Puppet sex film censored

One of the odder meetings of the Motion Picture Association of America recently had to rule who should be allowed to watch puppet sex.

16:34 08 October 2004

One of the odder meetings of the Motion Picture Association of America recently had to rule who should be allowed to watch puppet sex.

The creators of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut have made their latest foray into the world of film with Team America: World Police.

The film sees wooden puppets acting out a high octane plotline and like the South Park movie, it is filled with controversy.

But the scene that reportedly caused the censors the biggest headache was where two of the puppets appeared to have sex.

This was the part of the movie that saw censors slap a NC-17 rating on it (the American equivalent of a British 18 rating).

This took Trey Parker, writer and director of the film, somewhat aback.

"It's something we all did as kids with Barbie and Ken dolls. ... The whole joke of it is that it's just two dolls flopping around on each other. You see the hinges on their legs," he told the Los Angeles Times.

What is worse, he said, is that the MPAA did not seem to have problem with any of the violence in the film.

He said his film includes scenes where puppet a likeness of actor Tim Robbins is set on fire and a Susan Sarandon marionette is dropped from a high-rise building.

After progressively submitting less explicit versions of the "sex" scene Team America: World Police was eventually given an R rating (similar to the British PG).

The film, inspired by the original Thunderbirds series, sees a team of super-police try and thwart an evil dictator (who resembles North Korean leader Kim Jong-il rather a lot) who plans to sell weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

The film also features puppet versions of America's most outspoken celebrity activists, including Robbins, Sarandon and film-maker Michael Moore.