Thankfully, Charlotte Roche is not a sexist. Nobody who sits with severely parallel kinks somewhere and with papal seriousness claims to know everything that concerns the sometimes very strange bottom. But one that starts, asks, looks and, giggel giggel, also nachbohrt.
Therefore, it is fitting that Arte has now sent the presenter and author on Sexpedition to explore "Love Rituals" in Japan, Israel, Kenya, the US, India, and the Scottish Orkney Islands, ceremonially codified behaviors in which is negotiated and conserved what the respective society thinks about love and sex.
The first episode brings Roche to Japan, and one learns directly a beautiful new word: "Vegetable Boys" called the photographer Kyoichi Tsuzuki, who accompanies her, the young men who prefer a honeymoon cuteness bob next to the bed, as a real friend to have. Roche costs Geisha Fortune Cookies, which contain pornographic pictures of sex positions that somehow look like Ikea instructions with their simple line. As a narrative-happy interlocutor you in a park willingly fan out the average masturbation statistics of Japanese Jungmännerwesen, unfortunately, the police come and finish the shooting.
They are always on the good side of curiosity - even though the eternal pleasure-seeker, who still lingers on Roche's "wetlands", will disappoint. Also, when Roche addresses the Kanamara Matsuri Festival in Kawasaki (which translates as "Iron Tail Feast") with real enthusiasm to people who suck on chocolate-covered penis lollipops with some very elaborate vanilla cream details: "There's ejaculate!"
No erection - thanks mum
Instead of just showing, Roche really wants to know: how does this festival, for which older women carve Phalli out of particularly beautiful radishes with crafty seriousness, fit into a society in which many people only like to touch behind closed doors?
Comfortably, however, this view is not curiosized, "Love Rituals" is no gaffkasten for the supposedly exotic exaltation of others. In the first episode, Kyoichi Tsuzuki brings to mind the idea that obliquity always arises in the eyes of the beholder (and usually says just as much about him as about the circumstance he refers to). He leads Roche through a park (now quite strange) in which medical models are arranged from physical deformities to erotic imaginary sculptures.
Roche finds that "pretty weird". And then Tsuzuki himself bears the same attribute when she says that German men in the sauna think of their own mother in order to suppress an erection.
"Love Rituals", starting Wednesday, 9:35 pm, Arte. Episode two (via Israel) runs directly after 22.25 clock. Both episodes can already be seen in the media library.