It sounds like you might be asking for a helpful academic paper or analytical resource on the 2007 film Norbit, directed by Brian Robbins and starring Eddie Murphy.
While Norbit is not typically discussed in traditional film criticism journals, there are several useful angles you could take for a paper. Below is a structured guide to writing a thoughtful, insightful paper on Norbit—including potential thesis statements, themes, and scholarly connections.
While critics saw a vulgar, offensive mess, the internet saw a goldmine. Norbit is arguably the most quotable and meme-able Eddie Murphy movie since Coming to America.
In the age of irony, Norbit is the perfect film. You don't watch it sincerely; you watch it to quote it. You don't defend its politics; you defend its audacity.
| Theme | Description | Examples from Film | |-------|-------------|--------------------| | The “Magical Negro” trope | Subverted? Perpetuated? | The orphanage owner (Eddie Murphy in makeup) who offers wisdom. | | Fatphobia & gender | Rasputia as villainous, grotesque, controlling. | Physical humor: breaking furniture, loud eating, violent outbursts. | | Colorism | Light-skinned Kate vs. dark-skinned Rasputia. | Moral alignment: good = thin/light, bad = fat/dark. | | Cross-racial performance | Eddie Murphy in Asian (Mr. Wong) & Black (Rasputia) makeup. | Historical link to minstrelsy and racial masquerade. | Norbit
We cannot write about Norbit without addressing the elephant (or the woman in the leopard print) in the room. In 2007, the NAACP criticized the film for its portrayal of Rasputia, arguing it reinforced negative stereotypes of Black women as loud, aggressive, and sexually voracious.
Looking at it today, the critique holds weight. While Murphy famously uses fat suits to liberate his inner id (think Sherman Klump in The Nutty Professor), Rasputia lacks the redeeming sweetness of Mama Klump. Rasputia is purely a monster. She is an abusive spouse—physically, emotionally, and financially controlling Norbit. The joke is always her size and her appetite.
However, a modern re-evaluation might argue that Norbit is a stealth drama about domestic abuse. Norbit is a male victim of a female abuser, a story rarely told in mainstream comedy. The film never glorifies Rasputia; it holds her up as a force of destruction. The fact that the character is played by a man in a suit highlights the absurdity of the power imbalance, but it also complicates the racial and gender politics in ways the filmmakers likely never intended.
On Stereotypes:
“Though widely panned, Norbit offers a critical, if problematic, lens onto the persistence of racial and gender caricatures in mainstream comedy, reflecting post-Civil Rights era tensions in Black representation.” It sounds like you might be asking for
On Body Politics:
“The film’s exaggerated treatment of bodies (Rasputia’s size, Mr. Wong’s age) reveals Hollywood’s reliance on physical grotesquerie as a substitute for character development, yet inadvertently exposes societal anxieties about fatness, femininity, and desire.”
On Eddie Murphy’s Career:
“Norbit sits at a crossroads in Eddie Murphy’s filmography, where virtuoso character comedy collides with regressive humor, illustrating the trade-off between mainstream success and critical respect.”
The legend of Norbit took its most dramatic turn in February 2008. Eddie Murphy was considered the frontrunner to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his devastatingly dramatic turn in Dreamgirls. He had won the Golden Globe, the SAG Award, and the Critics' Choice Award.
Then, the Academy voters watched Norbit. The Memes: Why Norbit Survived While critics saw
Norbit was released during the voting period. The narrative is undisputed: the visual of Eddie Murphy in a fat suit, playing the crass, vomit-inducing Rasputia, was so fresh in the minds of older, conservative Academy members that they could not take his serious performance seriously. Murphy lost the Oscar to Alan Arkin (Little Miss Sunshine). In Hollywood history, no single movie has ever torpedoed an actor’s Oscar chances quite like Norbit torpedoed Eddie Murphy’s.
On its surface, Norbit follows a classic, almost fairy-tale structure. The titular character, Norbit Albert Rice (Eddie Murphy), is a meek, perpetually downtrodden doormat of a man. As a child, he was left at the "Golden Wonton" restaurant/orphanage run by the gruff yet paternal Mr. Wong (Eddie Murphy again, under even more makeup).
Norbit’s life takes a tragic turn when he is forcibly "adopted" by the monstrous Rasputia (Murphy in a groundbreaking fat suit). Fast forward to adulthood: Norbit is married to the abusive, domineering, and wildly sexual Rasputia. He works a dead-end job as a construction site accountant, and his spirit is crushed.
Enter the Deus ex Machina: Kate Thomas (Thandie Newton), his sweet, smart childhood sweetheart. Kate returns to town to save the local orphanage (the Golden Wonton) from a sleazy land developer, Deion Hughes (Cuba Gooding Jr., leaning into the smarm). The plot kicks in: Norbit must find the courage to leave Rasputia, help Kate save the orphanage, and win back the love of his life.
It’s a simple story about reclaiming one’s manhood and escaping an abusive relationship. The problem, as critics noted, is that the background scenery—specifically Rasputia—is so loud, so large, and so outrageous that it nearly destroys the frame.