And the winner is … platonic male intimacy! Maybe everyone is just a bit overexcited this early in the awards season, or maybe we’re witnessing a seismic shift in male social intimacy, but there has been an outbreak of men kissing each other this year. Enjoy it before the inevitable backlash kicks in.
Where did it start? Perhaps at the Golden Globes ceremony last week, where co-stars Ramy Youssef and Mark Ruffalo were seemingly so thrilled that Poor Things won best film for musical or comedy, they forcefully kissed on the lips. “Well, my mouth was going towards his mouth …” said Youssef afterwards. “And then the next thing, mine went to his,” added Ruffalo – which goes to show how novel the concept of just kissing another dude is to some men.
Then at the Critics’ Choice awards this weekend, Robert Downey Jr tried to get in on the act with his Oppenheimer co-star Cillian Murphy before going up to collect his best supporting actor in a film award. Downey went in, lips puckered at the ready, but Murphy ducked and went for the cheek kiss instead – which was awkward. A few days before, Murphy’s wife left a lipstick mark on his nose at the Golden Globes, so maybe he wasn’t taking any chances.
At last night’s Emmys, Kieran Culkin and Brian Cox exchanged a quick peck on the lips before Culkin collected his best actor award – an infinitely warmer exchange than any they had as father and son over four seasons of Succession.
The other big winners of the night, The Bear, went one better: Producer and actor Matty Matheson’s freestyling acceptance speech for best comedy was interrupted mid-flow, trophy dangling in hand, when Ebon “Cousin” Moss-Bachrach grabbed his face and kissed him messily, passionately, for a long, long time – like he was saying goodbye to his sweetheart before going off to fight in a war. Matheson was praising the restaurant industry at the time, so perhaps Moss-Bachrach just felt hungry, and decided to eat the nearest face.
You wouldn’t have caught John Wayne doing this sort of thing (at least not in public). For most of awards history, men have only done manly things such as shaking hands or patting each other on the back. Even hugging is a fairly recent innovation. And until very recently, the only place you would find two straight men kissing on the lips without comment was on-screen, as part of their committed portrayal of a gay character (or perhaps on the football pitch where different rules somehow apply).
Will Ferrell and Sacha Baron Cohen did their part to break down this particular barrier (let’s not call it a glass ceiling – a moustache ceiling?) at the MTV movie awards in 2007, where they took home best kiss for their Nascar comedy Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Collecting the award on stage, the two actors reprised the moment with such passion they ended up rolling on the floor together. But it was OK because they were still kind of “in role”.
This awards season we’re seeing something different: men expressing platonic affection in ways their forebears would never have dreamed of. Although, inevitably, it’s not as new as it looks, and you don’t have to go back to ancient Greece to find it – only as far as 1929, and the very first movie to win the best picture Oscar: Wings. At the emotional climax of the first world war drama, Charles “Buddy” Rogers says goodbye to his dying comrade Richard Arlen and plants a tearful but uninhibited kiss on his mouth. The Oscars ceremony that year was just 15 minutes long and was not filmed or broadcast, so who knows what happened when the win was announced?
