Denmark Lauched A Series For Kids About A Man With An Uncontrollable, Giant Penis. Erm, What?
It was supposed to be both funny and empowering when we watched Zooey Deschanel yell “penis!” in 500 Days of Summer, unabashedly. I mean, we got to be more comfortable saying things like penis, vagina and breasts out loud; what’s the point of treating some parts of our bodies like Voldemort? All this was cool until I stumbled upon things so bizarre, I wondered if the pandemic messed with people’s psyche. Not long ago, a giant penis structure was stolen overnight in Germany. First, why do we have a giant penis out there? Like imagine having a burger by a penis staring right at you. Second, where did they hide it? But you make a giant vagina structure in Brazil and it sparks outrage? This is like double standards having double standards!
Of course, we need people to be more comfortable with genitals and sex in general. But who knew someone in Denmark would think of making a series about a man with a giant penis… for children? Danish children are witnessing a brand-new show called John Dillermand (diller means penis in Danish) which is about a man with the world’s largest penis. And his penis is kinda out-of-his-control, like most penises in the world, or so the men act like.
Poor, innocent Dillermand just wants to go about his day like other people, but his penis gets in the way. Kathryn VanArendonk writes in Vulture, “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.”
So are we teaching kids at an elementary level that men have no control over their penises? Are we treating man and penis as two separate entities? They have clearly shown the guy playing badminton with his penis. This is further going to make our society excuse perverse behaviour from men and promote the mentality that this is how they are biologically designed to be.
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Christian Groes, an associate professor and gender researcher at Roskilde University told The Guardian, “It’s perpetuating the standard idea of a patriarchal society and normalising ‘locker room culture’ … that’s been used to excuse a lot of bad behaviour from men. It’s meant to be funny – so it’s seen as harmless. But it’s not. And we’re teaching this to our kids.”
However, there’s another side to the coin. Erla Heinesen Højsted, a clinical psychologist who works with families and children, said the show could actually be giving out a moral of the story. “John Dillermand talks to children and shares their way of thinking – and kids do find genitals funny,” she said. Højsted further adds, “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.”
The episodes are rather short and one can watch them online. It’s all about John and his diller – which is sometimes a curse, sometimes a boon. For instance, he can go fishing without a fishing rod but also have his pee-pee bitten by a fish! He can play throwball with his dog using his diller but the dog ends up biting it too. Of course, he still continues to use it like his alter ego.
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In fact, John is supposed to be all respectful and dresses his penis too. And if there’s a woman around, he curls it in.
Honestly, I have no idea what sort of effect this can have on children. Maybe the kids will find it funny. After all, the cartoons we watched did have a lot of sexual stuff in it without us being aware of it. Plus, genitalia shouldn’t always be sexualised, right? Maybe this is a way of teaching children the mishaps of not controlling their penises? I dunno. I guess we will have to wait for 20 years to find out what it did to children. If there’s a sudden hike in demand for therapists, then we’ll know John Dillermand was scarring.
