May Irwin and John Rice were starring in the musical comedy THE WIDOW JONES, about a middle-aged woman finding love, and THE KISS was a reenactment of the final scene. "Did they find THIS sexy back then?" is a common modern scoff and the answer is, no. It was always meant to be funny. - ThreadSky

moviessilently.bsky.social • 19 days ago

May Irwin and John Rice were starring in the musical comedy THE WIDOW JONES, about a middle-aged woman finding love, and THE KISS was a reenactment of the final scene.

"Did they find THIS sexy back then?" is a common modern scoff and the answer is, no. It was always meant to be funny.

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moviessilently.bsky.social•19 days ago

But modern people view their Gilded Age counterparts as naive prudes, so the myth stuck.

ALL sources claiming THE KISS was censored cite of of two sources: a satirical item in the comedy magazine The Chap Book, and A Million and One Nights by Terry Ramsaye, which cites The Chap Book.

moviessilently.bsky.social•19 days ago

The Chap Book item from 1896 complains that audiences are subjected to the horrors of the May Irwin Kiss ("she's not attractive! waaaa!") while being denied the pleasures of a European leg show. Hardly a cry for censorship there.

moviessilently.bsky.social•19 days ago

Film historian Charles Musser places the first rumbles of American film censorship in 1897, a year after THE KISS was released, and it specifically targeted the warmer peepshow machines on Coney Island.

Subsequent censorship movements, which didn't take hold until the 1900s, targeted movie violence

g026r.leftblank.org•19 days ago

It's not for nothing that the first (American) laws around film censorship that we know of were deeply concerned about prize fights.

moviessilently.bsky.social•19 days ago

Yes indeed! An early account of a traveling picture show being run out of rural, religious town was due to their collection of boxing films as much as their dancers.

moviessilently.bsky.social•19 days ago

In fact, THE KISS set off a cinematic kissing craze. Studios would regularly engage dancers to twirl a bit for the camera and then, in order to get their money's worth, had them kiss too. The earliest movie kiss between Black performers was captured this way.

Now THAT is a kiss!

moviessilently.bsky.social•19 days ago

But none of this fits in with modern perception (and you see this attitude as far back as the 1920s) that the 1890s were so sexually repressed that some light and intentionally goofy pecks between a middle-aged couple would cause a scandal.

So, they reverse engineer to make it work, truth be damned

moviessilently.bsky.social•19 days ago

Was someone somewhere in the 1890s offended by THE KISS? Sure, you'll find someone offended by anything if you look hard enough. (side eye at the Star Wars fandom)

But widespread scandal? A mainstream censorship demand? (Some sources even claim there were some backed by high clergy.) No.

postmodernpastoral.bsky.social•19 days ago

Release the 1897 peep show films 👏👏👏

gasmaskavenger.bsky.social•19 days ago

Reminds me of how The Bechdel Test was conceived as a throwaway joke from a lesbian comic strip but is now treated as a legit serious thing.

rightsrevolution.bsky.social•18 days ago

Oh no... Are future humans going to believe the onion articles?

moviessilently.bsky.social•18 days ago

They absolutely are

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