The Missed Kiss, and Other Movie Mysteries

First off, let me apologize for completely skipping last week’s entry. It was my last week of work before I head back to Philadelphia for—oh lord—my senior year of college, and things were very crazy-busy. I think I owe my biggest apology to my friend Cherie who was studying for her DAT (the MCAT for wannabe dentists) all last week and was hoping to use my blog as a method of procrastination. Yeah, I dropped the ball there.

I also started to experience some blogger self-doubt—questioning whether anything I had to write was really worthy of being read. This is supposed to be an online community of bloggers writing about their specific roles in the film industry. Thing is, I’m obviously not a member of the industry. Not yet, and perhaps not ever. So I wonder what those of you who come to my blog are hoping to read. What perspective do you want to gain from a cinema studies student writing her thesis and looking for a job? Definitely don’t hesitate to suggest topics or ask questions or start conversations—this way, I feel like what I’m writing has some relevance.

On with the blogging: One of the many, many reasons why I value movies as important cultural resources is that they reflect our lives and how we live them. I firmly believe that children today learn how to behave in part from what they see onscreen. That said, movies aren’t always honest about what they show us. Decades of codes and conventions and cues that help us read what we see have settled into comfortable clichés that no longer hold any real meaning.

I’m watching Enchanted as I write—a delightful movie with a gorgeously sunny chanteuse in Amy Adams. I go crazy for that Oscar-nominated final ballroom song, although it is completely ruined when Patrick Dempsey starts singing (I’m not a McDreamy person). This film made me think of what has become, for me, one of the great puzzles of making movies: the Missed Kiss.

You all know what the Missed Kiss entails. Preceded by solemn conversation that decomposes into silly, empty sentences as the two parties involved realize that a liplock is imminent. They lean in toward each other, slowly, hesitantly, lashes fluttering downward, hearts racing……

And then someone wimps out. They were both right on track for a solid smooch (a feat indeed, when their eyes are closed and they’re moving that slowly). Then, one or both pulls away, usually for some lame reason—generally an internal struggle that helps to drive the rest of the plot. They turn from each other, bracing themselves for one of two inevitabilities: majorly awkward silence or embarrassing filler phrases.

I’ll stake my first-year salary (assuming I actually land a salary somewhere!) that the Missed Kiss just doesn’t happen in real life. Maybe it used to, when courting rituals were more defined and a stronger sense of propriety was instilled in the youth. I’ve never heard of anyone actually playing out a Missed Kiss, unless they were doing what they thought they were supposed to do, as based on the experiences movies show us.

There are many, many strange and different kinds of kissing that happen in real life. There’s the wonderful-for-you-two, annoying-as-hell-for-everyone-else kind of PDA you really only see in the streets of France. There are real kisses that happen between real people who don’t try to wring the drama from every minute they’re alive, kisses that actually contain traces of 1930s Hollywood romance. And then there are drunk kisses, which is really the most common kind at college. Mistake kisses, can’t-believe-I-did-that kisses, dare kisses, impulse kisses, but no Missed Kisses—the general rationale being kiss first, ask questions later. Sorry, but I think the only Missed Kiss in the movies that actually makes sense is from the genius Superbad: Jonah Hill’s Seth tries to find his crush’s lips, but falls drunkenly into her face, giving her a black eye. Now that one I’ve actually seen happen, at many a campus frat party.

The Missed Kiss has become in recent years one of the most overused groan-inducing plot devices—right up there with the I’m Not Gay (Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That) Speech and the Tom Hanks Accent. It indicates, in my opinion, a laziness on behalf of the artist responsible. The Missed Kiss should have been retired after the MTV Movie Awards did a Dawson’s Creek parody of a slow kiss between Dawson and Joey that takes the length of a room and the entirety of that mind-numbing theme song to complete. Once Samuel L. Jackson interrupted the imminent kiss by bursting in through the window and smashing the radio playing the ubiquitous tune, the Missed Kiss was done.

Or so we thought. Filmmakers have continued to resort to this and other tired tricks, maybe to give the actors a break from, you know, acting. They are stand-ins—rather than finding creative, expressive ways to get the point across, old favorites are called up as automatic replacements for genuine emoting. Everyone can recognize the Missed Kiss, so no further effort need be made to convey the characters’ internal struggles and external obstacles. Something stands in the way of true love—comedy, and this something is overcome; tragedy, and it will remain a mile-high roadblock. Yes, the Missed Kiss really says all this, but it is now just a pale echo left behind after decades of use.

There are few movies that show unique individuals relating to each other in something other than movie language. And I think there’s a part of today’s audience that’s getting fed up. Maybe this is why documentaries are becoming more and more popular. We crave something more substantial than cliché. We want something real to chew on.

Thanks for reading!

Sara