There was a brief hullabaloo a week-plus ago when it was announced that promotional postcards for writer-director Adam Rifkin’s Look (releasing to DVD May 5 via Anchor Bay) were being rejected by the U.S. Postal Service for obscenity.

These are those postcards, which eventually arrived in my mailbox in two separate envelopes, each marked as “sexually oriented advertising.” Great, so now my postwoman knows thinks I’m a perv. If you ask me, this is totally a fix-is-in publicity stunt, a feeling the above-linked video in which Rifkin allegedly first finds out about the decision doesn’t do much to dissuade. Yes, black bars cover the thong-clad butts, but there’s the impression of willful envelope-pushing, of previously tested boundaries being poked — otherwise, why go with the cost of a multi-card mailing campaign at all, instead of an embedded viral email campaign? (Not sure, incidentally, why the first postcard rates an exclamation point, but not the second one; if one legal revelation is more shocking than the other, surely it’s the latter, no?) That said, this is a smart play, and certainly a net win for all involved: Rifkin can appear aggrieved, act shocked and get publicity for his film (look, I’m writing about it), and the USPS can score a few points with all the Sam Brownback, James Dobson and Roberta Combs types.