Bonanza 1964

KatiePie

I saw a documentary on Enid Blyton many years ago. She was very strict with her own children. Her daughter described how she spanked her with a hairbrush on several occasions. Also read some years ago from a woman who stayed next door as a child. Enid Blyton thoroughly disapproved of her behaviour and thought her parents were not strict enough. The woman always believed that character in her book was based on her.

I noticed that as well with another Enid Blyton story. I remember the original from decades ago because the housekeeper threatened the girl with her hairbrush if she misbehaved, but the modern version had a telling-off like you described instead.

mj2001
I wonder if they're doing it because they don't want children to know that it was ever normal to be spanked or if they're worried about giving material to a new generation of little spankos.

I'm sure also that I saw Dead Poets on TV a few years ago and, obviously I was poised waiting for the paddling scene (I remember seeing it when I was much younger thinking what is that strange thing he's using) and they'd cut it! The TV channel probably claimed it was to fit into the schedule but to cut that scene.

KatiePie

Was that the BBC Katie? It is insane to cut that scene, it was crucial to the plot.

It's the same with smoking - cigarettes and ashtrays are edited out of photographs, so as not to influence people to smoke. It's all right saying that people today shouldn't smoke or spank children, but censoring the past to make believe it never happened is, in my opinion, going too far.

One of the best spanking scenes I ever saw in a movie was apparently cut out for eternity from Walk On The Wild Side some time in the 60s or 70s. I first saw the movie in 1965 and it was during that scene that I realized for the first time that my curious fascination with spanking was actually a large part of my budding sexuality. The next time I got a chance to see the movie was not until 1979 and the scene was cut out. I've watched it numerous times since then, especially in era of cable TV, VCRs, etc. and the scene has always been deleted. I've never even seen any stills. In fact, I've only talked to a couple of people who've said that they ever saw this scene. Over the years, I've probably convinced myself that it was much greater than it actually was because I've romanticized it so much due to the impact it had on me as a young teenage boy.

We've been binge watching "Call the Midwife," based on the memoirs of a midwife working in a poor section of East End London in the early 1950's. At least they haven't altered reality in that show; everyone smokes like fiends except for the nuns, and a doctor recommends smoking to calm an expectant mother's nerves. By modern standards you'd say WTF but back then no one knew any different. My father-in-law got cigarettes issued to him in WW II when he was 17, got him hooked for life and lung cancer killed him.

That is a very valid point John, I have memories of things I saw on TV and in the movies back in the 60s, which now appear different, and it is my memory which is incorrect not the film.

Though I believe many old movies did have different versions issued depending on the censorship reigning in each country it was shown in, and not all the cuts survived or were chosen for modern showings.

They've removed all cp references from Enid Blyton's work. Dame Slap is now Dame Snap, a reference to spanking is changed to scolding. The kids in Faraway Tree books had their names changed from Jo, Bessie, Fanny and Dick to Joe, Betty, Frannie and Rick. Naughty golliwogs in the Noddy books became goblins. The slipper hanging in the schoolroom wall in the cover of Noddy Goes to School was replaced by a painting. It's censorship pure and simple.