Welcome back to Consequence‘s Sex in Cinema Week, an exploration of movies, the Hays Code, and what society labels taboo. Read our introductory breakdown and check back throughout the week for essays, interviews, and lists examining censorship of movie sex scenes and the creativity it inspired in filmmakers.
As more people got their hands on early film cameras, movies quickly went from snapshots of someone sneezing to workers clocking out to full-blown narratives exploring life, love, and the human experience. But where there’s love and humans, there’s its beautiful, vulgar, ever-controversial cousin — sex.
Thomas Edison’s 1896 The May Irwin Kiss holds the title for presenting film’s first hint of sex, as it captures the first onscreen smooch. Poke around the internet, and you’ll predictably find stories of the Roman Catholic Church calling for censorship, excerpts from critics naming the film disgusting, and general accounts of public uproar. And yet, the sources for such information are shaky at best. As Ralph S.J. Dengler argues in his 2010 article for Journal of Popular Film and Television, “The First Screen Kiss and ‘The Cry of Censorship,'” the hysteria surrounding The May Irwin Kiss might have actually been retroactive, with the moralistic cries of later decades making their way backward in time. His argument is further supported by the several imitators and spin-offs, like the less remembered but equally important Something Good.
Through that lens, the story of The May Irwin Kiss changes from an example of how audiences were always afraid of sex in cinema to an indicator that such a fear was learned. The campaign against the ol’ hanky-panky is less of an ever-present feature of culture and more of a pendulum, and in the 1930s, that pendulum was about to swing in the favor of one Will H. Hays.
When it came to content, Hollywood studios spent their first few decades free from formal interference. Instead, they self-policed, which paradoxically both stifled overtly transgressive efforts and encouraged sensational work because, well, even 100 years ago, sex sold. Movies gradually began pushing the envelope, leading to a string of so-called “pre-code sex films” and the eventual introduction of the Hays Code (see our explainer here!) in 1930. Yet, the Hays Code wouldn’t be vigorously enforced for another four years. So, whether as an act of rebellion or a last hurrah, filmmakers started putting out particularly salacious pictures. Call it film’s first culture war.
But the hammer came down in 1934, resulting in a comparatively squeaky-clean few decades. We’ll save that conversation for another day. For now, let’s focus on the relative freedom artists had before Papa Hays busted in and ruined the orgy party.
