the school scene paradox
Posted at 10:18 on 25 Apr 2008 by Pandora / Blake
A couple more schoolroom pics for you. These seem to be much more "modern" - no Victorian costumes or props here. I love the girl's fashionable pre-war hairstyle. It's not a look you see often in spanking photos, unless you count the many spanking scenes in old movies, and I think it works well here. The schoolgirl's heightened femininity works simultaneously to make her more sexual (she's not wearing a uniform, but stockings and a summer frock) and more vulnerable.
Vulnerability is the key theme in these images: the girl holding her dress up neatly at the back in anticipation of the consequences of error. She hasn't been punished yet, but she's on a last warning, and she's made acutely aware of that fact. Perhaps she failed a test or handed in a particularly atrocious piece of homework. She's summoned for a private detention, by which time she's expected to have brushed up on the material. The teacher goes through it with her painstakingly, gesturing relevant points with a lifted cane. The lifted dress serves to focus her mind. Any error in her presentation and his hovering cane will lash down across her exposed cheeks.
Which it does, sure enough. And there's a strange intimacy in the image of her punishment. The position is most likely intended to show as much as possible to the camera, but a consequence of it is that teacher and pupil become wrapped around one another, her kneeling at his feet, burying her face and hands in his lap while he wraps an arm around her waist and holds her skirt up for her.
The fear and vulnerability of her body language is contradicted by the sexual overtones in the way they're holding each other. She is simultaneously girl and woman. He is merciless, scathing, aloof - and at the same time taking advantage of her, seeking an inappropriate intimacy.
It's a familiar paradox.
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