My apologies for opening a new thread for this, but I need to incorporate a largish looping animated GIF to demonstrate my point and I thought it better to avoid putting this in the 'Teachers Who Paddle' thread, which is likely to be accessed fairly heavily. I would have preferred to embed a fairly small video, but none of the sites supporting streaming video appear to allow looping, in every case my video was converted to single play when streamed, which isn't adequate to illustrate the point I am trying to make.

In the Teachers Who Paddle thread I have had some discussion with American Way concerning the actions of Nancy Guillen in the Booneville High School paddling clips as she exits Principal Halter's study after her paddling, or assumed paddling. I think that either for the script, or in actuality if she was paddled at that time, she acknowledges and takes leave of a person within the study who we cannot see. The probability I believe is that this is, or is intended to appear to be, the witness to her paddling, most likely a female member of the school's staff.

I have seen this remarked on elsewhere, and the same explanation offered. I have referred to her action as a bow, but perhaps the abbreviated female version of a bow, which I think is called a dip (rather short of a full curtsy) would be nearer the mark. I think that in effect Nancy is signalling, or is intended to appear to be signalling, 'See, I've taken my punishment, I'm ok really, and no hard feelings'.

American Way does not accept that this is what happens. His response was:

She was not bowing. I differ with you and I wouldn't give much credence to what others have said.

which I thought was just a teeny touch over-dismissive!

I will let anyone who wishes to do so judge for themselves. In my opinion she bends her knees, inclines her upper body forward and nods her head to someone in the room, call it a bow, call it a dip, call it what you like, but she is acknowledging the presence of someone invisible to us within the room and taking her leave of them in a friendly way or my name isn't Another_Lurker! Your comments much appreciated.

The animated GIF below will load slowly, but will get up to full speed once it is completely loaded, when the action can readily be analysed.

Nancy leaves Principal Halter's Office after her paddling

If you have an FLV player on your system you can download a much clearer looping FLV video here. I doubt it will play directly in your browser, so download it to your hard disk by right mouse click and 'Save Target As...' then play it in your FLV player rather than left mouse clicking directly on it. However, if you believe your browser has the necessary plug-in, by all means try playing it directly.

A_L

Looks to be like the most enormous SMIRK is breaking out on her face in the last shot. Is it me, or do others think this episode is contrived?

I suspect there's not enough room for someone to be standing where she genuflects. Is she being made to kiss Old Glory or the like, or bow towards that?

I know our American cousins always have the flag prominently displayed in schools. I don't suppose they'd go to the lengths of having OG embossed on the paddle in reverse , but bowing to the flag after an alleged paddling might do justice to the Bald Eagle & E Pluribus Unum!

But that this is definitely some sort of glenuflectory gesture not a million miles from a bow, or I'm Jan-Christian Smuts in female attire!


Steve

You're spot on. Its a bow. Im wrong. About bowing in the States there was an auxiliary bishop that presented our eight grade diplomas and we had to genuflect on the left knee and kiss his ring. I'm not making this up by the way. Now the story and (i.e. a true account) get better. We were told the British did the same for their Queen but always with the left knee for the right knee were for God alone. The eighth grade teacher the Queen of Corporal Punishment in Our Lady of Corporal Punishment School had a rehearsal and she asked all of us to genuflect and kiss her ring. I genuflected but refused to kiss it. She took the ring and brought it slowly to my mouth but stopped there. The Mercy Nuns receive a ring upon their profession. If she were a bishop she would probably wear hers in her back pocket.

The contrivance of the Principla Office scene is further confirmed by her bowing. In the handbook the 4th tardy was a half day so she probably knew what she had in store for her. Tru TV wanted her paddled for their ratings because in the handbook only for that offense is swats mentioned. You would have no reason to bow to a witness but every reason to bow to someone holding a camera. IMHO it was filmed but not shown probably by prior agreement. She could have been paddled in one of the lower grades it usually doesn't take that many years to get in trouble and I don't think she was a stranger to that situation but we'll never know for sure without an interview!!! That would be an episode that could pump their ratings up. By that age girls know judging by the way they accentuate Mother Natures sway of the hips and that may have accounted for the timing of the rub or maybe she was told to by those who would definitely no the score. I was my own worse enemy. They had these initials (RSM) at the end of the name for Reverend Sister of Mercy. Behind their backs I said it stood for really small minds. I also called a Sister Lucia behind her back Sister Lucifer. I was naive and thought kinds of things never got back to them but they got back.

OTT but I hope of some interests to some. I was so shy in high school I said to a girl that she was callipygous. A big word indeed for 17 years old but I'm sure readers of this esteem Forum wouldn't have to make a trip to the library. She had to go to a big dictionary in the school library to find out what it meant so I wouldnt have to be there when she sound it what it meant. Dont try to spell check it. I had to spell it for her or it would take her forever to find it. I took her to a pitch and putt. Nine hole miniature size golf course where you rent golf balls and a nine club and a putter. They were all par threes and if you got a hole in one on a certain hole you got a free game.. I let her pick up after every hole. Do they do that over there? Not let them pick up but do they have something akin to pitch and put? Are not kids today shameless or maybe just less hypocritical? Now boys say to girls nice bum where you from? Maybe not just boys to girls either!!!

Thank you Another Lurker, .

Yes I agree entirely with you ...but I would because this whole event makes can be made sense of through the work of one of my favourite social anthropologists Claude Levi Strauss. Saying that I'm sorry if this is a little dense, I will try to explain as simply as possible in reasonable length where I'm coming from, but specialisms , are I'm afraid, sometimes just that! So apologies in advance!

In two of his major works (Tristes Tropiques and La Pensee Sauvage) Levi Strauss provides a socio-psychological framework for resolving 'asymmetric ritual' based on observation both of the Algonkin Indians (Midewinin peoples) and the Gahuku-gama of New Guinea. The interesting thing about this 'process' analysis is that it makes no difference whether the ritual was real (Nancy did get paddled, or faked, - 'shadow boxing') it would explain the power relations seen or glimpsed in the body language of the participants...........

OK cutting to the heart of the argument. Firstly it relies on a psychological principle , accepted by Strauss and Lacan (coincidently rejected by Sartre) that all men ( and women) have only one logical mentality , not, as many Anglo Saxons have suggested a pre-logical and a logical understanding , but only one which , in its earliest manifestations, ( hence the essence of social anthropology) sees these logical processes as providing a link between the physical stimuli of the world with a semantic understanding. Even Durkheim and Mauss both showed that such a type of understanding mus be at a minimum quantified. in some manner in order to produce a range of human understanding, which is based on physical experiences.......

To take the Algonkin as an example. They play competitive games, but they never allow an overall winner ...the teams are changed and the and membership of teams mixed so that the final outcome of the series of games is a draw. When this is achieved the game ends....Why? Because competitive sport to these peoples if it ends with victory for one side ends with the metaphysical death of the other, and this destroys social harmony not reinforcing it. This is a form of dialectical thought.

The act of corporal punishment itself can be rationalised though the dialectical model; but not , strangely through the rational analytical model of Anglo- Saxon philosophy... The psychological argument which extols the benefit of corporal punishment requires , a priori, a direct relationship between the physical and the semantic/logical. This can only be action/reaction , or in preference dialectical.

I don't want to digress but if you want validation of this look at the world of modern invention, the computer, telecommunications, electron microscopes....... they have an objective practical existence outside their functions as transmitters , receivers, and message display properties, an objective existence, which is revealed in the interplay and at the borders between their transmission properties and their function as objects ( or objectifications of scientific thought) in the physical world .

So what we are saying is that the act of punishment in this manner marries two elements of the human experience, one is supremely concrete ; the other supremely abstract. The linkage of these elements- 'sensible' ( in the real literal meaning of the word )qualities to formal qualities, which parallels the physical base of our world ( husbandry, artefact production, weaving )... providing for our physical needs against the abstract processes of intelligibility of which all contemporary scientific thought is the fruit.

Where does this take us . Well the process of physical punishment sets up a relationship of inequality which is probably why we have these arcane historical debates on the origin of paddling, and it carries with it an ideological baggage . But further than that the dialectic requires that the issue be resolved, laid to rest the order of things re-established. Just as the Algonkin do in their symbolic draw. In particular (and I won't force you through another theoretical maze) both Piaget and Lacan would agree that in educational socialization you cannot maintain the relationship between student and teacher as between master and slave....( thus as Doctor Dominum has pointed out in the narrow conxtext of his posting 'tag''coming from the Dr. Who series, ) magister' is the Latin for schoolmaster 'dominus' for master 'overlord' whilst to complete the triumverate , scholar is 'discipulus') I should not need to draw the dots together as to how these term relate semantically, for those who haven't yet given up in frustration!

So to come back to that body language. Wherever it is directed it is not surprising, there is a need to draw a line , to return things to as they were, the student /teacher relationship returns and the world continues on its axis. Not necessarily therefore a fully conscious action , an indicative action......the drawing of a line

This reciprocity of the process, action and reaction, is what is ignored by our friends in the abolitionist camp who proceed only through the logical processes of a automaton . They keep an infinite score line, a genuine book of the dead which leaves attribution to each action , and attributes blame not as the natural consequence of experience, but as a permanent blot.

Spontaneous action draws a line, it seals the book shut.(American Aay our catholic bretheren , or rather their higher priesthood have understood this for centuries!.....)

Miss F remarked I did something similar after my first caning, it only became focussed into this significance because of this debate on Nancy. On completion , I had, in the British manner, got through without showing pain, but had found achieving this exquisitely difficult to deal with. I offered my hand, not as a custom ( it was a custom in some schools ( not mine) but a custom is not spontaneous ..) but simply to return the relationship to where it had been - a signifier of the recognition of changed roles and the return to normality ( that's Sartre!)..

In English we put it behind us.

Sartre wrote, you can never avoid elements of this power relationship ...... and it was re-quoted in simple English by , I think Leonard Cohen , ' the dumb carnivore reproaches the herbivore...radishes scream when you pull them from the earth'

Dr. Dominum has commented on two important aspects of this , one of how his boys are able to generally distinguish between the act of punishment and the 'personalisation' of that into an internalised relationship of hatred or distrust.

He has also commented on the current psychological vogue for seeing girls as personalising and internalising a caning much more than boys .

To me the latter is descriptive , but needs analysis, and one way of interpreting this is again from my 'text' of the day.......... Women are not the hunters in patriarchal society, but the males cannot afford to internalise 'grudges' they depend on each other when hunting in the forest often for their lives.

In matriarchal society , say in Africa on the other hand, the women share this characteristic , and the psychological profiles and the process of personalisation is appropriately modified.And , as anyone who has visited say central or West Africa on educational business will know they cane pretty evenly ( and very hard) without sexual discrimination.

Modern society is more conjoint than either of the stereotypical types, so it would be interesting to see how this is changing...young women's drinking habits, for example, might socially imply that it is.

It is not surprising that this male/female divide is also reflected in the memory and oral history ( as opposed to the upper or ruling class ( take your pick) who write official histories) . In the history of folk music from the ancient to the modern there is a strand of masculine 'live and let live' because of mortal danger. Take two hunting songs ' all in green went my love riding ' (recorded by Joan Byez on the anti war album ' Baptism') and Leonard Cohen's ' Daddy's gone a hunting', which is I believe if my memory serves me well ( but if it doesn't doubtless someone will correct me !), on 'Various Positions' one of his more philosophical albums!

In conclusion Nancy is doing nothing extraordinary, she is accepting the new status quo and locking the door on conflict , action and reaction. It is an act probably as old and spontaneous as Man .but not always, if experimental psychology is to be accepted, typical of a modern girl. . ( In this regard I'm sure Dr. Dominum will agree social psychology/social anthropology (BA) and the basis of clinical or experimental psychology(BSc.) are different animals.)

Well I hope someone found that interesting

Hi prof.n. You say:

Well I hope someone found that interesting.

I certainly did, though I am not ashamed to admit that there are parts of it I shall have to re-read in hope of a better understanding.

I think we are both in essence saying that this was a closure and new start ritual, to ensure no loss of face or ill-feeling on either side. In the absence of evidence to the contrary I shall continue to think it was directed at the female witness of the paddling. I think the fatherly hand on the shoulder constituted a similar ritual between Nancy and Mr Halter who had administered her punishment. Or not, depending on your faith in human nature!

Hi Steve. Genuflect! You have no idea how hard I tried to bring that word to mind to use in my post, only to fail miserably, and then you trot it out without even thinking about it! I take your point about the apparent arrangement within the room, but I think the witness, if indeed the genuflection was to the witness, was standing against the corridor wall a little way down from the door.

You say the situation was contrived, and yes, there is possibly a feeling of that about it, which is why I have questioned if she was actually paddled before the exit we see from the Principal's office. I think there is a possibility that she was, but even if she wasn't I think the scene would have been carefully preplanned for the camera to try to reflect what would have happened if she had been paddled in the same session.

The 'enormous smirk'. I don't know, I will grab a frame and see, you are probably correct.

It occurs to me that some readers may not be familiar with the original videos. Rather old now, they are linked from Corpun.com and fairly easy to find on YouTube. The YouTube links in The Principal's Office thread on this estimable Forum still appear to work.

Hi American Way. As you will have seen above Big John MOI has pictures to cover EVERY facet of life, the universe and everything! Thankfully he has not chosen on this occasion to illustrate your use of 'callipygous', doubtless mindful of the fact that this is a family Forum!

Nancy may have "bratted" her way as one commentator said into the paddling to save half her Saturday but in doing so she more than likely wittingly as did the producers wittingly set up a chain of event climaxing with the paddling. What fun would it be watching her sit through Saturday school maybe less fun for us than her? Presuming she suffered a half day detention for her 4th tardy she was trying to escape the consequences by playing dumb about not knowing the consequences for the fifth and it was no surprise to her that's when the cameras were brought in. The Saturday trade off for swats is in the handbook which I'm sure was the reason why the producers picked that school. 300,000,000 million Americans don't all that's soing on in the South and 70,000 paddling incidents with girls is a relatively rare event.

Steve Halter was on salary but Nancy had a payoff too. There is a saying in sports that they don't pay salaries in professional golf because they live on their winnings. Bluntly put you eat what you kill. She seems to thrive on thrills and attention She let the world know Caveman Halter with his club (paddle) doesn't have power over me. She ate what she killed. She ate up every moment of it. The bow was to the witness and the cameras saying in effect (I DID IT SO THERE). The farewell shot was her saying by her rubbing was that your best shot? She got to pick up the ball on the 18th hole.

Try this link as I previously recommended.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD0EfM5f3io&fmt=18

StevefromSE5 said, regarding the animated GIF above:

Looks to be like the most enormous SMIRK is breaking out on her face in the last shot. Is it me, or do others think this episode is contrived?

So what happened next? Here is the evidence:

Nancy leaves the Principal's office - picture 1 Nancy Guillen is shown out of the office by Principal Halter of Booneville High School. She actually looks quite contrite here so possibly she had indeed just been given her 3 paddle swats for tardiness. Nancy leaves the Principal's office - picture 2 Hmm, Nancy doesn't look quite so contrite here! However it may well be both a smile of relief that her punishment is over and a smile for the camera she knows is waiting for her outside the office door. Or possibly Principal Halter has cracked a joke, though we don't hear anything on the sound track!

There are some pretty perverted people out there judging by this local story from an Arkansas newspaper and the feedback to the Tru Tv. The school and the family must have had no idea that her privacy would have been violated. Messing with a minor through a false pretence email interview. How old was she 16 or at most 17? You graduate either at 17 or 18 and she was only a junior. It made their newspaper so she and her family had to know about it. If I were her folks I would never let it happen in the first place and after this I would have called the authorities because that is not the American Way. I looked for the story in the local paper and came up with this. Is this news only to me?

http://www.arktimes.com/blogs/arkansasblog/2008/09/brutality_pays.aspx

http://boards.trutv.com/showthread.php?t=1660

The person who contacted Nancy is the main contributor to the Spanking Facts and Research site, which used to be on Network 54 but was closed down ( twice) because, at least in part , he was constantly posting pictures of very young girls getting birthday spankings ( And I mean 5 year olds)He still does this in fact though the site has very few contributors now as you have to register to take part.

This chap, called Cinndunc is a Canadian in his thirties and has often contacted 18+ aged girls who are beauty queens or similar and have had their picture in the paper and asked them about spanking, especially when they were children. Although Nancy was only 17 I think he thought it ok to contact her particularly as the story was such a big one. He was surprised to get a reply as he normally didn't. There are numerous critics of him on that site and one or more of them contacted the local paper to tell them who had contacted Nancy and what his motives were. He poses as a 22 year old post graduate female doing research into child rearing .

To his credit he is quite open about this though I think he very much overestimates those people who are interested in the spanking of young children.

Look up Cinndunc on Google and also that name on the Urban Dictionary ( which is very amusing)

Urban dictionaty definition is spot on. Urban Dictionary, Cinndunc is a a pedophile who finds sexual pleasure in the spanking of minors. Declan: There is no better definition. From my my American Way POV he broke the law First Amendment notwithstanding. I'm glad you told me he was Canadian. That beast has no site from what I can gather nor should he.

American Way

It is interesting that I am unable to obtain the Spanking Facts and Research site, it may have been closed down once again. The urban dictionary thing was posted by one of many of Cinndunc's enemies on that site as I am sure you realise.

I am interested in the corporal punishment of young females , but only those over the age of 13 or so. I don't think this makes me a paedophile or anything close to that, but posting pictures of 5 year old girls, and even babies is as sick as it gets and Cinndunc has been told in no uncertain terms about this.He is from Calgery if that is of any interest.