“Frankly, I don’t think it was an accident,” Eileen Blumenthal said of the technical difficulties that delayed her lecture Saturday afternoon. She was kidding about her lecture, “The Secret Love Life of Puppets,” even though the history of sex in puppetry is a topic that would raise eyebrows at many institutions. Blumenthal is a professor of theatre arts at Rutgers University and author of the well-known book, Julie Taymor: Playing with Fire. Her lecture offered an intriguing look at this Valentine’s Day-appropriate topic.

Blumenthal began with a short history of love puppets, which have their origin in fertility rituals. These puppets, some of which date back thousands of years, were used in performances all over the world. In India, for instance, giant king and queen puppets associated with fertility danced at weddings. Such puppets came in all different shapes and sizes and often possessed extremely exaggerated sexual organs. Blumenthal noted that fertility puppets with rising and falling penises controlled by strings are a widespread phenomenon. In fact, her personal collection included a beautifully crafted marionette whose pants fall down, revealing an unusually large and erect penis.

Shadow puppetry, in which silhouettes are projected on a screen, has been quite popular in Southeast Asia for many centuries. The images produced in this type of puppetry are considered “the absolute cusp between the real and the spiritual world.” Performances are viewed as almost sacred. Many of the most popular shadow puppet clowns are considered the descendants of fertility gods and performances that include them often also include very explicit material. Thai shadow puppet shows, according to Blumenthal, would often delineate copulating.

Sex in puppetry started as ritual, but it has become over time largely a form of entertainment. As Blumenthal quipped, “the majority of puppet sex is no more ritual than the majority of human sex.” Today, you can even purchase puppet pornography. Puppet sex has also played a role in sex education. In Uganda, for example, puppet shows were used to warn young people of the dangers of unharnessed sexual passion; they have also been used more recently to demonstrate proper condom use in India.

But the question remains: “why use puppets?”. Blumenthal offered a number of explanations. Puppets are not bound by social constraints as humans are; they are able to publicly perform sexual acts, such as ejaculation that would be inappropriate for humans. In fact, Blumenthal contended that puppets are often able to execute love scenes that are superior to anything real people could achieve. Unlike human actors, puppets are completely compliant. There is nothing that makes them uncomfortable. Moreover, puppets are freed from the limitations of the human body and can even be anatomically built for the role- for example puppets with penises so exaggerated that, Blumentha said, they “could be used to sweep the kitchen floor,” or belly dancing puppets with gigantic breasts and additional hip joints. Puppets are also less distracting than human performers; instead of wondering if the performers’ mothers are in the audience, or if they’re really aroused, everyone is able to focus their attention solely on the performance. Moreover, says Blumenthal, the audience gets an “extra kick” from the sex and eroticism of puppets because it is always unexpected.

Not surprisingly, attempts to ban such performances were not uncommon. In fact, in the Song Dynasty of China, several endeavors were made to prohibit all puppets on the grounds that they were lewd. However, in each of these cases the assault backfired and the ruler who tried to institute the ban simply became the object of satire. Fortunately for the Oberlin administration, the technical difficulties of Saturday’s presentation were purely the product of fate. Or so we think.