When the Winker winks at a girl, she tries to scramble across the room to kiss him, while her male partner does his best to hold her back. To play, participants divide themselves into girl/boy pairs with one boy left over to be the "Winker." The pairs sit on the floor, with each boy hugging a girl from behind. Alternately known as Ratchet Screwdriver, Bloody Winkum, or Wink, the game dates back to the early 1900s.
So we were surprised to learn that when teenage Quakers get together, their favorite activity is a free-for-all kissing game that often ends in bruising and rug burn. They've promoted a more harmonious world by founding causes such as Amnesty International, not to mention lending their name to oatmeal. The Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, is a small Christian sect best known for rejecting all forms of violence, embracing progressive politics, and dedicating themselves to simple, restrained living. While it's surprising to us today, that Wings scene didn't even cause a stir in 1920s America. Santanu Das, letters and accounts of the war are peppered with stories of soldiers kissing, embracing, and giving each other pet names like "my Palestine Wife." Das believes the war succeeded in breaking down the traditional limits on emotional and physical intimacy between men, allowing soldiers to form relationships that went beyond what was permissible at home. According to British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. When the film was released, no one raised an eyebrow about the scene, partially because kissing in the trenches was remarkably common during World War I.
In 1927, two soldiers kissed tenderly in the silent movie Wings, which won Best Picture at the first Academy Awards.
Apparently, straight men had been doing it for decades. That's true, but it wasn't the first time two guys kissed on screen. Movie experts often credit Sunday Bloody Sunday, a 1971 film about a love triangle among two guys and a girl, as the first mainstream feature film to depict two gay men kissing. Though, surely, there are more challenging / The First Guy-on-Guy Kiss to Hit the Big Screen While a simple kiss, even with a person of the same sex, doesn't seem like a brave or strenuous action for a movie, we'll still take the representation of queerness in any film. Smith recalled that Affleck said "a man kissing another man is the greatest acting challenge an actor can ever face." Once the scene was filmed, he declared, "now, I'm a serious actor." Apparently, Ben Affleck, who played a straight character that kisses his gay best friend in the filmįollowing a screening of the 1997 indie hitĪt Outfest this past weekend, director Kevin Smith participated in a Q&A and revealed how stars Affleck and Jason Lee felt about their on-screen gay kiss-slightly uneasy, yet up for the challenge. But only twenty years ago, portraying any semblance of queerness in film was considered taboo and brave. Today, same-sex relationships in cinema are closer to normal than they've ever been. UPDATE: The original tweet of this article was phrased in a misleading way and did not accurately represent when Ben Affleck made the remarks Kevin Smith related last weekend at Outfest.