Headline is a move. Title a book so that they sell more (not so that they are read, so that they sell), title an article so that SEO works magic or title a series so that it attracts attention in the Netflix catalog. And then comes the damn (but necessary) translation and that’s over. The best thing about Survival of a Curvy Girl is its original title. Survival of the Thickest is, in addition to being much shorter, infinitely more ingenious. It turns “survival of the fittest,” a staple of evolutionary theory, into the hilarious “survival of the fattest,” which is what Survival of a Curvy Girl is all about. .
As if its creator and protagonist, the comedian Michelle Buteau, was bothered by the word “fat”. It’s probably not her favorite word, but between that and “curvy girl”, I have no doubts: better a crude joke than a grotesque euphemism. Of course, things as they are, Buteau’s series is not exactly intelligent or refined in that regard, so who knows if the person responsible for it is in favor of its finicky title in Spanish. The first episode of this comedy contains a joke that is as homophobic as it is not very funny. The second being much more serious, of course. But the former is also significant. We want Michelle Buteau to make a Fleabag through Harlem, but her alter ego is more of a filler character for, precisely, the likeable Harlem from Prime Video. We want Mavis, the protagonist of Survival of a Curvy Girl to play with the clichés of the trope she represents, but Michelle has her emphasize the former and prop up the latter. Mavis is black, fat, proud, and irritating, and that’s wonderful, because it’s hard to get good comedy out of canonical characters. Wonderful… in theory. In practice Michelle Buteau simply changes the color and size of another stinking trope, the manic pixie dream girl, and makes her protagonist. An interesting idea that Lena Dunham exploited in Girls, a series against which Buteau seems to attack in some moments of her comedy.
It’s not that we like Mavis, it’s that we care about her. Unfortunately, Survival of a Curvy Girl seems more interested, almost obsessed, with the former. And she doesn’t make it. And it’s a shame, because Michelle Buteau’s shamelessness sure gives her more. Is her series of hers the way it is because, in addition to screwing up with the translation of its title, Netflix has put too much hand in the tone and development of the process? Will this be, like Special, another comedy that in order to exist has to guarantee its investors that its good intentions will always be above the wild sense of humor that its premise is crying out for? For when will Fat and Crazy Black, Crippled Fagot, El Cuñao de Vox or Vegano From Hell, brilliant comedies wanting to add salt to wounds, even if they are mine? I want to laugh with the series, not at them.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
