Meanwhile, in the USA, the delivery of 3,000 copies of the promotional poster to US stores Kmart and Wal-Mart, the largest chainstores in the country, resulted in their immediate refusal to sell the single, with the album also being withdrawn from stock, their reasoning being that 'Smack My Bitch Up' was inappropriate to the family-friendly policies of a chain that already refused to sell 'Parental Advisory'-stickered records.

If the 'Smack My Bitch Up' single hadn't created enough of a stir, the video succeeded in adding to the heat. In what was considered a promo for pornography, drugs and violence, the directors managed to add a new twist to the lyric. In it, the main protagonist is depicted drinking to excess, taking drugs, punching, vomiting and eventually taking a girl back home for casual sex. The twist, of course, was the fact that the main character was revealed in the last frame to be a woman and not a man, as seemed most likely, thus making a mockery of suggestions that the track is about man-on-woman violence.

Furthermore, although the video depicts this behaviour in a potentially glamorous light, in reality everything was overpoweringly seedy. As a result, you get the sense that the track could be about self-inflicted violence, such is the level of self-abuse the main character puts herself through.

Whatever the subtext that existed behind the promo's storyline, its broadcasting on television was, inevitably, restricted. MTV banned it at first, then retracted this action, allowing it to be shown in the early hours of the morning.

'It's just censorship, and some censorship I can agree with,' Maxim was reported as saying. 'Like, a war you see on the news and they show dead bodies, things like that should be censored in a way because [it could] glorify war. As far as the video [goes], it was something that happens in everybody's lives. And one part of that video happens to everybody - you know, people go out, they drink at weekends, some people do drugs, some people don't. I'm not sayin' every weekend, but during a lifetime. It was overdone, in a way, and it was all in one night. But, you know, people are experiencing it. That's been what I have seen. There's prostitution goin' on...and at the end, obviously, everybody thought there's gonna be a man, but there's a woman, 'cos we're just tryin' to say that women are just as bad as men, really. And not so much as just as bad as men but that women have the freedom to do what men do, and vice versa. But yes, censorship in that way I didn't really agree with it, because it's a music video and there wasn't anything really drastic in the video to censor, because half of the things you saw in the video you can buy in an Arnold Schwarzenegger film.'

It was Reading 98 Maxim said "They didn't want us to play this fucking tune, and the way things go, I do what the fuck I want " and then they played it

About the documentary about smbu:s controversy, it was on Youtube but it has been removed (don't know why) but there could be a download link. It could be pretty good for your essay, you could get the feminists point of view

the prodigy are faggots...what can be more controversially ?

sooo...you expect me to have my mom listen and watch the video?