Ever heard of Competitive Endurance Tickling (CET)? Neither had David Farrier, a TV reporter from New Zealand whose beat consists of all things out-there and bizarre: lizard-eating survivalists, costumed metal bands, an older woman known as the “donkey lady.” Farrier’s segments tended to act as lighthearted palate cleansers, so his interest was piqued by a video of young men in sportswear holding each other down and making their “competitors” squirm in discomfort.
When he reached out to the production company responsible for an interview, the openly-gay Kiwi was met with a homophobic dismissal. He and collaborator Dylan Reeve set about documenting this odd, increasingly Kafkaesque process almost instantly, with “Tickled” serving in part as a documentary about its own making. “If anything,” Farrier says of the swift legal action he was threatened with for merely trying to draw attention to what he’d come across, “it made me more curious than ever.”
Watching his film is a similar experience, and one that rewards our curiosity. “Tickled” inspires many laughs throughout but, true to its subject, more and more of them are born of discomfort as it goes on — part of you wants it all to stop even as you’re amused. But it doesn’t. Instead, the rabbit hole just deeper as Farrier (who narrates and frequently appears on camera) uncovers one oddity after another of the sort that’ll have even the most jaded internet addicts crying uncle.
In an apparent attempt to dissuade Farrier and Reeve from continuing with their project, the production company responsible for CET eventually flies three employees to Auckland. Farrier’s impulse is to disarm the situation with deflective humor — including a handmade sign welcoming his new guests to New Zealand upon their arrival at the airport — but those attempts are met with resistance by the representatives, who warn him against proceeding with the documentary.
“We have no control over what the spin would be,” one of them says after logging his displeasure at even being filmed in the first place. The harder this trio tries to get the filmmakers to see it their way, however, the more determined Farrier and Reeve become to bring this strangeness to light.
And it really is strange: CET quickly reveals itself as a kind of softcore fetish porn exclusively performed by young men, many of them low-level athletes or struggling actors. Farrier and Reeve reached out to several of them about being interviewed for the documentary, but only one wasn’t too reluctant to actively contribute. He tells a story of “acting” in one of these videos, eventually having it taken down, and then facing an onslaught of threats and harassment for his apparent transgression.
Not every turn in their journey is a dark one, however, such as their meeting with a Florida purveyor of fetish porn who specializes in the tickling genre. Affable and well-spoken, he compares it to a mellower version of whips and chains, a means of asserting dominance without inducing actual physical pain. “Tickle torture,” as he calls it, is just another form of control, and ultimately one of the tamer aspects of this documentary.
More precise details are best left to the film itself, but suffice to say that “Tickled” is the concept of “stranger than fiction” writ large. Each new revelation is more bizarre than the last, and yet it all adheres to its own bizarre sort of logic, the kind that seems inevitable in hindsight. Farrier is known for his offbeat segments, but his investigative chops continually impress; ditto his and Reeve’s willingness to keep going with this, often at their own peril.
