Danish public television has just introduced a new animated show about a man named John Dillermand and his unpresentably long penis.
The premise of the program, which is aimed at children between the ages of four and eight, is to show how Mr Dillermand – who translates as Mr Penis Man – has overcome the obvious challenges that come with an incredibly long schlong.
Instead of being hampered by his oversized package, he uses it in creative ways, including rescue operations, raising flags, grilling, and even a whimsical episode when Mr. Dillermand’s phallus is somehow frozen by an unexpected child.
The show, of course, has critics. Danish author Anne Lise Marstrand-Jørgensen wondered when Denmark had recently lowered sexual harassment at work. “Is this really the message we want to send to children while we’re in the middle of a huge #MeToo wave?” she wrote on Twitter.
But the show’s producers, of which 13 episodes have been watched more than 140,000 times since its January 2 debut, have defended the unusual choice of children’s programming. “We think it’s important to be able to tell stories about bodies,” public broadcaster DR posted on Facebook on Tuesday. “In series, we recognize the growing curiosity of young children about the body and genitals, as well as embarrassment and pleasure in the body.”
Some episodes show a less than happy and somewhat boring lady trying to keep her husband in line, including a scene in which she drops a pile of balloons from which her husband hangs from his member. Spoiler alert: he survives.
“It’s a very Danish show,” education expert Sophie Munster told AFP. “We have a tradition of overcoming boundaries and using humor, and we think it’s completely normal.”
Erla Heinesen Højsted, a clinical psychologist, told AFP that the show is not harmful to young children. “John Dillermand talks to children and shares their thinking – and kids find the genitals funny,” she said. “He is taking responsibility for his actions. When a woman in the show tells him that he should keep his cock in his pants, for example, he listens. Which is nice. He is responsible. “
Others claim that an entire show about an oversized organ is bad for men. “The standard idea of a patriarchal society is perpetuated and the ‘locker room culture’ is normalized,” Christian Groes, an associate professor and gender researcher at Roskilde University, told local Danish media. “It’s meant to be funny – so it’s seen as harmless. But it’s not. And we’re teaching this to our kids.”
The public broadcaster responded to the criticism on his Facebook page by saying that he could very well have done a show “about a woman without control over her vagina” and what really matters is that the children love Mr. Dillermand.