The Dread of Spanking After Death

Many major religions have as part of their conceptual framework the threat of eternal punishment in the afterlife, and Christian art in particular has used Hell as the vehicle for a kind of sadistic phantasmagoria exemplified in the work of Hieronymus Bosch:

Posthumous spiritual torment is rendered into inventive, bizarre forms, but above all it is made physical, not just because that’s better represented in the visual medium, but because it is simply easier to comprehend. So when James Janeway, a godly English writer of the seventeenth century, tried to explain it to young people in a suitably terrifying way, he picked the most dreaded experience of their youthful lives: he told them that Hell was like being spanked, only a thousand times worse. He was tapping exactly into the conceptual structure of retribution: there is always an ultimate punishment, a final sanction, which might be a sound spanking for a misbehaving teenager, or eternal damnation in the wider metaphysical context of humanity’s place in the overall created universe. And, in the visual imagination of the eastern Christians in what is now Romania, the analogy was exact.

Here’s a young woman who has been sent to Hell for sleeping on a Sunday:

It’s a detail from a damnation mural on the wall of the monastery in the Transylvanian commune of Sambata de Sus. And lest you suppose this is a purely medieval phenomenon, part of the age of Bosch that was banished with the coming of the Enlightenment, here’s one from St Eleutherius’ Church in Bucharest, which was done as recently as the 18th century:

And here’s a better preserved one, but of similar date, at the Horezu Monastery in the south of the country:

A special place in Hell: surely the ultimate in spanking threats!

Men are Like Streetcars: 1951-52

This was a boom year for high school stage spanking, if for no other reason than that it was also the peak year for Men are Like Streetcars. So without further ado, let’s dive into the year, beginning sometime in the fall with the junior play at Freeport High School, Illinois; Henry Guffey spanks Alison Furst:

The yearbook caption reads: ‘If I “dood” it, I get a licking. I “dood” it.’

November 9-10: the senior play at Southport High School, Indianapolis, Indiana: Bennie Wise spanks Jo Ann Elsea:

November 13-16: the senior play at Quakertown Community High School, Pennsylvania. The yearbook told its readers, ‘The cast will recall the rollicking laughter produced when “Bill” Price spanked Cynthia King for meddling in his affairs.’ Unfortunately, Cynthia was very ill on one of the performance days but she ‘performed like an old trouper’ by going on with the show.

November 14: the junior play at Oakland Craig High School, Nebraska; Harold von Essen spanks Mary Alice Anderson:

November 15-16: the senior play at South Division High School, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Kenneth Zipperer spanks Patricia Yarne:

November 15-16: the junior play at Albia Community High School, Iowa; a ‘hilarious moment’, says the yearbook caption, as Dean Smith spanks Joan Anderson:

November 15-16: the junior play at Greenville High School, Illinois: Norman Taylor spanks Pat Pacatte:

November 16: the junior play at Harris-Elmore High School, Ohio:

November 16: the all-school play at Mount Vernon High School, Ohio; Ron Haltermon spanks Ann Tabor:

November 20: the senior play at Elmira Free Academy, New York; Robert Williams spanks Elizabeth Mellony Johnson:

The yearbook caption assures us that this is a regular part of ‘The life of an actress’, and that turned out to be truer than at most places: on March 26, the school drama society produced Meet Me in St Louis, so audiences were treated to a second stage spanking scene!

November 29-30: the senior play at Vineland High School, New Jersey; Dick Masilotti spanks Marilyn Koitz:

November 30: the senior play at John Swett High School, Crockett, California; David Leighton spanks Dolores Reyes:

November 30: the senior play at Bassick High School, Bridgeport, Connecticut, with Judy Nosal as Maudie:

Also in November: the senior play at Needham Broughton High School, Raleigh, North Carolina, with Arlene Griset as Maudie:

December 5-6: Bradley Public School, Illinois:

December 6-7: the senior play at Edgewood High School, Pennsylvania was double cast, with Ross Flanagan spanking Patricia Hoyer and John MacFarlane not only doing the same to Shirley Fekety but also getting his photo taken doing it:

December 7-8: the drama class play at Richmond Union High School, California; Don Weimer spanks Lynne Simons:

December 13: the senior play at Washington Clay High School, South Bend, Indiana; Jerry Miller spanks Betty Strunk:

December 14: the junior play at La Junta High School, Colorado, in which, as the yearbook caption puts it, ‘Bill Rhodes administers a well-deserved spanking to Lora Tetley for her meddling in the romantic affairs of her older sister Sylvia’:

March 8: the junior play at West Lampeter Vocational High School, Pennsylvania:

March 13: Oconomowoc High School, Wisconsin, with Sandra Lewis as Maudie:

March 14: Madison High School, Ohio; Dave McBride spanks Ruth Ann Hagerman:

Also March 14: the junior play at Bremen High School, Indiana, with Bradley Robinson and Berdine Heckaman:

March 14 and 15 saw the annual school play at Toms River High School, New Jersey, with two casts. One Maudie was Joan Fuccile,

and here she is being spanked by Dwight Boud:

March 28: the senior play at Paris High School, Texas, with Bunny Williams as Maudie:

March 28: the junior play at Warren Area High School, Pennsylvania: Douglas Hetrick spanks Geraldine Dykins:

April 4: the junior play at Harrisburg Township High School, Illinois; Charles Swansey spanks Sherry Hensley:

April 24-25: the junior play at Shaler Area High School, Glensham Pennsylvania, with Marlou Jahn as Maudie:

April 25-26: Mattoon High School, Illinois: Clayton Coffee spanks Anne Weston:

April 25-26: St Clair High School, Port Huron, Michigan; Bob Smith spanks Barbara Magary:

April 30: ‘an embarrassing moment’ in the junior play at Kellogg High School, Idaho:

May 2: the drama class play at Tulare Union High School, California:

May 2-3: the senior play at Williamson High School, New York; David Mahon spanks Patricia Stevenson:

May 16: the junior play at Murphysboro Township High School, Illinois; Henry Varner spanks Teresa Stevens, first in rehearsal…

… and then onstage:

May 16: the Jesters’ Club play at Riverside Brookfield High School, Illinois; Bob Konecny spanks Jean Rada:

Still May 16: the junior play at Seaside High School, Oregon:

May 16-17: the senior play at Central High School, Traverse City, Michigan; Ronald Gainer spanks Patricia Clancy:

The rest are in alphabetical order of school, starting with the senior play at Bottineau High School, North Dakota; Myron Hayhurst spanks Norma Vikan:

The senior play at Davison High School, Michigan, with a caption illustrating what Maudie thinks of it:

The senior play at Field Kindley Memorial High School, Coffeyville, Kansas, with Mavis Starnes as Maudie:

Grant Union High School, Sacramento, California: Ed Aguirre spanks Joyce Turk:

The junior play at Midwest City High School, Oklahoma, with Shirley Maynord as Maudie:

The senior play at Morrisville-Eaton High School, New York: James Crane spanks Maxine DePuy:

At Ottumwa High School, Iowa, Richard Anderson spanks JoAnn Embree:

The dramatics club play at Windber Area High School, Pennsylvania, with Betty Makuch as Maudie:

And that’s it for the second year of Streetcars!

Photographer of the Week: Alex Zatsepin

‘Dark art’ is the declared specialism of Alex Zatsepin, who’s based in Chisinau, Moldova. At one level, that means he’s drawn to imagery from genres like horror

and sci-fi,

and sometimes, less classifiably, things you don’t see every day:

It isn’t all strangeness – but it is consistently dark.

The shadows encroach across the models,

and even in daylight, they take blackness with them.

But as you can see, this photography is far from gloomy and far from depressing.

Even if, occasionally, a clueless fellow finds himself so much in the dark that he has to resort to the instruction manual!

If you are interested in Alex’s work, please visit his online portfolio.

Make That Banshee Wail

The English rock band Siouxsie and the Banshees started in the punk era (their first album was entitled, aptly enough, The Scream), but survived the demise of punk and continued recording until the mid-1990s. In all that time they were fronted by their energetic lead singer Siouxsie Sioux, otherwise known as Janet Ballion:

One of the less famous minor incidents in the band’s history happened when they were on tour in the early 1980s. Rock’n’roll tours are noted for all kinds of high jinks, but this is the only known case of the lead singer being entrusted with making toast, only to burn it and receive her punishment from the bass guitarist:

The Sioux Indians may have been known for scalping their victims, but it seems the Banshees went in for skelping Sioux!

One Doctor: Four Spankings

A movie stays essentially the same every time you see it: you may notice different things or react in different ways, but if so, it’s you that has changed, not the movie.  But in the theater, every single performance is different, often only in subtle ways, because each time it’s created live at the moment of delivery. And when a production has a long run, or gets intermittently revived, it evolves.

We can illustrate this with a production of Moliere’s Le Médecin Malgré Lui by the Bordeaux-based Compagnie Présence, first staged in 2010 and revived three times in the next seven years. Sganarelle was always played by Axel Joucla, but there was a new Martine every time. Happily, each of them was spanked. Even more happily, each iteration of the production was videoed!

In October 2010, Martine was Laurence Charollais, and she contrives to show a bit more leg than her successors when being spanked:

In May 2013, Martine has become Maguelone Caporal, the youngest and prettiest of the four.

She gets her legs completely off the ground for at least part of the spanking, and there are several new bits of business that, unsurprisingly, were retained in all the subsequent versions. The pre-spanking chase is amended so that Sganarelle now catches her by doubling back. And afterwards, as always, Martine’s ordeal at her husband’s hands comes to an end when their neighbor, Monsieur Robert, intervenes, only to have her tell him to push off and mind his own business. In the Présence production, she reinforces this by slapping his face, and from Maguelone Caporal onwards, she does it while she’s still across Sganarelle’s knee – making her both slapper and spanked!

In May 2016, it’s back to an older Martine with Emmanuelle Anetas, who gives a vigorous performance with some energetic kicking as she is spanked:

And lastly, in May 2017, it’s Caroline Guastapaglia, and the business has now bedded down solidly:

For my money, Maguelone Caporal is hard to beat, but Emmanuelle Anetas gets an honorable second place. And they are all due a round of applause!

Photographer of the Week: Bill Tracy

Bill Tracy was an experienced commercial photographer based in Montague, New Jersey. These days he’s a retired experienced commercial photographer with a splendid portfolio of work to look back on. Just don’t ask him to take your picture: he’s done!

Like all commercial photographers worth their salt, Bill turned his hand to anything, from still life to still girls (who are, of course, an especially interesting subcategory of life).

The girls did get to move – just not when the camera lens clicked, please!

When not out and about in their vehicles, they might present themselves at his studio for shooting.

Get familiar with the decor: you’ll be seeing it again!

The shoot that’s most relevant to us was a vintage-style pin-up series Bill did for Sin City magazine. And now that we’ve gotten to know the set, let’s get familiar with the girls, too, courtesy of other photographers. The upright side of the equation will be Helen Vasso:

And it’s Brittany Rock who’s going to be upended:

I said upended…

No, more upended than that. And better change your undies for the spanking, dear!

But Helen better remember: white girdle girls may get spanked… but they also get even!

If you are interested in Bill Tracy’s work, please visit his website.

Line

Lajna is a Czech television comedy about Lubos Hrouzek (Jiri Langmajer), a top ice hockey coach who turns his back on his success: he gets divorced and quits his elite club in Prague, then sets up in the provinces with a new team and a new girlfriend, Denisa, played by Hana Vagnerova. Here they are together:

Her particular interest to us lies in a scene towards the end of the second series episode ‘Asistent’, shown on October 1, 2019, in which the other participant is not Lubos but his father Karel, played by Stanislav Sarsky. It is discovered that Denisa’s social media posts include some compromising photographs of herself and another man, and this calls for urgent intervention. Lubos is tied up with hockey practice and can’t get away, so Karel goes to see her for what will be their first meeting. He locates her in a nightclub, where she’s dancing in a see-through top and a fetching pair of black leather shorts, whose relevance to her impending fate will, perhaps surprisingly, turn out to be nil.

He fails to make her treat the matter of the photos with the seriousness he feels it deserves. In fact, she’s totally unrepentant. His response is to hook a chair towards him with his walking stick and push her face down across the seat.

With remarkable ease, he then pulls down those fetching shorts to reveal an equally fetching pair of leopard-print panties,

to which he administers a sound whacking with the stick:

We see various reactions around the room, variously horrified and amused, plus a chap filming it on his phone, no doubt for immediate dispatch to social media – so perhaps the punishment fits the crime. And indeed, she later seems particularly put out that it happened in public: ‘He spanked my bottom,’ she tells Lubos. ‘In front of everyone.’ And when he’s asked about it, Karel remarks that it was the least she deserved!

You can see the episode here; go directly to 19m 40s for the scene in question. (I don’t know if the video will be viewable worldwide, or indefinitely, so apologies if there is any disappointment in store at the other end of the link.)