Brain Fuel

The arrival of cinema (projected motion pictures) in the mid-1890s changed American culture like almost no other singular event. Things that were once forbidden suddenly became legal and even quite popular. Boxing, for example, was outlawed in the U.S. before the advent of film, but movies of boxing matches were perfectly legal. By 1898, the law caught up with the times, and boxing became a legal sport. Perhaps nothing was as jolting to American popular culture, however, than short cinematic film of The John C. Rice-May Irwin Kiss(April 1896). It was the very first kiss in movie history, and it not only altered the lives of its two stars but it reshaped American film, theater, and popular culture for then next century.