Already old enough to be a bubbe when she began her media career with the radio show Sexually Speaking in 1980, the vivacious Ruth Westheimer, better known as Dr. Ruth, quickly became a national sensation. In her signature thick Bavarian accent, the German-born, Jewish immigrant spoke frankly and nonjudgmentally about all sorts of intimate matters, endearing her to millions by answering their banal, embarrassing questions about sex and pleasure, in the process making her the country’s most likeable sex educator.
Ask Dr. Ruth gives a broad overview of the nonagenarian, roughly split into intertwining biographical and thematic strands. The former presents a chronology of her often-tragic life, from her early years as a German Jew before being orphaned during the Holocaust, to fighting in Mandatory Palestine, to her eventual move to New York, where she became a family planning educator and sex therapist. Her complex relation to the events of her life keeps the film enjoyable even when she’s recounting her more humdrum experiences. Westheimer is funny, clearheaded about her work and mission, and a joyful, compelling presence.
Thematically, Ryan White’s documentary details her progressive, but never explicitly partisan, stance on such topics as female sexuality, abortion, gay rights, and HIV/AIDS, as well as covers how her biography came to influence her work. Being orphaned by the war helped her develop an understanding of how interpersonal contact is vital to personal growth. Her experience during the Holocaust gave her a lasting impression of the effects of hatred. And working for Planned Parenthood made her realize just how many questions people have about sex. In this way, Ask Dr. Ruth illuminates Westheimer’s core philosophy, which might be summarized as an open-minded respect for intimacy and a belief that everyone deserves a fulfilling sex life.
The film’s thematic sections draw their material from archival footage and modern interviews with Westheimer about positions that she’s been open about on the air and in dozens of books over the course of four decades. Perhaps inevitably, it can often feel as if the film is retreading old ground—biographical material that, for one, is readily available on her Wikipedia page. Of course, Ask Dr. Ruth offers invaluable elaborations on these moving personal details, but telling the audience things that the subject was paid to say for nearly half a decade isn’t exactly revelatory. While the film celebrates her mostly progressive positions, it does little to document, much less discuss or challenge, Westheimer’s hardline centering of monogamy and denigration of casual sex. Doing so would have made for a more nuanced, honest portrait of her and her stance on our society’s sexual ethics. Rather, the film seems designed to neatly shore up Westheimer’s legacy by collating it into so many easily digestible points.
Indeed, White seems to think viewers won’t understand anything unless it’s shoved down their throats and accompanied by inspirational music. The documentary has a tendency to overbear and over-illustrate when it should be letting its fascinating subject do the talking. This is an issue that plagues many documentaries about Good, Important people, but it still doesn’t mean it’s necessary to include a scene where a reluctant Westheimer is convinced by her granddaughter that she’s a feminist, albeit a “non-radical” one, or to cue the swooning music as she, having recounted surviving the Holocaust and nearly having her feet blown off, reminisces about seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time.
As someone who didn’t listen to or watch Westheimer growing up, and had the internet to ask questions about sex, Ask Dr. Ruth struck me primarily as a historical dossier. Her uncynical use of mass media is most striking for its widespread tonic effect. It brings into relief just how spitefully prude the Reagan era was and how vital her work must have felt at the time. In place of self-loathing and fear, she offered optimism and education (her hatred of the term “normal” is one of the film’s recurring themes). The point hits hardest when hearing testimonies of how Westheimer’s programs saved people’s lives, underscoring that, at a time when the government was turning a blind eye to AIDS-affected communities, and homophobia and anti-abortion sentiments ran high, Dr. Ruth’s practiced decency was literally a saving grace.
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