Rio Carnival floats toned down
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The group has agreed to make minor changes to the floats.
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RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) -- A Brazilian group has agreed to tone down its sexually explicit displays for the city's famed Carnival parade after prosecutors threatened to ban the floats.
Grande Rio -- whose carnival theme "Let's Wear the Little Shirt, My Love," slang for using a condom -- will modify the explicit decorations on its floats, including a giant Adam and Eve copulating and sexual positions from the Kama Sutra, prosecutor Andrea Rodrigues Amim said.
"You can see that they have gone beyond erotic and already border on the pornographic," Amim said.
The group's president Helio de Oliveira said the changes would be minor.
"We determined that we are not going to hide anything totally but since they found some things offensive -- and that's not how we see it -- we are going to cover some things with leaves and vines and roots," Oliveira said.
The group's floats have been a target for controversy in this predominantly Roman Catholic country.
Acting on a complaint from the Association of Catholic Legal Scholars, juvenile court prosecutors on Wednesday visited the workshop where the group was finishing floats.
"If they don't make the appropriate changes we could enter with a court order to have the floats banned from the parade, but I don't think it will happen because the group's directors have been very accommodating," Amim said.
Joaosinho Trinta, who designed the floats and costumes, is no stranger to controversy.
In 1989, the Church sued to remove a replica of Rio's mountaintop Christ statue from a parade float designed by Trinta.
He wrapped the statue in black plastic and posted a sign: "Even though you are banned, watch over us." The float was met with massive applause when it entered the Sambadrome stadium.
"Look all the sculptures are reproductions of the Kama Sutra. I'm not to blame if ancient art from India is in bad taste," Trinta explained of this year's entry.
Asked if the samba group hadn't benefited from the controversy, he replied," I regret it. I don't feel we need this type of publicity."
Even so, he admitted the group anticipated controversy from the moment they chose the parade's theme.
The group has been praised by the country's Health Minister Humberto Costa for its efforts to deal frankly with the issue of safe sex.
And a top official of the United Nations' anti-AIDS program sent a representative to visit the group's workshop.
"Integrating HIV prevention messages into popular events is an effective way to educate young people about AIDS and ultimately prevent new HIV infections," Dr. Luiz Loures said in a statement.
The reaction from the Catholic church has been relatively restrained, though Rio's archbishop, Rev. Eusebio Oscar Scheid, has said organizers should make sure the group doesn't go too far.
Rio's two-day carnival parade is the highlight of the pre-Lenten bash, which officially gets under way Friday and ends five days later on Ash Wednesday.
The city's 14 top samba groups, featuring hundreds of drummers and thousands of singers and dancers, present elaborate parades in a two-night show at the specially designed Sambadrome stadium in downtown Rio.
During Carnival, which celebrates the beginning of the Christian season of Lent, most of Brazil puts everything on hold to drink and dance the night away.
But the celebration is also a major event for the federal government's anti-AIDS program, which plans to distribute 10 million free condoms during the festivities.
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