149 PEOPLE LIED FOR FOUR MONTHS - AND CALLED IT LOVE.
You have all heard about it by now. On Saturday afternoon TV 2 pulled the programme "Alle elsker Rasmus" ("Everybody Loves Rasmus"), five days after the premiere, with an unreserved apology from programme director Dorthe Thirstrup.
So while it's fresh in our memory, let's take a look together at what it was, before it disappears. I'll sum it up briefly -
The comedian Rasmus Wallbridge was told that his biggest dream was coming true. He and his best friend and partner, Martin Johannes Larsen, were going to make a feature film for Nordisk Film. For four months he cast actors, held meetings, pitched to film executives, wrote, shot. Casper Christensen was in on it. Anders W. Berthelsen was in on it. Malte Ebert, Esben Pretzmann, Christian Stadil were in on it. Rasmus Krogh, who in real life is sales director at Nordisk Film, played the role of Nordisk Film and nodded along to his film. The director Jesper Rofelt, the man behind Klovn, wrote the scenes. The production company Drive Studios, which Nordisk Film owns, produced it. TV 2 paid.
(At least) 149 people knew.
One didn't.
His girlfriend didn't know. His manager didn't know. Like him, they believed they were in the middle of shooting a feature film. His life's dream. He has written that himself.
So let's call it what it was.
It wasn't a prank. A prank lasts thirty seconds, and then you laugh together. This was four months of a Human Being's life, where everything around him was acting, and where *the only* real thing in the room was him. His joy was real. His work was real. His doubts and worries were real. His trust in his best friend was real. That was precisely why they used it.
*Real* was the raw material.
TV 2's own promotional copy said it without blinking -
"Everything is staged. Everyone is playing a role. Except Rasmus Wallbridge."
Try reading that sentence one more time. As a description of what is being done to a Human Being.
....
Now to what is, for me, the real matter. Not press ethics, not consent, not the criminal code. All of that is on its way, and that is as it should be. But that is the system's own language about itself, and in that language TV 2 can always find its way out again. "My judgement failed," says Dorthe Thirstrup. That sounds like a mistake. A mistake can be corrected.
This was not a mistake.
The decisive thing is not what went wrong. The decisive thing is that none of the 149 experienced that anything was going wrong. I have looked for one who objected along the way. One actor, one editor, one person in the production who stood up and said - "we simply don't do this to a human being". I haven't found anyone. Not a single one. On the contrary. TV 2's explanation, before it all fell apart, was that the intention was to CELEBRATE Rasmus. To show what a fantastic guy he is.
They meant it. That is what's chilling.
This is where the Lie lives. Not in a single liar. The Lie needs no liar. All it needs is for everyone to agree. 149 people, each of them looking around the room and seeing that all the others are in on it, and thinking - then it's probably fine. Then it's probably funny. "You're up for this, right? It's gonna be bloody hilarious." And then you're in. Not because you have thought about it, but because all the others haven't.
It is the Herd Animal in full bloom. And a herd isn't evil. A herd is just without grown-ups.
The TV host Anna Lin asked where "the grown-up" was in all this. It's the precise question, and it has a precise answer.
There was NO grown-up, because a grown-up is someone who can stand alone in a room and hold himself together where everyone else agrees. Nobody could. From the actor up to the programme director there was NOBODY who could. And so "children" isn't an insult. It's the most fitting description. Because children don't know what a Human Being is, since they haven't become one yet.
....
The French thinker René Girard spent more or less his whole life describing one mechanism - the crowd that gathers around the one human being.
What characterises the mechanism is not hatred. It's agreement. Everyone is in on it, everyone experiences themselves as good, and the one stands outside. And the crowd cannot see what it is doing, precisely because it agrees. It's no coincidence that the high priest in the Gospels says it is better that one Man should die than that the whole nation should perish. It sounded reasonable. Everyone nodded.
I'm not saying TV 2 crucified anybody. I think. I'm saying the mechanism is the same, and that from the inside it always feels like something else. From the inside it feels like a tribute. Like community. Like "everybody loves Rasmus".
And notice the title. It is the word Love, turned upside down. 149 people who *love him so much* that not one of them tells him the Truth for four months.
I mean...
That is how sick our culture has become. And what makes it chilling is that it isn't just a little crooked. It stands in almost perfect balance. 180 degrees upside down.
Because look at which programme was lying right next to it. The one that should have been made.
They had found a man who carries something special. Something a lot of people are fond of. And inside him lay a lifelong dream that he had carried around for years - maybe for as long as he can remember.
They saw all that. That was why they chose him. And then they used it as "material".
The right programme was the one where they had chosen him for exactly the same reason - and then had stood beside him. Given him the film. Followed him from the first idea to the final cut, with all the doubt, falls, stubbornness, sorrows, mistakes and small victories along the way, while the camera slowly opened onto what always shows itself when you let a Human Being become - that there is no bottom.
That the depth in one human being who is allowed to pursue what he or she was created for is infinite.
Everybody would have watched that programme. Not because it was funny. Because it cuts straight into the dream each of us walks around with, and which most of us never get to see fulfilled in the world. We would have watched him do it, and then we would have gone home and thought about our own. And some of us, maybe even, acted on it. To the joy of the rest of us.
But that programme requires two things that weren't in the room.
It requires a different view of what a Human Being is. And it requires Courage. Because it is far more dangerous to Believe in a Human Being in front of everyone than it is to laugh at him.
They chose the easy thing.
And called it Love.
....
And then there is what I think is the bottom of it all.
When it was over, and Rasmus had the Lie revealed to him in a cinema, he sat next to Martin and laughed. Then he got up and walked out. With his back to the camera. And over the footage of him walking, by all appearances, lies that same laugh again. Two sound experts have listened and are in no doubt - it is the same audio clip, used twice. A law professor calls it "misleading editing".
Just think about what is happening there.
The Lie couldn't even let him leave.
It needed him to be laughing and smiling as he left the room. His dignity was the last thing that had to be rescued - not for his sake, but for the programme's - so it was edited in afterwards.
That is the whole view of Man in three seconds of sound.
....
"He could say no," Dorthe Thirstrup said on Presselogen, the TV 2 media programme, on Friday, and she stood by it. That may be true in law. And it is COMPLETELY empty in reality.
Because look at what kind of no he was offered.
Four months are in the can. 149 people have put their time and their faces into it. Nordisk Film, which is THE company that decides whether you ever get to make a film in this country, is sitting in the room. TV 2, which is THE station that decides whether you ever get on screen again, has paid.
And then they ask you - "are you in?"
Without your manager. Without your girlfriend. Without anyone on your side.
Anna Lin put it quite simply - anyone can work out that TV 2 would probably rather play with him in the future if he says yes than if he says no.
That's how a gatekept industry works. Nobody threatens you directly. There's just a door, and on one side of the door you're in, and on the other side you're out. And everyone in the room knows it, and nobody needs to say it. You don't need a Law to take a Human Being's Freedom. You just need to own the door he has to go through to have his Dream realised.
Thirstrup also said something else on Presselogen that I can't let go of. She said she was very aware that it was a difficult, difficult situation to put Rasmus in, and added - "it could be wasted money".
Notice the order.
The risk that gets mentioned is the budget.... f*ck the Human Being, right?
"This is gonna be bloody hilarious."
....
In closing I'd like to say one thing in defence of the 149, because it matters.
None of them wished him any harm. I believe that. Martin Johannes Larsen, Rasmus's now former best friend, wrote on Saturday that he had asked himself -
"Was I seized by an idea and let myself get carried away? I was."
That is the most honest thing said in the whole affair, and I respect it.
But that is exactly the point. "Wanting the good" and "being good" are not the same thing.
Evil isn't always something somebody wants. Sometimes it's just what happens when 149 people stop asking what a Human Being is, because all the others have stopped too.
A Human Being is not "material". It is not "authentic reaction". It is not a target figure. Or a "resource". It is not the one in the room who isn't acting, and who can therefore be used.
A Human Being is created in an Image it did not make itself, and it can therefore not be owned - not by a herd, not by an industry, not by a programme director with good intentions, not by a group, by a municipality, a state or a King.
The day a culture forgets that, the first thing it does is take an innocent Human Being, strip him bare in front of everyone and call it Love.
And that day is no longer on its way.
It was last Monday, at 8.40 pm, on TV 2 Echo.
❤️🔥🪽
Have a good Sunday, friends ☀️
....
And Rasmus - if you're reading this. You were the only one in that room who behaved like a Human Being. It wasn't you who was exposed.
And everyone can see that now.
I hope your dream of making your film comes true. If I can be of help with anything, and I have no idea whether I can, then just get in touch.
If we're not here to help each other forward and lift each other up - what on earth is the point of it all?
