosperity. Oliver Hardy, Lou Costello and Curly Howard were all perfect exemplars of the earlier Comic Fat Man, the part of their comic teams to which we always extended our greatest sympathy. They were the ultimate stars of their comedy teams who had the best lines and the best schtik - the reason being that because they were fat, their nosethumbing at people of higher social class had more heft. They were given the best lines, had the most screen time, and because of the humor inherent in their courting women, they were given more romantic situations.
Therefore, here is a new ranking of Comic Fat Men:
John Candy > John Belushi > Will Sasso > Chris Farley > John Goodman > Louie Anderson > Wayne Knight > Zach Galifianaikis > Jack Black > Jeff Garlin > Artie Lange > Kevin James > Frank Caliendo
HM: Rosanne Barr
...every time I try to lose weight I think about fat comedians.
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