For instance, you might want to spank someone with a whip,īut if you don’t have a whip, you might use a rope in the same way: This can then result in another round of improvisation. So it’s not just that spanking implements are improvised out of other tools which also retain their original primary purpose some such tools are improvised into spanking implements, and that then becomes their primary purpose. A riding crop was always designed for striking blows, but the originally intended target was a horse’s crupper, not…Īnd the familiar example of Charlie Chaplin shows that canes were originally an aid to walking but as the twentieth century went on, the walking stick and the bendy cane parted company, and the latter became primarily known for a different function. I’ve said these are all purpose-built artifacts, but some of them are still the product of some repurposing, at least in their recent history. Just running through the arsenal like this immediately brings up a number of pertinent points. As we have already seen at length, many are repurposed from their original function, but there are also some, not yet discussed in this series, for which corporal punishment is the original function. That contrast between the impression and the actuality helps to define a major distinction between types of spanking implement. But it’s actually the royal sceptre, the symbol of authority being used ad hoc to impose that authority in a physical way. Because it’s an artificial hand, it looks, especially if you haven’t watched the rest of the movie, as if it has been designed to replace the human spanking hand with something essentially the same but more durable. What makes the moment a little less than commonplace is what they’re being whacked with. There’s a moment in the 1941 Italian fairy tale Cenerentola e il Signor Bonaventura (Cinderella and Mr Goodluck), also known as Princess Cinderella, when Cinderella’s two stepsisters (Tina Mannozzi and Teresa Palazzi) are bent over in front of the King (Guglielmo Barnabo) to have their bottoms whacked: