“Are you not entertained?” Russell Crowe’s Maximus famously bellowed to the Colosseum crowd in the 2000 film “Gladiator.” But for decades, kiss cams have been posing a different question to U.S. sports fans and concertgoers: “Are you not the entertainment?”
Whether lighthearted distraction or comic relief, the ubiquitous arena and stadium feature is as American as apple pie — or at least as American as baking an apple pie and posting it on social media.
Live competition and performance offer us communal experience on a massive scale, but they also offer a chance to make memories and — with the aid of kiss cams — to become part of the entertainment ourselves. For a few back-to-back moments, as the camera zeroes in on its various targets, fans watch with curiosity, anticipation, excitement and maybe even self-conscious dread.
“These events are epic, nostalgic, and for some even narcissistic,” said Adam Resnick, founder of 15 Seconds of Fame, a Los Angeles-based company whose app allows participating fans featured on in-venue video boards like kiss cams to download and share the footage as a digital souvenir.
The origins of the kiss cam are frustratingly foggy but Resnick and others agree they burst onto sports scenes in the 1980s, in the years after sports franchises began introducing increasingly massive color video screens at ballparks and stadiums. Designed to fill breaks in the action and typically set to cheesy pop ballads, the kiss cam was a major innovation that shifted the focus from courts and fields into the stands.
