Live lobsters, smiles and missiles: the ludicrous leaders strut their stuff

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s train trip to Russia, to pose with embattled leader Vladimir Putin, was a spectacular triumph – in self-satirising theatre, writes Tom Peck

A scene from 'Team America: World Police' the 2004 puppet satire that lampooned Kim Jong-il, father of North Korea’s current leader (Paramount Pictures)

When, in 1677, John Milton somehow got his hands on previously unseen, 600-year-old footage of King Canute ordering the sea to come no further upon the land, writing it up in Paradise Lost he reckoned that Canute had given the instruction “with all the state that royalty could put into his countenance”.

A thousand years ago, stateliness was a state of being. That if you wanted to do important things, you had to dress importantly. Some things most definitely never change.

Kim Jong-un’s father could hardly have been made to look more ridiculous in the puppet satire Team America: World Police, made by the creators of South Park, singing about being lonely and threatening enemies with his giant fish tank full of harmless nurse sharks.