Teh One Who Knocks
01-06-2021, 03:23 PM
By Charles Wade-Palmer, Reporter - The Daily Star
https://i.imgur.com/GWXSrmC.jpg
A kids' cartoon about a character with a giant penis has sparked outrage.
John Dillermand is a new Danish animation aimed at four to eight-year-olds about a man whose giant penis can do everything from save lives to steal ice-cream from children
Aired for the first time on Saturday by DR, Denmark's equivalent to the BBC, critics have slammed the concept as "normalising locker room culture", the Guardian reports.
Danish author Anne Lise Marstrand-Jørgensen wrote: “Is this really the message we want to send to children while we are in the middle of a huge #MeToo wave?”
Christian Groes, an associate professor and gender researcher at Roskilde University, said the cartoon could reverse.
He daid: “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.”
But Erla Heinesen Højsted, a clinical psychologist who works with families and children, said the show is harmless.
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.”
Højsted conceded the timing was poor and that a show about bodies might have considered depicting “difference and diversity” beyond an oversized diller – Danish slang for penis.
Broadcaster DR hit back saying how it could just as easily have made a programme “about a woman with no control over her vagina,” and that the most important thing was that children enjoyed John Dillermand.
https://i.imgur.com/GWXSrmC.jpg
A kids' cartoon about a character with a giant penis has sparked outrage.
John Dillermand is a new Danish animation aimed at four to eight-year-olds about a man whose giant penis can do everything from save lives to steal ice-cream from children
Aired for the first time on Saturday by DR, Denmark's equivalent to the BBC, critics have slammed the concept as "normalising locker room culture", the Guardian reports.
Danish author Anne Lise Marstrand-Jørgensen wrote: “Is this really the message we want to send to children while we are in the middle of a huge #MeToo wave?”
Christian Groes, an associate professor and gender researcher at Roskilde University, said the cartoon could reverse.
He daid: “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.”
But Erla Heinesen Højsted, a clinical psychologist who works with families and children, said the show is harmless.
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.”
Højsted conceded the timing was poor and that a show about bodies might have considered depicting “difference and diversity” beyond an oversized diller – Danish slang for penis.
Broadcaster DR hit back saying how it could just as easily have made a programme “about a woman with no control over her vagina,” and that the most important thing was that children enjoyed John Dillermand.