Counting Kisses at the Movies

The Screen Kiss and the Cinematic Experience in Egypt

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8968434
AutoresIfdal Elsaket (0000-0003-3403-2599, autor correspondente)
Ano2023
Volume55
Fascículo2
Páginas211-237
Data de publicação2023-05-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoInternational Journal Middle East Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0020-7438 • E-ISSN: 1471-6380
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0020743823000661
OpenAlexW4383720926
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas2
Referências citadas16

In this article, I use the 1969 Egyptian film Abi fawq al-Shagara and the motif of the kiss as a launch pad to explore broader cinematic experiences and cultures in 1960s Egypt and beyond. I argue that the deployment and debates around screen kisses not only represented wider conflicting and shifting impulses around questions of audience tastes, sexuality, and the role of the cinema, but became central motifs through which audiences experienced the movies. Inspired by a historical approach to the study of cinema, one in which media texts and audiences are central, this article shifts the gaze away from the screen to consider the public lens through which films were appreciated, the broader global media landscape in which they existed, and the tensions between audiences and critics. I bring popular magazines, audience reactions and memories, and wider international cultural trends into the frames of analysis not only to nuance our understanding of Egyptian cinematic cultures, but to shed light on an often-neglected component of Egyptian history of the 1960s; the fun, the pleasures, and the anxieties of a quickly changing cultural and leisure landscape, and the wider cultural mood that helped shape a generation's experiences of the cinema

Aesthetics · Art · Human sexuality · KISS (TNC · Literature · Media studies · Movie theater · Sociology · Visual arts · Gender Studies · History · Middle East Politics and Society · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender · Political and Social Issues