Spanking under the influence

[64Fordman]

How many of you, like myself, were around in BC (before cable) and the internet and remember the thrill of seeing a movie scene or magazine picture that pushed your buttons? It was like a gift sent from Hollywood just for you. It was a special gift because it was unexpected and carried no overt sexual suggestion. Unlike today where a few keystrokes can produce hundreds of photos and video, mostly porn. Remember when birthday spankings were a common party activity? Herein lies the question, does widespread access to porn alter society’s attitude toward otherwise innocent good natured fun and turn them negative? Here is my case for the influence of porn on spanking.

From the 1931 movie ‘The Cowcatcher’s Daughter’. Poor Pops, a single parent, had to resort to corporal punishment to keep his wayward daughter Marjorie in line. He spends most of the film trying to get her married off and out of his hair. The film is famous for a pre-code implied nude scene when Marjorie’s clothes are stolen while skinny-dipping in the pond and she has to walk back to the house in only her hat and boots. A two rail fence protects her modesty. At one point she comes to a gap in the fence and pauses for a moment, then swings an unseen gate closed and continues on. I wonder how many wives hands covered their husband’s eyes at that moment.

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A 1950’s era magazine ad shows how to get the wife to buy the right coffee. I can only imagine the outcry if ads like this ran today.

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Two publicity photos. No stranger to on-screen spanking or taking a pie to the face, Shirley Patterson was a B-movie actress who did westerns and appeared in several Three Stooges shorts. Also an all-grown-up Shirley Temple, this could be a publicity photo for her movie with Cary Grant ‘The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer’.

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Lucy gets a little ‘splainin from Ricky in an episode of ‘I Love Lucy’. John Wayne teaches Maureen O’Hara who’s boss in ‘McLintock’ and Elvis does the same for the adorable Jenny Maxwell in ‘Blue Hawaii’. All from the 1960’s

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http://elviswomen.greggers.net/images/jennymaxwell003b.jpg

And now, two more recent examples. First, from the animated series ‘American Dad’. In the episode ‘The Missing Kink’ wife Francine discovers a good spanking provides the sexual satisfaction she craves and convinces straight-laced husband Stan she should be punished whenever their son misbehaves. Stan gets wise when Francine can’t control her sexual urge and gets the kid in trouble every chance she gets.

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From the Showtime series ‘Weeds’ Kat Foster gets a little kinky spanking that includes bondage and a ball gag.

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The above episodes from 2012 and 2013 provide a good example of how Hollywood’s depiction of spanking changed from good natured innocence to pure sexual activity. Please share your opinion pro or con.

[ElectroPainLover]

Hey Fordman,

I am a BC person...though I could get some pretty good scenes every now and then when the scrambler would allow the tri-colored vertical line slip away when "ON-TV" came out. However, I digress, for me it was more of kidnapping bondage scenes over spanking. Even today, I watched "Get Smart" (the movie) and found the scene where Agent 99 is tied to be quite pleasant.

Those pictures you linked are quite nice however. It is true how much Hollywood, and Society for that matter, has turned a simple spanking into something knotty. But, in some area's, it's getting to where it is illegal to spank your own children. And heaven forbid if a man ever put his wife over his knee and gave her a couple of swats...can we say "Off to Jail"? So, there is nowhere left for spanking to go but into the bedroom or dungeon of consenting adults.

Dana -- EPL

[A Pensive Pen]

Porn certainly has some effect on the sexual and gender norms in many societies. Google can bring up a slew of studies (and a bunch of moralizing ideology) that argue about exactly what that affect is.

But if you're asking whether porn brought us from those pics of Lucille Ball and John Wayne to that episode of Weeds, then probably not. At least not by itself. Gender norms have been turned on their heads from the late 1960s onwards. The women's rights movement and second wave feminism managed to reveal how a many circumstances that women faced in society and their daily lives were actually tools of marginalization and oppression. The idea that a husband could decide by himself that his wife had somehow 'misbehaved,' forcibly hold her down and strike her is part of that. That social progress is most likely that took spanking off movie and network television screens

But the sexual revolution took place alongside those events, and worked to establish how consensual sex acts, however unorthodox, could be part of a healthy person's life and that one's personal appetite for sex, even if 'strange,' was not something to suppress and be ashamed of. Porn rests on this side of the equation, and of course it's no coincidence that the production, variety, and availability of porn exploded in the 1970s. That liberation is mostly likely what put spanking into pornography (and is a major part of why this website exists today).

The point was getting society to realize two things: that involuntary, non-consensual spanking was in fact violence and a symbol of inequality, and that there really wasn't anything innocent or good-natured about it. On the other hand, voluntary and consensual spanking could be a fulfilling experience that adults had a right to engage in without feeling ashamed.

[ElectroPainLover]

Please don't get me wrong as it is not my belief that innocent television spankings from early TV brought spanking into the world of porn and BDSM. I believe that spanking in this world came from the fact that it is a way to cause fairly severe pain without any real physical harm or endangerment to get a submissive to comply. The one time I actually swatted my ex's ass (jokingly) hard enough to leave a red mark made me feel real bad because I didn't think I was swinging as hard as I smacked (also, I am submissive by nature and not into giving out pain but receiving it).

There were also other, less obvious but equally degrading, demonstrations of how unequal women were treated on those old shows. The fact that if a woman wanted to open a charge account at a store they would call the husband to see if it was OK was just as degrading as the swat on the rear.

If you were to ask my son if it was ever OK to hit a woman, he would say NO! I engrained it into him as he has a little sister and I told him that since he was very young, as my father did I. I tried to use as little corporal punishment on my children as I could. In my case, it really was the case of "this is going to hurt me more than it does you". I abhored having to spank my kids.

I believe that spanking play between two consenting adults can be healthy to a relationship which both find it enjoyable, no matter who is the dominate or whether it is a switch relationship. Non-consentual spanking, or any other form of domination or represiveness, is wrong in my personal opinion and do not condone it in any manner.

As you Pensive, I believe that BDSM and fetishes grew out of the sexual explosion of the late 60's and early 70's of the free love movement and do not believe it to be solely linked to how women were treated in 40's through 70's television. I believe spanking in porn simply does what it did to me when I was growing up...gain compliance and learn not to do whatever I got spanked for again. Not to mention the humiliation of it also. Even in fetish play, spanking is meant to punish, demoralize, and humiliate the receiptient; something that should never be placed upon an unwilling person.

I hope this clarifies any unclear views I may have portrayed in my earlier post.

Dana -- EPL

[A Pensive Pen]

No worries at all. I certainly wasn't trying to put words in anyone's mouth, and apologies if I gave that impression!

Like everything else, symbols and their meaning can change with time. Seeing, for example, the coffee ad that 64Fordman posted may or may not have been seen as lighthearted, innocent, funny, or whatever when it was first made. And it probably got different reactions from different people.

[ElectroPainLover]

No worries at all. I certainly wasn't trying to put words in anyone's mouth, and apologies if I gave that impression!

I didn't feel like you were putting words in my mouth Pensive, I had reread my post and it seemed a bit obligitory and wanted to make sure I wasn't misunderstood and my post had left a lot of room for it. After I looked it over I could see how one might get the impression that I may believe in the old practices of marriage and/or spousal abuse...If I hadn't wrote it, I might've gotten that idea.

Please do not feel as if I had taken offense...I didn't...and I thought you concisely explained your opinion on the subject and our opinions run fairly parallel to one another and we are on the same page.

I too believe the coffee ad was a bit harsh, but, Chase & Sanborn had always had somewhat racy commercials and such...same as Carl's Jr./Hardees do with thier scantily clad (though very hot) women selling hamburgers. C&S were sponsors for many radio comedy shows...Charley McCarthy & Edgar Bergen for one...and did some funny comercials that would seem a bit out of touch today.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I took no offense but put it back upon me for not being more concise in my first post.

Dana -- EPL

[64Fordman]

Thank you for your response and insight. Personally I prefer real life partners to be equals regardless of what happens in the bedroom. It’s interesting to note that all of the early examples of spanking in my original post occurred during a time when networks and studios would not show married couples sharing a bed.

‘I Love Lucy’, ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’, and any movie Doris Day made with Rock Hudson or James Garner are good examples. Even more extreme was the TV show ‘Make Room for Daddy’ where Danny Thomas played a traveling night club performer. When he returned home from the road the two sons would have to share a room so Dad had a place to sleep even though his wife was in the house. Was this censorship run amok?

Meanwhile, The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, and Bert and Ernie all shared a bed.

One time my ex was sick but decided she needed some so she rolled on top of me and started doing her thing. Well her nose was runny and it dripped into my mouth. My cold was a lot worse than hers. After I felt better she was teasing me about it and I put her over my lap, no pain, it was all in fun and not something we usually did. We had sex all over the house after that spanking.

After reading your comments I’m thinking maybe our political correctness pushed this out of main stream entertainment and left it solely in the hands of porn. It’s the same with bondage, I remember playful tie-up scenes in shows like ‘I Love Lucy’, ‘Bewitched’, ‘Lavern and Shirley’, ‘The Brady Bunch’, and ‘Happy Days’. Today comedies leave this subject alone, in dramas they are always sexual in nature and start out or end up non-consensual.

I don’t remember seeing a spanking scene back then that was depicted as abuse, it was always in a comedic nature. Even though Maureen O’Hara got spanked by John Wayne she certainly played strong women in all her films. Compared to the violence young people watch today was Lucy being spanked by Ricky that bad?

As for Dana’s belief fetishes grew out of the 60’s and 70’s sexual revolution, I’m not so sure. I read a book last winter titled ‘Victorian Women’ by Joan Perkin. The lives of women living in England during the 1800’s is revealed through letters and journals from women of all economic classes from maids to the Bronte sisters. Weather it was tying an adolescent’s hands to the bed at night so he doesn’t, you know, to punishing students for not completing lessons, or a Governess tying her unruly charges, the number of times someone being tied up is mentioned is astounding.

I don’t know about you but if I had a young Governess tying my hands every night so I wouldn’t, you know, that’s all I’d be thinking about.

[ElectroPainLover]

I is funny how the censor's would allow certain things but not others. I think that spanking, back then, was not being considered a sexual thing but a punishment; whereas, a couple sleeping in the same bed allowed people to use their own knowledge of what they did when couples slept together.

Again, I didn't explain myself as clearly as I should have Fordman. A speaker that I used to listen to explained that when you are not understood correctly, it is not because the other person misunderstood you but because you didn't explain yourself well enough.

I do understand that BDSM and bondage has been around much longer than the 60's, but, that the sexual revolution brought people out of the closet about it afterwards. I don't believe, though I could be wrong, that there were too many fetish clubs prior to the sexual revolution. Now, however, you can find them quite easily with a little research or probably even looking in the phonebook. All one has to do is look at the sexual torture devices and bondage devices of the Middle-Ages to know how long torture and bondage has been around, but, afterward that time it was placed into the realm of being taboo because of how cruel, torturous, and, ususally deadly the devices was back then. I know that it never went completely away but believe it became more openly accepted by fetish practitioners after the sexual revolution.

I hope that clarifies my understanding a little more.

I too believe that relationships have to be equal outside of the bedroom. My ex and myself had an agreement on such things as; we would not spend more than $60 on something. Our problem was more an arguement on who would actually make a decision and not whom would win the decision but actually make it. Neither one of us wanting to seem as if we always made the decisions. However, I was much more the submissive in our relationship...even outside of the bedroom, though, there was no TOP or BOTTOM in our relationship other than position 

Dana -- EPL

[64Fordman]

Poster for the 1953 movie adaptation of Kiss Me Kate

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