Started watching S4 of Fargo last night. This time its set in a smallish town in Missouri, 1950, and one of the narrators is a coloured girl attending a local high school. When viewers first meet this young lady, she's in the principal's office, waiting to be paddled. She's standing in the secretary's area, and we can see another male student bending over having his backside whacked with a paddle by the teenager. Once he's been dealt with a left the office, the principal announces 'Next!' and our heroine enters the office. In the next scene she's being escorted back to class by another teacher, and she is walking with discomfort and wears a pained expression. She gets sent back to the office soon after for fighting with another girl, although she's the one with the black eye and claims that she got it by hitting the other girl's fist with her eye (the other girl was not paddled, and the inference this is because she's not a coloured student). Once again she is being escorted back to class, walking stiffly and clearly in some pain. There's a short follow up scene where her teacher asks her to take a seat, she attempts to, but can't, it's just too painful, she asks if she can stand for the remainder of the class. Not something you'd see in a lot of shows these days. It put me in mind of a couple of stories I've read here about school paddlings, the recipients often seem to react the same way this young lady did. |