Admittedly, we didn't expect much from a ZDF production via a social network along the lines of OnlyFans, a pornographic Internet platform. Can't a series that bears the terrible title "WatchMe – Sex sells" only be unpleasant? But it isn't. In fact, the six-part series (director: Alison Kuhn, screenplay: Jonas Bock, Christian Hödl, Lene Pottgiesser) approaches the topic relatively relaxed and shows sex scenes that, if they are not consciously designed to seem unpleasant, even come across spontaneously.

Anna Vollmer

Editor in the feuilleton.

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"WatchMe – Sex sells" tells the story of three characters, Malaika, Tim and Toni, who earn money on the social network "WatchMe" with erotic photos and livestreams. Malaika (Maddy Forst) presents herself with the conviction of an "empowered" activist, Tim (Michelangelo Fortuzzi) runs a couple's channel with his much older (and much more motivated) partner Josh (Simon Mantei), and Toni (Anna Werner Friedmann) initially acts out of pure lack of money because she cannot pay for her son's tutoring sessions.

What happens when you sell erotic pictures?

So the motives are different; the conflicts and complexities that arise from the activity on the platform as well. The creators of the series said at the premiere in Berlin that they wanted to take up various aspects: What happens to one's self-worth when one sells pornographic images of oneself? How does the environment react? And what does such a job do to the partnership? For each of the three figures, the platform has different effects, sometimes encouraging, sometimes doing the opposite.

Above all, there are questions that a journalist Malaika asks in the first episode in the interview, namely whether it is really emancipatory to sell one's body on the Internet, and how it is that if it serves equality, it is mainly women who do it, while men tend to watch. Such questions can be argued, and the series illuminates the pros and cons narratively without finding or wanting to give a clear answer.

Telling sex without voyeurism

The narrative implementation is not easy at all. On the one hand, because a lot of it takes place in the digital space, on the other hand, because you want to tell something about pornography without being pornographic. That's why they decided on a certain color concept, says the director at the premiere, and made sure to show the process of filming and not the result. An intimate coordinator was also always available when the performers wanted support.

At no point is the series voyeuristic or embarrassing, but it gives the impression that it only wants to depict and address a certain layer. All three characters live in exceptionally pretty apartments, even the poverty of the single mother has something picturesque about it and loses its harshness as a result of the fact that a friend with an even fancier apartment repeatedly assures her of financial support and help. It is understandable that the series makers do not want to serve the prejudice of the "dirty corner", but can this only be implemented by catering to educated bourgeois ideas?

This doesn't just apply to aesthetics. When Malaika's subscription numbers stagnate, she suggests to her devilishly evil manager (Agnes Decker) to intersperse Judith Butler quotes from time to time. Tim, who is catching up on his high school diploma, meets another content creator from "WatchMe." He's already studying, takes Tim to the library and asks if he thought he was stupid? Are those who do not study stupid?

This is not to say that platforms of this type do not have the people that the series is talking about. But wouldn't it have been interesting to get closer to one of those hyper-feminine, often operated women who also exist on OnlyFans? To portray a woman who doesn't present her activism in the form of the right vocabulary, maybe even one who isn't an activist at all? It certainly wouldn't have been easy without serving clichés and fantasies of masculinity. But maybe it would have been worth it. Apart from that, "WatchMe – Sex sells" is quite successful – a series that entertains and asks the questions that the topic raises. It's enough to make a second season out of it.

WatchMe – Sex sells, in the ZDF media library