Kissing Still Requires Consent

I rewatched the film Mid90s. The story follows a young boy with a tumultuous home life who befriends a group of older skater boys. It's a simultaneously wholesome and gritty story as Stevie innocently pursues the comradery his cool new friends, who are just as reckless and immature as he is. The first time I saw the movie, I was subjected to the party scene in which Stevie, who is about 12-13 years old in the movie (put a pin on that), gets sexually coerced by an older teenage girl.

Although the more graphic aspects of the assault is only described by Stevie naively bragging about it to his friends, we are shown a scene of them kissing. This was a distressing and uncomfortable scene for me, as it should be for anybody, however I functioned under the idea that “that was the point” and I initially appreciated the unabashed display of the moment “before” a child’s innocence is taken away from them. However, the second time around I skipped the kissing scene completely. It went from seeing Stevie being pulled along by the hand to a bedroom to Stevie numbly looking for his friends before finding them and reciprocating their excitedness. The actual impact of the incident did not get diluted with the exclusion of watching the assault take place.

My initial defence of the scene was partially influenced by the false idea that kissing is a relatively innocent interaction. I have already been against showing sexual assault in media and fiction as it feels like nothing but hollow grabs at shock or disturbing displays of voyeurism. Yet I somehow believed kissing was an exception. My misconception that kissing isn’t inherently sexual thus harmless evaded the subject of consent with directing minors and even adults to kiss on set. The Netflix series, Stranger Things ran into such controversy as the show creators, Matt and Ross Duffer, unknowingly ousted themselves in coercing their young actress Sadie Sink into doing a kiss scene she wasn’t prepared for. I remember seeing a clip of the interview in which Sadie was still frazzled about being pushed into it and one of brothers (I don't know who's who) responded “well I didn't know you were gonna be such a baby about it”. This attitude about kissing being an innocent act of affection is what lead the Stranger Things’ creators to brazenly reveal what is actually inappropriate behavior from them. They themselves didn't think it was a big deal and even found entertainment in the “child-like panic” of one of their actresses where it clearly was to her. We musn’t obfuscate how kissing is still an intimate act between two people that requires trust and consent!

Forced kissing was a trope I was exposed to commonly as a kid. It always made me uncomfortable when characters “would steal a kiss” from someone who didn't and wouldn't have consented to it. One particularly disturbing scene from my childhood was from an iCarly episode, iPie, where Trudy—who was a slew of problematic writing choices as is—sexually harasses Spencer and eventually forces herself on him, all to a laugh track hooting and chuckling at it all. Although she's “just” forcibly making out with him on the couch, there were clear sexual insinuations leading up to it (asking Spencer to take their date to the couch and when he makes the excuse that the couch is broken, she responds “then let's break it some more” and then literally drags him by the feet there). To this day, I'm still baffled at why something so clearly rapey made it through the censors. That episode has bored itself into my memory against my will.

I also recall watching WWE with my brother where there was a whole skit and match of one male wrestler against three female ones in which he forcibly kisses all of them before he'd pin them down. I vividly remember the male wrestler showing his wide open mouth and his tongue hanging out to the crowd while he has one of the female wrestlers in a hold before snogging her as she resists. The whole thing was choreographed but what I watched was the glorification of a man sexually humiliating women to a crowd of cheering fanboys. This showcase of sexual assault and misogynistic violence managed to be in full display because of the idea that forced kissing isn't full on rape (but the closest thing to it).

Kissing is basically used as an age appropriate substitute for sex in media yet it's not as if kissing lacks sexuality. If kissing is so innocent then why is there often a deliberate sexual connotation with it in stories? If it's not a big deal, why is there so much emphasis around who you do it with, having a “first time”, and how to do it right? If it isn't dirty then why is kissing commonly used in foreplay and why are women's lips often sexualized? Kissing is a deeply intimate act and is actually indiscernible from sexuality. The frivolous treatment of kissing undermines how traumatic and invasive it really is when one can't consent. I finally learnt that kissing can constitute as sexual assault after learning about content creator Seth Francois’s experience when David Dobrik played a “prank” on him in which he tricked him into making out with an older man.

[The sexual assault hotline] said it directly to me. They said, 'I'm sorry you were sexually assaulted.' And I broke down. I called my mother and some of my close friends and I said, 'I can't believe that happened to me’

This made me reflect on my own experience from when I was a kid and my step dad (at the time) asked me to kiss him on the cheek. Even just that I wasn't comfortable with as kissing was never a practice in my family besides between spouses. He was pushy about it though so I leaned in to kiss his cheek as a mere courtesy. He swiftly turned his head and kissed my lips. I naturally recoiled in disgust while he laughed at my “childish” reaction to “just” being kissed on the lips. What he may have not realized was that my reaction wasn't just some absurd fear of cooties, it was a revulsion to an intimate act being forced upon me by somebody I just put my trust in. When I saw him try to pull the same thing on my twin sister, I warned her he'd just turn his head, a warning I wouldn't make if it was just some harmless prank and I didn't fear the idea of my sister experiencing the same thing I did. I felt genuine anger and disgust, emotions so seldom respected in children. I was legitimately scared of him trying to kiss me again after that, something I wouldn't feel if the act of kissing was as innocent people may try to convince you it is. I'm not trying to accuse the man of maliciously and intentionally sexually assaulting his children, I can give him the benefit of the doubt that these are the kind of “practical jokes” adults play on kids just to see how they react with little understanding of children’s autonomy and forced kissing as an invasive act (although he was wholly inexcusably inappropriate with me over the years that no matter how serious he was about it, really creeped me the fuck out). There is more awareness around children’s consent in the boom of gentle parenting content online but even that receives backlash as apparently many adults don't appreciate that their entitlement to physical affection from children is being perverted.

After the first time I saw Mid90s, I stumbled across a YouTube comment that informed me the actor who played Stevie, Sunny Suljic, was actually younger than his character at the time, only having to be 11-12 years old during filming, and the girl he made out with was played by Alexa Demie who was already in her late 20’s.

(This isn't the YouTube comment, I can't find it now, but it still brings up the same concern)

Of course the scene would've still been unethical if the actors matched the age of their characters but it's much worse knowing the age gap was even larger than their fictional one. Alexa Demie said she felt “safe” doing the scene in an interview, which the permission of the child she kissed should've mattered much more.

I had a lot of anxiety about that (at first) because obviously there’s somewhat of an age difference between Sunny and I. But he is just so cool and it felt very comfortable and safe, and after thinking about it... There’s no way I didn’t want to be a part of it.

I also came across a strange interview with Sunny Suljic in 2023 where he was asked how he felt about filming that scene. He claims it was no big deal, that it was “all consensual”, and even said that he was “stoked” about it and told all his friends (similiar to how his character talked about his experience in the movie). I’m not going to tell Suljic how to feel and honestly, I'd prefer if he really didn't find the kiss scene to be a problem. I won't project my feelings onto him, however I don't think that should take away from the ethics of filming that scene to begin with.

I didn't need to watch the kiss scene to feel disrupted. This idea of showing uncomfortable and traumatic situations to “make a point” turns out to be entirely tasteless, redundant, and even counterintuitive. Sunny Suljic embodies the toxic masculinity the movie sought to critique. The idea that men being survivors of sexual assault is “emasculating” and that female attention is supposed to be a bragging right makes it harder for men to process and confront their trauma, especially one as young Sunny who would be only 19 as of writing this. Many who watched the scene felt as if the film was actually glorifying the assault rather than challenging it (although I don't agree, I understand how the film could’ve made it more apparent that what happened was a bad thing). This isn't helped by the fact that the scene itself circulated on tiktok as a form of soft-porn for creeps. At the end of the day, kissing requires consent and it's ignorant, if not diabolical, of Jonah Hill to cutaway at the sex part but still have his young actor be assaulted for the sake of creating a disturbing moment under the assumption that it's “just the kissing part” of the overall assault. Jonah Hill seemingly understood the grotesqueness of depicting statutory rape thus why he chose not to show it and he presumably understood how the kissing scene was disturbing in itself, thus the dark tone of it, yet similarly to when I first watched it, he didn't seem to make the connection that the kiss scene still feels disturbing because it is also rape. Undermining the intimacy of kissing ends up being a dangerous mentality. It results in a misguided idea of consent, the practice of forced kissing with little to no consequence, and the victims of it feeling invalidated and even infantilized.