Critics condemn idea of animated series about a man who cannot control his penis, but others have backed it.
Yes this really happened: In Denmark, kids are kicking off the new year with a brand-new animated TV show called John Dillermand. It sounds innocent, right? Well, how should I put it… it’s NOT!
It is in fact a TV show about a man with an astonishingly long penis. A KIDS show. Aimed ages 4-8!
“John Dillermand (“diller” is a Danish word for penis) is a hapless, generally well-intentioned Everyman character who wears a red-and-white-striped onesie and just wants to go about his day doing regular chores. He wants to buy some groceries, go to the zoo, and do a little light gardening. Alas for poor Dillermand, at every turn, his penis gets in the way. It snakes through the hedges, where his neighbor nearly trims it with a pair of clippers. It grabs an ice-cream cone and then drops the ice cream on top of a traffic light, causing the light to short-circuit and snarl up traffic. In one alarming scene, Dillermand goes hunting, and his extraordinarily long member grabs a gun and waves it around the forest. John Dillermand has an extraordinary penis. So extraordinary, in fact, that it can perform rescue operations, etch murals, hoist a flag and even steal ice-cream from children.”
www.vulture.com
Not at all surprising, the new series, which premiered on Saturday, on Denmark’s DR channel (the equivalent to the BBC)… has provoked debates about what is and what is not, appropriate for kids to watch.
Um… I can solve that debate pretty quickly. This is NOT appropriate. 🙈
“Is this really the message we want to send to children while we are in the middle of a huge #MeToo wave?” wrote the Danish author Anne Lise Marstrand-Jørgensen. The show comes just months after the TV presenter Sofie Linde launched Denmark’s #MeToo movement.
And for so many other reasons!
On the other side of the “debate”, Erla Heinesen Højsted, a clinical psychologist who works with families and children, said she believed the show’s opponents may be overthinking things. “John Dillermand talks to children and shares their way of thinking – and kids do find genitals funny,” she said.
“The show depicts a man who is impulsive and not always in control, who makes mistakes – like kids do, but crucially, Dillermand always makes it right. He takes responsibility for his actions. When a woman in the show tells him that he should keep his penis in his pants, for instance, he listens. Which is nice. He is accountable.” “What kind of culture are we creating for our children if it’s OK for them to see ‘perfect’ bodies on Instagram – enhanced, digitally or cosmetically – but not ‘real bodies’?” she said.
Erla Heinesen Højsted
Hmmm? I’m not sure I’d describe John Dillermand’s giant striped penis, as being an example of a “real” body 🤣 …but okay, good point, I guess.
DR responded to the latest criticism by saying it could just as easily have made a program “about a woman with no control over her vagina” and that the most important thing was that children enjoyed John Dillermand.