One Shies at the Prospect of Raising Yet Another Defense of Cannibalism

“You can’t kiss a movie,” Jean-Luc Godard said, and this is mostly true, in that you cannot initiate the kiss. The Movie could initiate the kiss if The Movie wanted, as it is so much taller, leaning in, no way to demur, you would be too polite anyway, and, as the Roman poets have stressed, there is always something porous in the decorous. So there can be kissing between you and The Movie, and it would be amazing, better the more incoherent The Movie is and the more you had to pay to see it, though in the movies it is said that prostitutes don’t like to kiss as kissing is too personal, though I disagree, as sometimes the human will make a show of locating you with a kiss, almost to prove to you that you are a real person with a face and that, absolutely, they know where the face is and the face isn’t, and this is how you know, for sure, that both of you have been paid. But I don’t want to make you feel bad here, and I apologize, for you are entirely kissable, as I have watched you through windows and keyholes even though, up to this point, you do not appear in movies. Often you appear holding a book in your hand and with God knows what playing in your head––I imagine you repeating to yourself, over and again, “the horse knows the way, the horse knows the way”––and remember: even someone as learned in film as Jean-Luc Godard got it a little wrong. You can kiss The Movie, if The Movie wants to kiss you. It’s just that The Movie, finally, isn’t all that interested in your mouth.