Barbara and screenwriter Anika Decker don’t exactly stand for prudery. But only one could draw a lifelike clitoris on demand.
Barbara: Dear Anika, “Liebesdings” is coming to the cinema in July, the film for which you wrote the screenplay…
anika: … exactly, which is my original job …
Barbara: … and which you also directed.
Anika: I haven’t been doing this for long, third time now.
Barbara: I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I was talking about it for my Got It Joke show.
Anika: With who?
Barbara: With your leading man, Elyas M’Barek. And one of the first words he said to that was “clitoris”. I was very happy about that, I think the subject has far too little space on the first German television.
Anika: Elyas’ role in the film comes into contact with a feminist theater company, which leads to him wearing a cap that looks like a clitoris in a longer scene. So: what a clitoris really looks like. A longer piece with multiple branches and side terrains… Looks really nice, like a flower.
Barbara: Hardly anyone knows that.
Anika: And that’s what it’s all about. Almost anyone in the world can draw an anatomically correct penis. But female sexuality has no place in our media world. Concrete example: In another film scene, this theater troupe puts on a dance revue number in tampon costumes to “Bleeding Love”. Here it comes: This excerpt may not be shown on television.
barbara: Oops. How so?
Anika: Because, according to the reasoning, any children watching could be endangered. Seriously now: menstruation as a threat? It’s always taboo. What does that say about the perception of women? And it doesn’t stop there. There are still textbooks in which the clitoris is represented as a small bump.
Barbara: That sucks. That prudishness, that tendency not to say or show anything that would offend anyone. But that’s TV. That doesn’t really apply to film, does it?
Anika: I’ve been in the film business for 25 years and I would differentiate between in front of and behind the camera. So: The fact that Elyas wears a clitoris cap in “Liebesdings” is, in the context in which I put it, a kind of coarseness that goes well in a comedy.
Barbara: And behind the camera?
Anika: It would have been nice if people had known what they were saying earlier. A quarter of a century ago I would have wished for a touch less atmosphere at the regulars’ table.
Barbara: what happened there?
Anika: Back then I would come on set or into the production office as an unknowing blonde intern and I felt like fresh meat. For everyone, without age limits. I – and every other woman, by the way – was checked out by almost every trade.
Barbara: And your 23-year-old self has already reflected on that?
Anika: Sure, of course. I was taken to so many business dinners in those first few years that I realized: My presence there would be completely unnecessary purely job-related, I actually had nothing to do there… Until I understood what was going on.
Barbara: How terrible!
Anika: Absolutely. So: It wasn’t like I was dragged into a broom closet. But there were those situations that were kind of… in between. If someone said they wanted to “go through two or three things with you afterwards”. They scared me.
Barbara: And is that different today?
Anika: Not necessarily in the mind. But you definitely pay more attention to what you say or do. #MeeToo changed that. I find that very pleasant. Is that part of the nudity you wanted to talk to me about?
Barbara: Exactly. But now you probably want to know how I deal with the hundreds of thousands of porn pictures of me that are circulating the internet.
Anika: With the… what?
barbara: If you enter “Barbara Schöneberger nude” into Google, you will find the most wonderful porn scenes with me.
Anika: But that’s fake, isn’t it?
Barbara: So please! Naturally. There, in all seriousness, people sit down and mount my head on the bodies of copulating women.
Anika: Wait, I’ll have to google that… Oops. Yes, really! That’s… my goodness. And this! How you look at it!
Barbara: Yes, I can remember the original picture. I was walking a red carpet, fully clothed, by the way.
Anika: OK. Now I want to know: What does that do to you?
Barbara: For one thing, I’ve laughed my ass off several times about it.
Anika: I understand. Just your looks, which don’t really match what’s happening downstairs… And the other thing?
Barbara: does it touch me
Anika: Why that?
Barbara: Well, look at it this way: a person sits down…
Anika: … most likely a man …
Barbara: … in the evening and spends his free time neatly cutting out my head from digital images and then adding it to this context. That someone does this work! That’s great!
Anika: But you’ve never been really naked on TV or in photos, have you?
Barbara: nope
Anika: Why?
Barbara: Nobody asked.
Anika: I do not think so.
Barbara: Not true either. “Playboy” has regularly offered to do this at ever increasing intervals, and now they do it in one wash with the bouquet and the card for my birthday. But speaking of birthdays: I’m 48 now, and I’m already noticing that I’m … let’s say: becoming more insecure about myself and my own nudity.
anika: I will soon be 47 and can confirm that. Weird, is not it? We are established women in the prime of life, we are successful in our fields – for men that would be reason enough not to get dressed at all. In a figurative sense, I mean.
Barbara: It must be because of the common image of female nudity, and it’s still dominated by women half our age who don’t have cellulite as an issue. When I think about it: In the end, only the card came from “Playboy”, no flowers. The technical possibilities to adapt to this common image probably don’t exist yet.
Anika: Well, I would have my picture taken naked immediately.
Barbara: For real?
Anika: Of course. Just not for these relevant magazines. The context has to be right. For example, when art requires it. If it were for a good cause. Or the artist is great. Now if Annie Leibovitz came around the corner and wanted to take a picture of me undressed – you wouldn’t be able to look as quickly as I undressed. It’s not about nudity per se. It’s about trust and the platform where that nudity appears.
Barbara: Hm, I don’t know. That might have been the case in the 1980s. But if Annie Leibovitz takes a picture of me today, it would be accessible to everyone. And if someone wants to find out more about my commitment to early childhood education, for example, they will come across the Leibovitz picture during their research. It used to be an episode. Today everything is available forever. Anika: That’s true, of course.
Barbara: And I don’t know what that would do for me either. Except that I use a certain voyeurism. But you must be constantly thinking about how much you are showing – not of you, but of the actors you are writing the roles for.
Anika: And that’s a big issue with them for the reasons you just mentioned. In “Liebesdings” there is also a very beautiful, highly erotic love scene…
Barbara: Oh really? Elyas naked?
Anika: No, he’s wearing a T-shirt, and his film partner Lucie Heinze shows neither primary nor secondary sexual characteristics.
Barbara: Wait a minute: you didn’t shoot the nude scene to spare your actors?
Anika: nope Because the scene didn’t need nudity.
Barbara: How many have you used in total as a director so far?
Anika: Wait, I just have to count. Exactly…zero. I don’t want to rule out that it will happen at some point, but I’ve never had to do it before.
Barbara: And what about films that you wrote exclusively – were you encouraged to write nude scenes?
Anika: Happened. There was this one studio boss who said about an actress: If I buy her, I want to see her tits and ass.
Barbara: And? Did you write both?
Anika: Of course not. You know, on a movie like Basic Instinct, I understand nudity. But just for the lust I find them dull and unimaginative. If I want to show how a closed person falls in love with someone, then I need intimacy and devotion. A nipple can’t tell me that.
Barbara: I understand. So now comes a hard cut, I want to talk to you about another kind of nudity. You wrote this book three years ago.
Anika: You mean: “We from the other side”, my novel.
barbara: Yes. Although, and that’s what matters to me: it’s your own story that you’re describing. With whom you also got pretty naked, I think.
anika: That’s not true: It’s the story of my fictional character Rahel. But everything that is medical is something I have experienced myself: I wrote about my sepsis, which I suffered eleven and a half years ago.
Barbara: You almost died from it.
Anika: In fact, my parents have already been advised to organize my funeral, that is correct.
Barbara: What has happened there?
Anika: I had a kidney stone that I didn’t know about. It jammed and blocked drains.
barbara: And you were in a lot of pain.
Anika: What I had is called “annihilation pain”. The name says it all. But it was Christmas Eve and the clinic was staffed with emergency staff, nobody recognized it. This is how this sepsis came about, with nine days in an artificial coma and the probability that I would survive it is actually infinitesimally small.
Barbara: It is also interesting how Rahel’s professional environment dealt with the situation. Namely: not good. With incomprehension. Like you, she’s a screenwriter.
Anika: It’s correct.
Barbara: Has this happened to you?
Anika: There are parallels. I don’t need to tell you that in the entertainment business, it’s absolutely impossible not to be always bright, not always fit, not always ready for anything. We are all independent, including you. We always have to function, we don’t get sick.
Barbara: So if you show your vulnerability…
Anika: … really gets naked. And in a way studio bosses definitely don’t want. In my case, that meant that I suddenly couldn’t deliver anymore. Hardly anyone understood that.
Barbara: It’s been over a decade since your sepsis, but the book about it only appeared three years ago. How so?
Anika: Because it took a crazy amount of time to process the whole thing. I needed my time – also for research. In the end it’s not really my story.
Barbara: Why not?
Anika: Because in an autobiography I would have had to describe the role of others, and I just didn’t want to do that. But one thing certainly plays a role.
Barbara: Which one?
anika: I like to tell stories for my life. I can’t help it.
ANIKA DECKER was born in Marburg in 1975. In 2007 she wrote the screenplay for “Keinohrhase” and since 2015 she has also been directing her feature film “Liebesdings” which is currently in cinemas. Her novel “We from the other side” (Ullstein) was published in 2019. Decker lives in Berlin with her husband.