"No, you can't laugh at this.
So says participant Lina after she has gone through Alexander's apartment and found books in his bookshelf that are not to her liking.
One of the books is the Icelandic artist Hugleikur Dagsson's book "Is this a joke?". The book consists of crude jokes delivered by stick figures.
"Very raw, degrading and homophobic," says Lina in the latest episode of "Married at First Sight," noting that if Alexander has this kind of humor, it probably won't work between them.
Naked and exposed
Hugleikur Dagsson says that his comics are not an expression of sexism, homophobia or racism, but on the contrary are a depiction of things he thinks are problematic.
"It's like a kind of therapy for me to deal with the ugliness of the world. I think humor is a great way to deal with things that are so horrible that you can't understand it. If it makes you angry, it means that the anger is coming from the right place. This means that you are against, for example, homophobia. If that means you misunderstand my joke, that's ok," he says.
Alexander says in the program that he felt ashamed and felt naked and exposed when Lina read the jokes aloud. After assuring Lina that the book is part of a bygone, immature era, he throws the book in the trash.
Hugleikur Dagsson has seen the clip.
"This doesn't look like a good relationship. If someone is forced to throw away books because they are a dealbreaker in the relationship... I would start looking for the exit right then and there," he told SVT.
Culture squabbles recur in the series
This is not the first time culture has been the subject of discussion in "Married at First Sight". In 2021, a Midsummer celebration ended in tears when raggar troubadour Björn Rosenström's song "Pojkarna som busar" was played.
Is there any cultural expression that could make you break up with a partner?
– I am very liberal. But Nazi memorabilia, I would have a very hard time with that.