Uncle Shrimp says “Uncle”
American-style online mob cancelation: Who is most hated, a children’s TV host or his haters?
Onkel Reje (Uncle Shrimp) has been a popular figure on Danish children’s television shows for more than 10 years. Played by Mads Geertsen, he is a large, hairy, bearded man who wears a sailor’s hat and striped shirt, smokes a pipe, and swears a lot (in Danish). He performs silly, often bawdy songs and stories that test the limits of vulgarity and politically incorrect opinions. His hits include “Prutte prutte prutte” (“Fart fart fart”) and “Jeg kan ikke li’ at gå I bad” (“I don’t like taking showers”).
Onkel Reje has also appeared in live performances and released albums with his “Heavyband.” They dress in leather outfits, waving the devil horns sign and a bottle of Jack Daniels, inviting kids to become devil-worshippers like all good heavy-metal fans.
Devil-may-care satanism
Geersten has provoked protests from conservative and religious groups (DK) for years. In 2019 he was reported to The Danish Press Council for advocating drunkenness and satanism to children. His program manager at the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) defended him as providing fun entertainment to children.
Geersten has nevertheless remained popular with his audience. Last year his program Onkel Rejes fede sommerferie (Uncle Shrimp’s cool summer vacation) was named the best children’s program on Danish TV (DK). When the tabloid Ekstra Bladet surveyed readers on whether “It is okay to have booze and playful satanism on children’s TV,” 66 percent approved.
Social media shitstorm
But now Onkel Reje has been the object of criticism of another order of magnitude. He has received a deluge of harassment and threats of violence on Facebook. His program director has not specified the full extent of the accusations, but they include exhibitionism, pedophilia, and grooming (DK). He was reported to the police for subjecting children to an “adult sexual space” and promoting a “woke agenda” (DK).
The attacks have been so virulent that Geertsen has taken sick leave and canceled his coming performances and DR has in turn reported the threats to the police (DK). According to Morten Skov, the head of Children’s and Youth programming at DR,
“Mads Gertsen does not feel safe on the street or performing his work…. [D]isgusting accusations that are not only undocumented and groundless but in every respect unfair and also have great costs…. Onkel Reje carries on in a superlative manner a decades-long DR tradition for children’s content at children’s level. He should be celebrated and not besmirched for it.”
According to DR, the main forces behind the attack on Geertsen are anti-vax, Covid-skeptical “conspiracy theorists” (DK) who appear to have been inspired by American religious fundamentalists. That would be ironic because in 2020 Onkel Reje and the Heavy Band themselves released a song critical of the government’s Covid restrictions: “We have Corona (until the opposite is proved)”. Watch the video.
Free-speech counterreaction
Many prominent Danish performers, including Casper Christensen, Anders Matthesen, and Paprika Steen, as well as Liberal Alliance Chair Alex Vanopslag, have come to Geertsen’s defense, insisting on his right to self-expression. Commercial enterprises, such as the optical chain Louis Nielsen and the painting supplies chain Flügger, have also condemned the harassment. For that, they were also subjected to such violent condemnation that they needed to shut down the comment field on their Facebook page.
But the support for Geertsen has been so widespread that one of his main accusers, Connie Ringaard, feels that she is now the most hated woman in Denmark (DK). She and her family have themselves received tons of vicious mail and threats: “It has been completely insane and totally transgressive and very, very violent.” She went on an evening news magazine to defend her actions:
“I believe I have participated in starting what you could call a coordinated attack on DR, on the [Onkel Reje] universe and the character, but not the man himself.”
She regrets only reporting Geertsen to the police and feels “very, very bad” that he needed to take sick leave.
Where will the escalation end? Will it be safe for anyone to practice gross and blasphemous humor or to object to it? Will the cops put the warring factions in the same jail cell? Stay tuned.
It's crazy watching all these book bans and other forms of art that are being cancelled. Especially now that it seems a lot of the same type of American style cancellation has become popular abroad. Although in the long term I doubt how successful they will be, I mean take a look at South Park, Parent and religious groups have always tried to get the show off air, yet it is probably the most successful show on Comedy Central and enjoyed by a broad group of people no matter their political, religious, or sexual identity. Also the Judy Blume books that were banned in the 1980s were later reversed in the 2000s and 2010s.