AfterEllen reports Friday that Delta, the Harge of airlines, has decided that the kissing in 2015’s best and most live-bloggable film, Carol, was far too offensive for its prudish passengers to handle while hovering 30,000 feet above the ground. For those of you unfamiliar with the film (or the Patricia Highsmith novel on which it was based), it’s here that I should note that the bulk of the film’s on-screen kisses are between two consenting women.
Delta’s actions were revealed in a series of tweets between comedian Cameron Esposito, musician Mary Lambert (of “Same Love” fame), After Ellen writer Trish Bendix, and the film’s screenwriter, Phyllis Nagy (all of whom are queer women themselves).
In a statement, Delta wrote:
There were two versions of this film that the studio makes available — one that is edited and one that is not edited. The edited version removes two explicit scenes that do not meet our guidelines. The edited version also removes all kissing.
While I can understand removing the nudity (when Love Actually was on planes in the early 2000s, they removed the entire Martin Freeman/Joanna Page stand-in subplot) cutting the kissing—an act that wouldn’t even take a Big Bang Theory episode above TV-G—seems completely outrageous and, dare I say, a teensie bit homophobic. Though some blame should fall on the distributor for allowing such a version to even exist, Delta was under no obligation to choose it.
So! In order to give Delta customers who were unaware that Carol and Therese were more than just best gal pals, I’d like to share all the kisses the two share in Todd Haynes and Phyllis Nagy’s wonderful film.
Here they are locking lips after the first few legs of a particularly sexy and tense road trip:
And here they are a few seconds later, being even more deviant:
This is later in the same scene, as they suck face like two witches having one last moment of pleasure before burning at the stake.
Next is their final kiss, which takes place in Chicago, just as the devil foretold.
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