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The Speech of Skins

Rushmir Mahmutćehajić

in On Love: In the Muslim Tradition

A man can hide from another man, and even from himself, but he cannot hide from God. Everything of his remains accessible to Him. Since the eyes, ears, and skin are the borders across which ... More

A man can hide from another man, and even from himself, but he cannot hide from God. Everything of his remains accessible to Him. Since the eyes, ears, and skin are the borders across which relationships are established between the self and the nonself, they are also obstacles for the other in his knowledge of the inner self. Thus hearing, sight, and touch bear witness to what can be hidden from another. And only those who can speak can bear witness. Human reliance on the other's lack of knowledge about his inner self presupposes the inability of ears, eyes, and skin to speak. They are thus subordinated to human management through speech. But the Self is only present in the pure heart. Touching and kissing and union at the moment of achieving the peak of satisfaction, which unites severity and beauty and extinguishes separation, serve only to show that all dividedness and all closeness are different ways of disclosing that oneness.Less

The Kiss

Toni Bentley

in Sisters of Salome

This chapter describes the pantomime entitled Le Rêve d'Egypte (Egyptian dream), which starred Colette Willy and the mysteriously named “Yssim,” and which outraged audiences because it featured a ... More

This chapter describes the pantomime entitled Le Rêve d'Egypte (Egyptian dream), which starred Colette Willy and the mysteriously named “Yssim,” and which outraged audiences because it featured a kiss between two women. Colette's appearance in Le Rêve d'Egypte in 1907 was the first time Salome had appeared overtly as both a femme fatale and a lesbian. Unlike Maud Allan, Mata Hari, and Ida Rubinstein, Colette appropriated Salome not as her identity but as her personal accomplice, her transforming device, in searching out her own true identity as a woman with a powerful male sensibility.Less

“… he looks at this world and wants it all …”: Thunderball

Jon Burlingame

in The Music of James Bond

John Barry remains in charge of James Bond music on the fourth film. Attempting to avoid writing a song called “Thunderball” for Bond's underwater adventure, Barry and lyricist Bricusse write “Mr. ... More

John Barry remains in charge of James Bond music on the fourth film. Attempting to avoid writing a song called “Thunderball” for Bond's underwater adventure, Barry and lyricist Bricusse write “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” (the title based on a nickname that the Italian press had given 007) and Barry based much of his dramatic score on the song's melodic line. Dionne Warwick sings the song, but it is scrapped in September 1965 when the studio decides it wanted a song based on the movie title. Barry and new Bond lyricist Don Black write “Thunderball”, which Tom Jones records. Shirley Bassey, meanwhile, records “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” as a possible end-title song, but the performance is sub-par and the producers reject this second try. Bassey filed suit against the producers, attempting to stop distribution unless her song is reinstated. A London judge refused to do so. The Thunderball soundtrack album hits the American top 10.Less

The Kiss

Lamed Shapiro

in The Cross and Other Jewish Stories

This chapter presents the text of Lamed Shapiro's short fiction titled The Kiss. It explains that the story is about a pogromist who kills a Jew because of his refusal to kiss the pogromist's feet. ... More

This chapter presents the text of Lamed Shapiro's short fiction titled The Kiss. It explains that the story is about a pogromist who kills a Jew because of his refusal to kiss the pogromist's feet. It suggests that the pogromist's act is a mockery of Christ's humility in washing the feet of John the Baptist.Less

Grifters: Kiss Me, Stupid and the Fortune Cookie

GENE D. PHILLIPS

in Some Like It Wilder: The Life and Controversial Films of Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder offended the Catholic Legion of Decency mightily when he made Kiss Me, Stupid. It was definitely not family entertainment, nor could it be retooled into a family film. The Legion of ... More

Billy Wilder offended the Catholic Legion of Decency mightily when he made Kiss Me, Stupid. It was definitely not family entertainment, nor could it be retooled into a family film. The Legion of Decency took a dim view of this film. It was also viewed in Europe not as a prurient movie but as a film aimed at thoughtful adults. When one sees Kiss Me, Stupid today, now that the controversy has died down, one can see that it is a knockabout farce and that is all that it ever was. Moreover, Wilder and Diamond developed a scenario called The Fortune Cookie, about Harry Hinkle, a TV cameraman accidentally knocked cold by a football player, Luther “Boom Boom” Jackson, during a game. Harry allows his brother-in-law, “Whiplash Willie” Gingrich, a crooked lawyer, to lure him into filing a fraudulent insurance claim to acquire the fortune he needs to win back his greedy ex-wife. It is the first of three Wilder films that are linked by an exploration of male friendship. Wilder was relieved that he experienced no censorship problems with The Fortune Cookie.Less

Thinned and Diluted: Babel in Published Russian Literature of the Soviet Period

Marietta Chudakova

in The Enigma of Isaac Babel: Biography, History, Context

This chapter presents a fascinating view of Babel's evolution as a writer and stylist in his interaction with the body of Russian and Soviet Russian literature. Contrary to the prevailing view of ... More

This chapter presents a fascinating view of Babel's evolution as a writer and stylist in his interaction with the body of Russian and Soviet Russian literature. Contrary to the prevailing view of Babel as a sui generis author with a limited genealogy in Russian letters and practically no following among Soviet Russian writers, it is shown that Babel, in fact, had a tremendous impact on Soviet Russian prose, which absorbed elements of his style even as it diluted its intensity and pungency to “safe” consumption levels. Paradoxically or not, Babel, too, found himself caught up in the “taming of Babel”: as the author of his 1937 story, “The Kiss,” he was coming close to resembling his own Soviet epigones.Less

Chapter 4

Xiao Lu

in Dialogue

This chapter discusses the author's first sexual experience. It explains that when she returned from Shanghai to Beijing, China, she always went to the place of his father's friend Wei Bo and his ... More

This chapter discusses the author's first sexual experience. It explains that when she returned from Shanghai to Beijing, China, she always went to the place of his father's friend Wei Bo and his wife. The childless couple, Wei Bo and his wife, treated her as their adopted daughter. Thus, it was more shocking that she experienced her first kiss and her first sexual intercourse with Wei Bo. This chapter describes how Wei Bo took her virginity and her reactions to Wei Bo's actions.Less

The Story of a Kiss: Isabel's Decisions in The Portrait of A Lady

J. Hillis Miller

in Literature as Conduct: Speech Acts in Henry James

This chapter analyzes the story of a kiss in Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady using the speech act theory. The kisses in this novel involve the characters of Caspar ... More

This chapter analyzes the story of a kiss in Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady using the speech act theory. The kisses in this novel involve the characters of Caspar Goodwood and Isabel and others between women. This chapter suggests that all the kisses were used by James as efficacious speech or mute gestures that stand in the place of speech acts. They also functioned as effective performatives in lieu of speech because a kiss is a way of doing things not with words but with signs.Less

Social Realist Melodrama: Middle-class Minorities and Floundering Fathers

David Martin-Jones

in Scotland: Global Cinema: Genres, Modes and Identities

This chapter focuses on two films that draw upon the social realist tradition, Ae Fond Kiss (2004) and On a Clear Day (2005). First, it outlines the way social realism is defined in studies of ... More

This chapter focuses on two films that draw upon the social realist tradition, Ae Fond Kiss (2004) and On a Clear Day (2005). First, it outlines the way social realism is defined in studies of cinema, and then sketches in something of its history in relation to British cinema and previous cinematic representations of Scotland. It then demonstrates the two films' different cominglings of social realism with melodrama. Whilst Ae Fond Kiss draws a subtle distinction between global and local identities, in On a Clear Day the question of a specific identity that can be described as global, local or even national recedes into the background as the film focuses on gendered identity in a post-industrial milieu. In Ae Fond Kiss, Scotland plays an integral role as a location in which the action is set. In On a Clear Day, Scotland becomes a film set, a backdrop with resonances of industrial masculinity — long-established in previous cinematic representations of working-class life in Scotland's shipyards — against which to explore the future of post-industrial masculinity in the United Kingdom more generally.Less

Kissing

Erik Gray

in The Art of Love Poetry

This chapter concerns kissing, which has figured prominently in the love poetry tradition. A poem is the natural correlative to a kiss. Both are oral pleasures; both are simultaneously sensual and ... More

This chapter concerns kissing, which has figured prominently in the love poetry tradition. A poem is the natural correlative to a kiss. Both are oral pleasures; both are simultaneously sensual and spiritual, providing satisfaction in themselves while also sublimating or substituting for more intimate forms of erotic contact. Above all, both reflect the many contradictions that cluster around love. Like a poem, a kiss both communicates and interferes with communication; it is both discrete and unbounded; it represents both union and separation. Beginning with Catullus and taking as its central figure the Renaissance poet Joannes Secundus, whose neoclassical Basia (Kisses) exerted a lasting influence, the chapter considers the structures that poets have consistently deployed to communicate the experience of a kiss, including not only rhyme but such tropes as chiasmus, parataxis, and polyptoton, all of which help figure forth the erotic tensions inherent in the act of kissing.Less

Joyce’s Countergospel in II.4

David Spurr

in Joyce's Allmaziful Plurabilities: Polyvocal Explorations of Finnegans Wake

David Spurr’s analysis of II.4 focuses on the “joysis crisis” (395.32) at its center—the moment when Tristan French kisses Isolde. The kiss evokes others in the fictions of Joyce and those of his ... More

David Spurr’s analysis of II.4 focuses on the “joysis crisis” (395.32) at its center—the moment when Tristan French kisses Isolde. The kiss evokes others in the fictions of Joyce and those of his predecessors, Richard Wagner and Dion Boucicault. The presentation of it in the Wake foregrounds the double function of the tongue as sexual organ and organ of speech, as desire and signification are united. The amorous encounter is given the magnitude of a religious epiphany, bringing together—but without prioritizing—body and spirit, flesh and word. The jouissance of the kiss signals both liberation from the logos of the law and a new relation to language. Joyce’s mixing of the sacred and the profane produces a heretical but celebratory “countergospel,” in his ongoing recasting of the traditional New Testament Gospel throughout II.4.Less

That Long Kiss: Comparing Joyce and Lawrence

Enda Duffy

in Modernists at Odds: Reconsidering Joyce and Lawrence

This essay puts Joyce and Lawrence into context with emerging technological culture in the early twentieth century by examining their representations of public affection and the kiss in Portrait and ... More

This essay puts Joyce and Lawrence into context with emerging technological culture in the early twentieth century by examining their representations of public affection and the kiss in Portrait and The Rainbow. Suggesting the kiss as a public declaration of sexual desire a modernist invention, Duffy considers the multiple mediums in which the passionate kiss as public spectacle revolted against propriety and connects judgments of Joyce and Lawrence’s focus on discourses of sexuality.Less

Free State–free press?

Mark O'Brien

in The Fourth Estate: Journalism in Twentieth-Century Ireland

This chapter examines how a conservative climate impacted on journalism in the newly independent Free State. It surveys the moral crusades against what was viewed as vulgar journalism and the ... More

This chapter examines how a conservative climate impacted on journalism in the newly independent Free State. It surveys the moral crusades against what was viewed as vulgar journalism and the lobbying by vigilance associations to cleanse journalism of content, such as crime reporting, that was considered undesirable. It examines the impact the Censorship of Publications Act 1929 had on journalism by looking at the Waterford Standard case of 1929 and the lesser-known ‘kissing case’ of 1937 – both of which had a long-lasting chilling effect on journalism in Ireland – particularly in relation to media coverage of certain types of crime.Less

Stardom

Sharon Ammen

in May Irwin: Singing, Shouting, and the Shadow of Minstrelsy

Chapter two considers Irwin’s career during her years of greatest popularity. Her appearance in vitascope’s “The Kiss” from The Widow Jones enhanced her fame. The author analyzes Irwin’s string of ... More

Chapter two considers Irwin’s career during her years of greatest popularity. Her appearance in vitascope’s “The Kiss” from The Widow Jones enhanced her fame. The author analyzes Irwin’s string of successes in comic farce and her use of scenes of intoxication during a time of temperance crusades. Irwin’s style as a major female comic elicited positive middle class audience response as she used her performance skills to help make the audience identify with her even as she profited from the nineteenth century growth of the “cult of personality.” Like other fat comics, she used her size as a source of humor–but maintained an image of personal attractiveness.Less

Censors at Work

John Billheimer

in Hitchcock and the Censors

This chapter views the Production Code Administration through the eyes of the censors employed by the administration, documenting their approach to reviewing film sources, scripts, and completed ... More

This chapter views the Production Code Administration through the eyes of the censors employed by the administration, documenting their approach to reviewing film sources, scripts, and completed films. General and specific guidelines in the four-thousand-word Code are cited, and the chapter provides examples of the interpretation of these guidelines by administration employees such as Joe Breen, Jack Vizzard, and Albert Van Schmus. Guidelines explored include the duration of screen kisses, forbidden words and the use of double beds. The approaches and effectiveness of Code censors are documented through their correspondence with producers and directors, including Alfred Hitchcock.Less

Vertigo (1958)

John Billheimer

in Hitchcock and the Censors

Vertigo received mixed reviews on its initial release, but a 2012 poll of film critics rated it the best film of all time. During script preparation and filming, the Production Code Administration ... More

Vertigo received mixed reviews on its initial release, but a 2012 poll of film critics rated it the best film of all time. During script preparation and filming, the Production Code Administration reported several objections to the somewhat implausible story of a man who tricks a friend with vertigo, played by James Stewart, into witnessing the ‘suicide’ of the man’s wife with the help of a double for the wife who later falls in love with the friend. Code office objections included the filming of intimate undergarments drying on a line, discussions of brassiere design, a ‘cat house’ reference, all scenes that are ‘objectively lustful’ and feature ‘open mouth kissing,’ and any hint of sexual relations between the Stewart character and the two characters played by Kim Novak. Most of all, the censors advised that ‘it is most important’ that the guilty husband be brought back for trial. The ban on unpunished crime had an adverse impact on more of Hitchcock’s American films, starting with Rebecca, than almost any other Code provision. Hitchcock made a show of accommodating the dictum in Vertigo by filming an ending in which Stewart and his ex-fianc’e listen to a news broadcast announcing that the villainous husband has been captured and is about to be extradited for trial. The ending was so out of place and obviously ‘tacked on’ that it was cut from the American release but included in foreign prints to satisfy the censorship boards of other countries.Less

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Eve Golden

in Jayne Mansfield: The Girl Couldn't Help It

Jayne's career at Fox takes its first tumble with the dreadful film Kiss Them for Me (late 1957). She plays the violin and piano on Ed Sullivan's show, spars with Zsa Zsa Gabor, and she and Mickey ... More

Jayne's career at Fox takes its first tumble with the dreadful film Kiss Them for Me (late 1957). She plays the violin and piano on Ed Sullivan's show, spars with Zsa Zsa Gabor, and she and Mickey (still unmarried) are trailed by the scandal-seeking Confidential magazine.Less

Converging in Time

Ray Zone

in 3-D Revolution: The History of Modern Stereoscopic Cinema

Using the 2003 and 2006 World 3D Expos in Hollywood as a starting point, the 1950s 3D films are reviewed and described along with their directors, stars and directors of photography.

Kissed by the Muse of Roller-Disco: Utopia versus the Golden Ages of America, Hollywood, and Classical Myth in Xanadu (1980)

Meredith E. Safran

in Screening the Golden Ages of the Classical Tradition

The second chapter on refractions of the golden age of heroes examines the roller-disco cult classic Xanadu (1980), in which the kiss of a Muse inspires a frustrated commercial artist to save America ... More

The second chapter on refractions of the golden age of heroes examines the roller-disco cult classic Xanadu (1980), in which the kiss of a Muse inspires a frustrated commercial artist to save America from its late-1970s “iron age” by rejecting his corporate job and founding a socially inclusive nightclub. Safran explores how this project’s utopian potential becomes subsumed by contemporary nostalgia for America’s post-World War II prosperity and the “golden age” of the Hollywood studio system, signalled by quoting the filmography of Xanadu’s venerable co-star Gene Kelly. His particular brand of on-screen masculinity echoes ancient homosociality associated with the Hesiodic all-male golden age, the end of which is associated with the invention of women—much as Xanadu’s homosocial mentoring relationship is disrupted by the Muse. The young protagonist’s impossible romance with the goddess risks degrading his masculinity in light of her divinity, until the film refigures her as a prisoner of the divine realm and him as modern Orpheus who breaks into that realm to plead for his beloved’s return. His success not only bests his classical model but also recuperates him as a man, an artist, and a self-employed small business owner.Less