The “Mechanical Truth” behind Cruel Intentions: Desire, AIDS, and the MTV Movie Awards' “Best Kiss”

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Notes

¹By “the generation who grew up under AIDS,” I mean those individuals born roughly between 1975 and 1985 who were students during the late 1980s to mid 1990s when AIDS-phobic safe sex education was at its most virulent (Patton 34, 46–47).

²These nominations indicate that perhaps the MTV Movie Awards does want some credit for nominating “outer limits” kisses, even if that credit must be undermined by the obvious straw-man nature of these queer contenders; i.e. one cannot seriously argue that their nominations were ever intended to do more than to titillate or amuse. The nominations in question include, for cross-generational kisses, Juliette Lewis and Robert De Niro from Cape Fear (1991; nominated in 1992) and Mia Kirshner and Beverly Polcyn from Not Another Teen Movie (2001; nominated in 2002); for (quasi-)incestuous kisses, Christine Taylor and Christopher Daniel Barnes from A Very Brady Sequel (1996; nominated in 1997) and Jeremy Irons and Dominique Swain from Lolita (1998; nominated in 1999); for bestial kisses, Jason James Richter and Willy from Free Willy (1993; nominated in 1994); and for group kisses, Matt Dillon, Denise Richards, and Neve Campbell from Wild Things (1998; nominated in 1999).

³By 2003, both the telephone and Blockbuster voting options were no longer available.

⁴As an additional boost to the kiss's autonomy, MTV allows the “Best Kiss” award to be accepted by the actors involved in it, as opposed to the director who designed it or the producer who facilitated it (as is the case for the MTV Movie Award's “Best Movie” or the Academy Awards' “Best Motion Picture of the Year”), since to give the award to the kiss's director or producers would be to admit its construction.

⁵Kurtz's appearance is an allusion to her role as Cécile's mother in Stephen Frears's 1988 Dangerous Liaisons.

⁶Translation mine; the original French reads, “Ce côté farce du filme est renforcé par le snobisme de Mme Caldwell, la mère de Cécile, et par la gaucherie de l'adolescente, dont la tendance à faire basculer les boules de glace du premier coup de langue devient vite une propension à tomber du lit.”

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Caetlin Benson-Allott

Caetlin Benson-Allott studies contemporary cinema, queer theory, and popular culture as a graduate student at Cornell University. Her research interests include the queering of “straight” sexualities in women's postmodern fiction and teen films, and she is currently revising a conference talk on the importance of lesbian femme identity for feminist theory and transgressive interpretations of gender.