A short film featuring an animated action hero engaging in group sex and punching apathetic youth into voting booths has been pulled.
The Danish parliament seems to have an interesting view of what the country’s youth responds to, after commissioning the controversial advertisement to improve voter turnout.
The 90-second short follows Voteman, who decapitates hipsters and is first pictured having sex with five naked women before being called to fulfil his duties.
Voteman follows this with a frenzied attack, punching young people into polling booths, and is assisted by two dolphins dressed in studded leather collars.
The film aims to increase interest among first-time voters for the European Parliament elections, but was removed from the parliament’s YouTube and Facebook websites after criticism that it was too raunchy and “talked down to youths”.
It generated 200,000 hits when it was posted on Monday before being pulled a day later.
“Reactions in social media were deeply divided,” Parliamentary speaker Mogens Lykketoft said in an email to news agency Ritzau.
Mr Lykketoft said he had taken into account views from “many whom I deeply respect that the film was far more serious and offensive than it was intended to be – and that it talked down to youths”.
He said some “felt it was raunchy but acceptable humor that could generate interest in the May 25 vote, which was the intent”.
But he said that parliament, as an institution would be more careful in the future about what it commissioned.
Of about 4.1 million Danes eligible to vote in the European Parliament election, an estimated 33,600 are first-time voters.
Kristian Jensen, parliamentary group leader for the main opposition Liberal Party said before Lykketoft’s decision, he was not sure whether to “cry or scream in anger” over the video.
Ozlem Cekic of the Socialist People’s Party welcomed the move to pull the film, adding it should never have been posted because it conveyed a degrading view of men, women and youths.
Warning graphic content
This article first appeared on News.com.au