|
Monday, March 03, 2003
What's in a kiss?
By Henrylito D. Tacio
Believe it or not, a kiss can sometimes cost your nose. In 1837, at the dawn of the Victorian Era in Great Britain, Thomas Saverland attempted to kiss Caroline Newton in a lighthearted manner. Rejecting Saverland's pass, Ms. Newton not so lightheartedly bit off parts of his nose.
"WHAT'S in a kiss?" asked a popular song. "Have you ever wondered just what it is?"
I am sure you know the answer to that question. Since time immemorial, kissing has been a part of history. In fact, it a kiss from God that infused the "spirit of life" into man, according to the account of Genesis 2:7. God is said to have formed Adam from slime and dust and then breathed a rational soul into him.
This concept of divine insufflation, which surfaces frequently in religious teachings, is often viewed through the kiss metaphor.
Another memorable kiss recorded in the Bible was the betrayal kiss of Judas. As told in the New Testament, Jewish leaders under the high priest Caiaphas had paid Judas Iscariot 30 pieces of silver to identify Jesus Christ.
With a kiss, Judas singled him out. Jesus was arrested, charged with blasphemy, and condemned to death. "Halik ni Hudas" is how we, Filipinos, call it.
Perhaps one of the earliest depictions of a kiss between a man and a woman is on an Iberian stone relief dating from the 4th to the 2nd century B.C.
The piece, featuring the kissers in profile from the shoulders up, was found in Osuna, Spain. It is now displayed in the Madrid National Archaeological Museum.
One of the most renowned pieces of sculpture in the Western world is The Kiss, sculpted by French artist Francois Auguste Rodin in 1896. Inspired by Dante, the figure of two nude lovers kissing brought the era of classical art to an end.
Rodin described The Kiss as "complete in itself and artificially set apart from the surrounding world."
Ever heard of the most kissed statue in history? The figure of Guidarello Guidarelli, a fearless 16th-century Italian soldier, was sculpted in marble by Tullio Lombardo and put on display at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ravenna, Italy.
During the late 1800s, a rumor started that any woman who kissed the reclining, armor-clad statue would marry a wonderful gentleman and settle down with him.
Some four to five million superstitious women have since kissed Guidarelli's cold marble lips. Consequently, the soldier's mouth has acquired a faint reddish glow.
Believe it or not, a kiss can sometimes cost your nose. In 1837, at the dawn of the Victorian Era in Great Britain, Thomas Saverland attempted to kiss Caroline Newton in a lighthearted manner. Rejecting Saverland's pass, Ms. Newton not so lightheartedly bit off parts of his nose.
Saverland took the lady to court, but she was acquitted.
"When a man kisses a woman against her will," ruled the judge, "she is fully entitled to bite his nose, if she so pleases."
Even if a kiss won't happen, there is always something fatal that would come out from it. King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was engaged in discussions with the Kuwaiti oil minister when the king's nephew, Prince Faisal ibn Mussad Abdel Azia, burst into the office unnoticed. The king stood and, assuming that the prince wished to offer him holy greetings for Mohammed's birthday, lowered his head and waited for the traditional kiss. It never arrived. Instead the prince fired a bullet into the king's head, and then another into the neck, killing him.
A deadly kiss, that's what it is. A young lady (sorry folks, she was unnamed) in medieval Italy took advantage of her in-law's tradition of kissing the lips of a marble bust in order to uncover an alleged household treasure. By applying poison to the marble lips, the woman killed two members of the family and proceeded unhampered into a secret room.
There, she found, not a treasure, but a deformed child. The dying head of the family, her third victim, cursed the woman, promising that her own child as well as the offspring of every seventh generation would be so deformed. This sounds a good plot of a movie. Any takers?
Speaking of movies, they have contributed a lot of unforgettable kisses. The first kiss ever to be recorded in films occurred in Thomas Edison's film The Kiss between actor John C. Rice and actress May Irwin in April, 1896. Adapted from a short scene in the Broadway comedy The Widow Jones, The Kiss was filmed by Raff and Gammon for nickelodeon. Its running time was less than 30 seconds.
Several years later, in 1941, the longest kiss in film history happened. Jane Wyman and Regis Toomey executed it in the movie "You're in the Army Now."
The Lewis Seiler comedy about two vacuum cleaner salesmen features a scene in which Toomey and Wyman hold a single kiss for 3 minutes and 5 seconds (or 4 percent of the film's running time).
Years earlier, in 1926, the Warner Brothers made a film with 191 kisses. During the course of the picture (2 hours and 47 minutes) John Barrymore as the amorous adventurer in Don Juan bestows a total of 191 kisses on a number of beautiful senoritas -- an average of one every 53 seconds.
The first kiss to reach the movie screen in India was between actor Shashi Kapoor and actress Zeenat Aman in the 1978 Indian film Love Sublime. This landmark kiss, a product of new film guidelines, triggered a nationwide debate over censorship.
Kapoor felt that the increased creative freedom would only add logic to Indian love stories and result in less cinema violence. Chief minister and film actor M.G. Ramachandran called for a major protest, labeling the kissing scenes "an insult."
One cinema kiss that turned heads among the moviegoing public was between two male actors, Peter Finch and Murray Head, in the 1971 film Sunday Bloody Sunday.
The British tale of a bisexual love triangle included a medium close-up shot of this kiss in a scene originally planned to have featured only an embrace from afar.
Director John Schlesinger commented that Finch and Head "were certainly less shocked by the kiss than the technicians on the set were. When Finch was asked about the scene by somebody on TV, he said, 'I did it for England.'"
Finch was nominated for Best Actor Oscar for his performance in the film but was defeated by Gene Hackman, who was great in The French Connection.
Again, what's in a kiss? Plenty. |
|
[ return
to top ]
[ home
]
|
LOCAL NEWS
BUSINESS
OPINION
SPORTS
LIFESTYLE
FEATURE
SUPERBALITA
WEEKEND
|
