In one of my all-time favorite South Park episodes, the boys get assigned Catcher in the Rye in school, only to find that it’s not nearly as offensive as they’d been promised, and set out to write a properly offensive book, which they call “The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs.” It becomes a literary success when Stan’s parents find it and find they can’t read it without vomiting. In a related story, over in Germany, Hollywood Reporter tells us, there’s a film currently shooting in secret in Berlin, a film adaptation of Wetlands, a best-seller written by former MTV VJ Charlotte Roche (pictured). I did a little research, and if this thing isn’t the real-life Scrotie McBoogerballs I don’t know what is. You have no idea how happy sharing this makes me.
Wetlands takes place entirely in a German hospital room. This room is occupied by Helen Memel, the novel’s 18-year-old narrator, who has been admitted with a self-inflicted injury. In the course of shaving her less talkative end, she managed to cut her anus with a razor. The wound festered and now she needs an operation.
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The novel’s basic premise is that Helen has had sex, feels great about that, and is generally at home and easy with human fluids in a way that the rest of us are not. She likes to smell and eat her “smegma”. She is in love with her copious “slime”. She broods on her “well-trained pelvic muscles'” and her “very successful” experiences of anal sex. She is fascinated by masturbation, which she appears to believe she invented. “I think a lot of women still don’t masturbate, simply because they don’t know how to talk about it,” Roche told an interviewer. Helen is not one of those women. She molests barbecue tongs and avocado pits. And the shower attachment, of course. (Sometimes, I feel like the only woman in the world who uses the shower attachment for washing my hair.) While masturbating, Helen likes to hum Amazing Grace, which does go to illustrate the incredible diversity of human sexuality.
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When visiting public lavatories, Helen likes to “rub the entire seat with my pussy before I sit down”. “I’ve never had a single infection,” she adds, reassuringly. [TheGuardian]Helen dishes gnarly stories about leaving a used tampon in an elevator, dribbling a trail of urine from the bathroom to her bed and eating scabs. [Publisher’sWeekly]
She eats her snot. Eats her scabs. Sucks on the left overs on her knickers. She drops tampons she is using on the dirty floor, with the intention of it getting dirty, then re-uses it. [Amazon Reader Review]
She calls cum slime and talks about not showering/washing for days to increase her “vagina stench”. [Amazon Reader Review]
…if Helen were a real woman she would have had pelvic inflammatory disease ten times over. [Amazon Reader Review]
Here’s an actual passage:
I always put makeup on the inside of my pussy when I have a date to f*ck. … It makes the pussy and rosette more dramatic, deeper, more beguiling. Since I learned that black women have the reddest pussies, I only go to black hookers. …the interior colors of the pussy really pop when it’s spread open. [source]
Oh Charlotte Roche, will you marry me? Ahh, but what does the old grey lady have to say?
“Wetlands” opens in a hospital room after an intimate shaving accident. It gives a detailed topography of Helen’s hemorrhoids, continues into the subject of anal intercourse and only gains momentum from there, eventually reaching avocado pits as objects of female sexual satisfaction and — here is where the debate kicks in — just possibly female empowerment. [NYTimes]
I would expect nothing less than a detailed topography of hemorrhoids from a German best seller. Say what you will about the tenets of national socialism, those people really love sh*t.
I also enjoyed this review:
Wetlands, in the tradition of Plath’s The Bell Jar, is a remarkable novel about mental illness that has been mistaken for feminist literature.” – Alice O’Keeffe, New Statesman
Anyway, so yeah, they’re making that into a movie.
The film version has been shrouded in secrecy – Rommel Film, who acquired the rights, have given the film the coded title Memelland, apparently to confound reporters and keep the production under wraps. THR has learned Wnendt is also shooting some scenes from the film gonzo-style throughout Berlin. All personnel involved in the film have had to sign non-disclosure-agreements — a rarity for a German film.
A representative from Rommel Film refused to confirm or deny the NDA-requirement but did acknowledge the company was purposely not releasing any details about the film, preferring to finish it first and announce it “in due time.” [HollywoodReporter]
It’s scheduled to be released 2013. Like they say, the details remain tightly under wraps, but I have my fingers crossed for some narration by Morgan Freeman and a juicy role for Dame Judi Dench. Ooh, and Cam Gigandet could play the smegma-covered tampon!