Serafima Serafimova
What would you do if someone secretly filmed you masturbating and threatened to release the video online?
When I was growing up in the ’90s, there wasn’t a positive narrative around masturbation, just a sense of mystery and an unshakable air of guilt and disgust. As a grown woman who is very comfortable and vocal about her sexuality, I am a firm believer that being open and honest is the best way to ensure our sexual explorations are done in a healthy and shame-free way. But if a video of me getting my rocks off did exist, would I be ok with it being shared with my family, friends and the rest of the world? Absolutely not…
Inspired by an email scam that found its way into his inbox, director Eugene Kolb created Ur Heinous Habit – a cheeky animated documentary that dives into the intersection of shame and pleasure through a series of zoom conversations. Told through a series of brilliantly illustrated characters, which also work to conceal the identities of the interviewees, this fourteen-minute short holds an introspective magnifying glass to our sexual routines and the result is delightful and thought-provoking in equal measures.
“I knew from the onset of the project that I was going to create animated avatars for each of the film’s interview subjects to protect their privacy”, Kolb reveals.
A couple of years ago, Kolb received an email from someone claiming to have hacked webcam footage of him masturbating, threatening to send it to all of his contacts unless he paid them off with bitcoin. After doing some digging and becoming fascinated by the concept of people blackmailing strangers by taking advantage of their most private moments, Kolb posted on Instagram to see if any of his friends would be up for having an honest conversation about masturbation.
“I had long exhibited feelings of shame around masturbation in the past so I had a personal agenda to hopefully understand myself a bit better through the process of having these conversations” – Kolb shared with S/W. – “ My original intent was really just to talk and explore this somewhat taboo and rarely discussed topic openly and see if there was something there. I was blown away by the positive response and the candor, vulnerability, and humor of the twelve people I eventually ended up interviewing for the film. In the end, it’s really a film about them, my brilliant friends. What a joy it was to make it.”
The warm chemistry between Kolb and his friends shines through the interview sound bites and I’m convinced that the contributors’ unfiltered accounts of their sexual self-gratification alone would make an entertaining podcast. But it’s the attention to detail in the animation design that makes Ur Heinous Habit so refreshingly fun.
“The framing of the different talking heads is meant to resemble how they appeared to me when I conducted my interviews over Zoom, and in particular as a reference to how they might have been viewed on their webcams if these online scammers had hacked them”, Kolb explains.
Each character, illustrated by Molly McIntyre, inhabits their own unique world and is injected with buckets of personality. The eclectic collage style of animation is deceptively simple and is in fact full of giggle-inducing, suggestive details (Schindler’s Fist being one of my favourites), and the use of hands to illustrate the juiciest bits in the film was a very smart directorial decision.
With its quirky animation full of naughty winks, Ur Heinous Habit leans into what is ultimately one of the oldest activities humanity has engaged in. As such, the film’s themes have a widely appealing familiarity, encouraging the audience to connect with it on a personal level. By combining clever craft with a compelling narrative, Kolb has delivered eye-candy that also doubles up as food for thought, and I am lapping every single bit of it right up.