One of the purest expressions of human intimacy, kiss defies
definitions. One can write, sculpt or paint a kiss, the way Keats, Rodin and
Klimt had done respectively. Innumerable poets and writers have written about
it. Films have captured kisses starting from little pecking to violently
passionate lip locks. Seeing a couple kissing does not bring revulsion but it
parts our lips in pure joy, a little bit of shyness and some sort of intrigue.
A kiss between two human beings, irrespective of their gender, age and
relationship evokes an inexplicable emotion in us; some kind of helplessness.
The kiss of human beings is marked both in public and private domains because
that brings two people together to an intimate state and often it shows a
temporary surrender, nonviolence and love. It is temporary because the next
moment the kissers could be two different people, cherishing different ideas
and even nourishing thoughts of mutual decimation. When animals kiss the
same things happen. But we do not notice because they are not ‘marked’ the way
human kisses are. In pornography you do not find kiss because there it is not
the intimacy of human beings represented in the acts nor it shows the
tenderness of love and surrender; but the acts of willingness to force and
violence. In the disembodied or rather dismembered and fragmented posturing of
pleasures as shown and seen in pornography, kiss does not feature as an
ingredient of enhanced passion because the very intimacy that a kiss demands for
itself to happen between two people is ruptured beyond repair. A kiss is a
welcome note with a farewell message hidden beneath.
(Sailor Kissing the Nurse)
Kiss has never been a national debate before on this scale.
For the curious onlookers and chronic voyeurs in social networking sites, for
the liberal intellectuals and concerned politicians, for poets and
photographers, for news channels and print mediums, the protest and the counter
protest gave ample amount of materials to ideate both in public and private
zones of a cultural and moral discourse. The sad thing is that it never became
a political discourse as even the most concerned politicians decided to discuss
it in its sociological and cultural dimensions. A politico-legal discourse could
have put the issue to complete rest had the government taken a strong stance
on it through legal modes, saying that acts of intimacy that do not amount to
the embarrassment of people in the public domain should be treated as
expressions of human bonding therefore inoffensive. But the governments that
rely on the existence of their power purely on vote bank refuse to make such moves
mainly because the overtly sentimental and purist notions of culture and public
morality prevalent amongst the voters make the elected and electable
representatives of people cringe and play unto the gallery. Ironically, a
society that is divided along three lines (as usual), as in ‘yes to kiss’, ‘no
to kiss’ and ‘no comments’ is the same society that has the same opinion on the
ban of liquor and closure of pubs and bars in Kerala.
‘If music is the food of love, play on,’ said the poet. We
should make an amendment to it; if kiss is the fire of love, kiss on.
Practically, kiss cannot be prolonged for the reasons of choking and the slow
staling of oral fluids. Kiss cannot be prolonged unless it is shown in an
edited sequence from various angles montage/d by many other scenes that
accentuate the intimacy. When kissing is seen, it is not ‘done’ by the seer. As
the character Bridget Jones wonders in her diary, why people close their eyes,
especially the woman, when she is kissed. Jones also does not understand why
women pout their lips and hold a peculiar expression on their faces when they
apply mascara on their eye lids. Similarly, if someone sees the kiss, s/he is
an active agent in the act if not a voyeur. An act of kissing lets people forget themselves. There is complete surrendering and also taking complete
charge. Whether it be surrendering or taking charge upon someone’s existence
for a few moments, both the parties cease to exist in those moments of mutual
give and take. At the horizon, sky and sea do not fight; they just play. At the
shore waves and sand do not fight, they kiss.
(Kiss protesters in Kochi)
Unfortunately, protesting against a kiss and using kiss as a tool to
protest, go equally wrong. The protestors of kiss are goaded by their
sentimental understanding of social morals defined and elaborated upon by popular
imaginations of a nation’s history and contemporaenity, both of which are the
constructs of dominant imaginary that refuses change to take place in a society
where such imaginaries have found safer havens. The kiss protestors, by default,
fall to the forces of the same imaginary as they replicate the same act as a
tool of protest. While ignoring the kiss event is not a feasible idea to bring
around social changes or at least making some dents in the steely social
body/imaginaries, replicating the same could be detrimental in the long run and
also run the risk of turning a serious discourse into a self mockery as it happened in the case of the notion of ‘installation art’ in Kochi Muziris
Biennale first edition in 2012. People started talking about ‘installation’ not
as a discourse but as a linguistic aberration giving it a comic edge. Kiss,
seen in the same way, could also become a thing of mockery therefore a way to
delegate the same ideology of the right wing forces, through over use and under
‘valued’ use. Kiss protest is good as far as the word ‘kiss’ loses its
taboo-status and becomes a word less loaded with its traditional cultural
baggage. This has happened to the words like ‘sex’, ‘vagina’, ‘cunt’, ‘fuck’
and so on, mostly to positive effects, at least seen from within the feminist
discourse. The word ‘kiss’ could also become a part of the daily parlance and
once the magic of a word is lost and gets lighter by use, the cultural values
attached to it could fall off, easing the society that uses the word much
lighter in word and deed. The same thing has happened to the words ‘queer’ and ‘Dalit’
in the socio-cultural and political discourses.
Protestors of kiss place themselves as proud anachronisms
within a society which has gone much ahead in time vis-a-vis habit, consumerism
and liberal political thinking. They happily belong to those zones where things
are shielded awkwardly yet celebrated through displaced gestures, suggestions
and verbal innuendoes. Popular films of yester years (when state was the only
negotiator of morality through stringent censor laws within a much hailed
democracy) have helped in forming this kind of a mindset, a true reflection of
a forced psychological condition in which the pleasure is not sought in the
actual but in the displaced, giving away a fleeting effect of enjoyment but
never becoming a part of the enjoyed or the enjoyment itself. When the enjoyer
is removed from the things that have to be enjoyed, it induces a sort of pain which
could turn into anger at any given time. Nostalgia could be equally soothing
and it could also leave someone seething with anger. If you look at our popular
imagination of myths or social tales in novels, films and serials, nostalgia
makes someone come back to the roots and the moment s/he recognizes the fact
that s/he cannot be completely a part of it because of its intangibility, anger
sets in and it forces the person into the avenge mode. The intangibility of
nostalgia is displaced and seen as tangible objects, like property, deed, gift,
rituals and so on. Protestors of kiss are the victims of such displaced anger
that comes out through nostalgia that renders them helpless and it turns into
anger and they hit the path of revenge. As I mentioned before, the tangibility
of property, as it is intricately connected with the body and sexuality of
women, manifests as the morality of the society/women as seen/voyeur-ed/gazed
at by the nostalgia monger.
The kiss protestors, however come from a different route,
but unfortunately reach the same point of conclusion; woman’s body and sexuality,
therefore the morality of the society as something to be contested, hid,
displayed, celebrated, gazed at and then relegated to ignominy. The identity of
the kiss protestors as well as the protestors of kiss is obscure (seen in a
large context, as in ‘who are those people who vandalized the restaurant? Or who
are those people who came to Marine Drive to kiss?) and if at all they have
their larger identities through affiliation and contract, they are pitted
against each other, ironically working towards the same point of nullification.
The stalemate, to kiss or not to kiss, though eminently childish and laughable
up to certain extent, inadvertently works for the benefit of the state that
instead of entering into a discourse with the parties, tries to neutralize the
friction through brutal force. A call for kiss protest, interestingly had
brought oft-said, clichéd and predictable reactions from the larger society of
Kerala. In fact, not coming from the right wingers, and obviously coming from
the ‘no comment’ parties, who are terribly tortured by their own denial of
things, these comments ranged from, ‘will you allow your mother and sister to
kiss in public?’ and ‘if a couple is caught on sexual act, could the protest be
massive public fornication?’ Anyone uses the ‘vulgus logicus’ (I don’t know
whether this term exists but it is good to use some Latin for fun) – popular
logic- these could be the common questions. However, if you read these
statements with logic of informed reasoning, you might know that these
questions come from a sort of gender phobia. Woman’s body, as far as these nay
sayers are concerned, still needs an external agency. Mother and sister are
connected to their domestic roles as mother and sister (in that case daughter,
wife and all those female qualifications within the domestic realm). They
cannot have their independent agency of asserting their identity in the public
domain.
(Girl kissing boyfriend in a Police van in Kochi- manorama photo)
It is interesting to see why these nay sayers did not raise
the questions like ‘Will you allow it with your office boss?’ ‘Will you allow your
headmistress to do this thing?” These questions are never asked because the
larger society refuses to see woman in charge. The hypocrisy of the society once
again comes to the fore when you see the post-protest pictures posted on social
networking sites where girls are seen pecking on friend’s cheeks, or a couple
locked in a serious kiss of protest inside a police vehicle. The pubic gaze, as
seen in the gazes of the people who are within the picture frame as well as
outside of it, is always on the woman who kisses the man, not the other way
round. Her value has been judged then and there by the onlookers and the
judgment cannot be replete with the words like ‘bold and daring’ but words like
‘a girl who could do ‘things’ in public and easy going’. The gazers want to
protect their mothers/sisters/daughters/wives from this ‘public shame of
kissing’ by denying the fact that the girl who is in the picture seen kissing
her boyfriend or friend could be someone's daughter/wife/mother/sister. The
isolation of a woman who dares/kisses and seeing her as a moral threat to the
society is the process from which all issues originate. Seeing woman as an
exclusive individual, unconnected or disconnected to her social/domestic roles
seems to the pivotal reason behind all these conflicts. Kiss, therefore is an
expression of this exclusivity of women; and a society that fears that
exclusivity would obviously detest kissing whether it is public or private.
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