The Uncut Story: The Rise Of ‘Drawing Dicks On The Herald-Sun’
NSFW, obviously.
When I was a dumb teenager I was late to class all the time. One day my English teacher sassed me with an impromptu challenge for my tardiness: Give a talk in front of everyone, right now. The topic? Something about the school that “meant something.” I got up there, collar damp, mysteriously wondering why my friend Brett got isotonic sports drinks for lunch and I got Primas.
Suddenly my hands moved as if guided by unseen forces. I don’t want to say it was Jesus, but it was Jesus. Before I realised it, those sticky hands of mine had arced an enormous cartoon dick on the whiteboard behind me and the room was in stitches. Even my sassy English teacher. Throughout my passionate speech about what this massive cock meant to me and society, I’d periodically stop everything to add to it: snaking veinage, crispy little hairs! Fissures of detail along the undercarriage, the shine of an imagined downlight on its beautiful perfect glans!
It became sacred. It remained there throughout the class and, I was told, the rest of the day. The afterschool cleaners prostrated themselves before it, refusing to scrub it from the board. They had to be threatened: Sanje, you wipe that cock off right now!
“I don’t want to ever not find a fart joke or a dick joke funny,” Larry Boxshall laughs, uproariously. He’s the Melbourne-based director of Drawing Dicks On The Herald Sun: The Documentary, a thing that is going to do what it says on the tin. “I always want to laugh at that humour. I feel like if I don’t, that’s the day I’ve grown up. I’m a total man-child. I’m selling my comic book collection to make this film! I’m in my thirties and I’m still collecting comic books, that’s idiotic. I feel like it is the art form that really joins us all. It’s like the Force in Star Wars. It surrounds us, it penetrates us, it brings the galaxy together. Get me a terrorist from ISIS and a Jew and tell me they haven’t drawn a cock before. I don’t believe it.”
The documentary explores not just how the infamous Facebook page shot into existence courtesy of its tradie originators Dylan Merritt and Jeremy Bassett, but also focuses on the many artists who’ve grown alongside it. By Larry’s estimate, they’ll have completely covered about 50 by the end of the film, and with good reason. The ‘sir’ in Sir Jonathan Edward Guthmann is there because of his flair for undersea pubic hair.
“One of my other favourite things about the page and what we’ve filmed so far is the fact they’re just regular people. Guthmann’s really the only trained artist. The others are just regular people like you and I who’ve gone, ‘I’m gonna give this a crack.’ They’ve never thought artistically before, and this page has made them think artistically. I think that’s utterly brilliant, and it creates laughter. That’s the best thing about it,” Boxshall says.
Artwork by Sir Jonathan Edward Guthmann.
“So many people tell me the only thing they like about Facebook is Drawing Dicks On The Herald Sun, because everything else is fucking pictures of cats or ‘I’ve had a really shit day today.’ No one gives a fuck about that. This provides a bit of warmth, a bit of laughter. It’s amazing how many people love the page.
“One of the things Guthmann said that really touched me – he’s been an artist for years now, and he’s a brilliant artist. Extraordinary – he actually told me that the first time he felt really noticed and loved was when he exploded on Drawing Dicks On The Herald Sun,” Larry adds. “He just couldn’t believe it. Suddenly, the guys dubbed him a knight. He’s now Sir Jonathan Edward Guthmann. It’s something he loves very much, and obviously when he puts his pictures up they go ballistic, they go nuts. He recently did one on Serena Williams and it was massive. People really loved it.”
Like a fountainous outpouring of hand-drawn ejaculate, Larry’s aiming high. Apart from trying to get Andrew Bolt and Rupert Murdoch to appear and contribute their own cartoon cocks (“Every person who gets interviewed draws a dick for us”), he also wants the Herald Sun to simply admit the page exists.
“They never have, and the thing is if you go on the page, it’s got over 375,000 fans now. It’s growing by about 1,000 or so a week. Even more sometimes. The Herald Sun page has got less than 100,000, something like that,” Larry says.
“I’d love them to say, ‘Yes, we know it exists.’ I’ve spoken to a lot of people that work there. They’re all lovely, and the thing is they hate the Herald Sun as much as you do. The problem is they’ve got mortgages and families and they’ve gotta pay the rent, you know? I get why they won’t do it. Some editors have said they do tend to choose photos that would be more dick-friendly than others,” he laughs. “I know it generates really strong opinions in people, and a lot of people disregard it as the Liberal Party newsletter. Definitely that can be warranted, but I also just want the Herald Sun to admit that the page exists.”
For his part, Larry remains impartial (“I laugh just as hard at the dicks drawn on The Age as I do at the ones on the Herald Sun”), but it’s easy to wonder if the page’s ongoing popularity might be some indication as to how a whole lot of Australians feel about conservative loudspeakers – particularly in the current political climate.
Artwork by ol’mate BRAZEN.
“I think about it a lot. One of our artists – Rebecca Van Der Werff, who’s in the second promo we put out – she said something in her interview that really floored me: ‘It doesn’t matter where you go, the Herald Sun is a part of your life.’ It’s in every café. You know, it’s there. You probably read without even knowing you’re reading it, and you don’t have to buy it to read it.”
Which is semi-ironic considering you may have noticed that Drawing Dicks On The Herald Sun does not appear in your feeds nearly as much as it used to, if at all.
“Dylan and Jeremy unpublish the page – and have done at least twice now, I think – in order to stop it being taken down forever. That’s always a constant threat. For some fucking bullshit reason, despite the fact the page has 375,000+ likes, all it takes is a vocal minority to have art taken down and the page itself too. It’s incredible. Minority rule.
“The bizarre reason for the art being taken down is almost always under grounds of nudity. Ridiculous. It’s satire. It’s humour. It’s like these people have never seen a dick before. Or cum. If you don’t like it, fuck off. They don’t even make any money off the page. They get offers from lots of people to sell it, though. It’ll be back. It’s like a fucking phoenix. We need it now more than ever. By March 3rd, we’ll have been filming for two years, and we’ve got a hell of a lot left to do. We’re aiming to finish the documentary by May.”
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