[ SECRET POST #1771 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1771 ⌋


Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 07 pages, 157 secrets from Secret Submission Post #253.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - hit/ship/spiration ], [ 0 - omgiknowthem ], [ 0 - take it to comments ], [ 1 2 3 4 - repeats ]
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom.livejournal.com]

17. http://i.imgur.com/vIRrs.jpg

[fenrischained.livejournal.com]

That bothered me even as a kid.

And, as a slightly older kid, I started wondering where the appropriate government authorities were and why NONE of them were paying any attention to the horrific stories which were clearly circulating.

[(Anonymous)]

This. It was especially annoying when Hortensia(sp?) said to Matilda, "Would your parents believe you?" as an explanation for why the school hasn't been shut down, because I always answered with a "Yes!!!"
Hell, one of my teachers called me a "bitch" once and my parents were in that school so fast...

[helenadax.livejournal.com]

It didn't bother me in Matilda because it's a book for kids. It's like the thieves from Home Alone. If they acted like real thieves, the kid would be dead in five minutes.

[meadowphoenix]

Naww, as soon as they heard a noise they'd run, especially since I don't think they had weapons. Now if they were career felons, then...

[lolofielding.livejournal.com]

Strange, it disturbed me as a kid.

But then as I got older I started to realise that the Headmistresses punishments are so OTT that they would sound like something a child made up. "She locked us in a closet filled with spikes!" or "She made the fat kid eat a whole chocolate cake." (still don't see this as punishment to be honest XD)

Then again, I also have to wonder where the fuck Ofsted were in all this. :P

[(Anonymous)]

But she also threw kids out of windows and shot-putted them across the yard. Surely at least one parents would be like "holy shit, why are you covered in bruises and dirt!"

[alice-alaizabel.livejournal.com]

This was actually used as the justification for why she never got caught in the book. She deliberately behaved so completely outlandishly that no parents would ever believe their kids. "She pulled my hair" would have parents in the school. "She picked me up by my plaits and swung me around then threw me thirty feet over the wall" sounds like something a kid makes up because they don't like the teacher.

[(Anonymous)]

I assumed that it was because, at the time Dahl set his stories in, teachers/authorities could do pretty much whatever they liked to children. For that matter, teachers didn't just have authority over pupils, they enjoyed status over most parents as well, by virtue of being 'educated' and 'professional'. It doesn't seem unreasonable to consider that, in an era where caning was commonplace, that children could be locked in cupboards, and be casually insulted and derided. The 'nails and glass' and whirling that girl around by her pigtails then become a sort of dark comic exaggeration of existing norms, not the horrific abuse they would be viewed as today.

[(Anonymous)]

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS. Locking in a cupboard and being forced to overeat was stupidly outlandish during a time when the preferred school punishment was the cane.

[fenrischained.livejournal.com]

Except that, yeah, but to a kid who didn't understand that it was comic exaggeration, it still broke my suspension of disbelief that nobody noticed the small child flying screaming through the air in an outside, presumably fairly urban environment.

I mean, where was this school, besides apparently miles outside any sort of residential area?

[sandor051.livejournal.com]

Dropping in to say this.

Though for some context, my father was literally at one point locked in a cupboard (and forgotten at the end of the day) by a teacher.

These are things that happened, and even within that, English boarding schools were renowned for being particularly strict above and beyond the national norm.

[(Anonymous)]

I was so sad when I read about that. :(

Suddenly the snarkiness and morbidity in British humors makes so much more sense.

[(Anonymous)]

It never even occurred to me to question this.

My parents weren't half as bad as Matilda's, but they were always pretty dismissive when I tried to tell them that teachers or other kids were picking on me (granted, I was never shot-put out a window or anything). I just kind of assumed it was normal after a while, since that's how the adults act in pretty much every book/show/movie ever.

[(Anonymous)]

It's paranoia fuel for kids, too. "Don't even bother telling your parents, no one will believe you."

[smittenlotus.livejournal.com]

I always sort of assumed that the kids didn't tell their parents out of fear that Trunchbull would make their lives even more miserable if they told anybody what was going on.

[streetcake.livejournal.com]

Matilda's school disturbed me as a child more than every horror movie I ever watched as an adult could dream of.

I tried to tell myself that in real life the parents would've figured out pretty quickly and the place would've been shut down. It didn't help much.

[la-petite-singe.livejournal.com]

In the book or in the movie? In the book it kinda makes more sense--or rather, it fits in more with the world he's created. In the movie, though, yeah, that's weird.

[elenauial.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen this movie for years, and it's been making curious: wasn't the "chokey" basically an iron maiden closet? I can't remember if it was actually as bad as I remember, or if the fact that it terrified me as a kid built it up in my imagination...

[nyxelestia.livejournal.com]

I can't speak for the book, which as I understand it was set in a British private school.

For the American public school setting, though, I got a bit bothered by it, too. On one hand, I do expect it to be totally unrealistic, as it's a kids' movie (I mean hey, there's telekinesis in there). On the other hand, it disturbed me how...easily they managed this, how they made it so humorous and how NO parent believed them. I can see a lot of other things happening (i.e. Trunchbull successfully denying it once in person, parents going to the school only to see it much different than their kids describe it, ect.), but the idea that no parent ever believed their kids - even in the outrageous context of the kids' movie, it made little sense to me, and disturbed me quite a bit. If it weren't for the awesome telekinesis I probably would've forsaken the movie altogether just for that.

[(Anonymous)]

Sounds like my school when I was a kid... Luckily my homeroom teacher turned out to be a Miss Honey type of person.

We never had any bruises, and everything was kept pretty hush-hush, so it's not like our parents didn't care. Last I heard, this kind of thing still goes on in some schools.

(In case you're wondering, I'm from Europe.)

[(Anonymous)]

Considering we spent the 80s and 90s prosecuting and cleaning up from the child abuse cases from the 50s onwards that had basically been disbelieved or ignored at the time... I think this was a book that reflected real concerns that were just starting to come out. It was normal in the past for people to know there was a teacher that a child should avoid being alone with, who was a perv, and nobody did anything about it. It was normal for children to complain of serious abuse and be disbelieved, for teachers and social workers and staff at children's homes to be protected and the children disbelieved, even when there were many complaints and people basically knew it was true.

Things are very different now: we spent the 90s and 2000s basically rewriting our culture when it comes to child safety. It's seriously different now, but the Trunchbull stuff is actually quite believable in the old culture. Working in the new UK culture, I find the statistics on American schools appalling, but under the old UK system it was much the same.

[starrywolfpaws.livejournal.com]

I think it was probably partly to fit into the 'adults are dumb' thing that crops up a lot in children's books and also as someone pointed out the Trunchbull did do punishments so outlandish that no one would probably believe it happened.

Also, teachers in the UK could get away with a lot more at the time that Dahl was writing. When my mum was in secondary school she got dangled out the window by her feet by a teacher. (My mum also used to be quite a trouble starter, one of the pranks she told me about was her and some other people in her class locking the sewing mistress who nobody liked in a walk in cupboard)

[(Anonymous)]

I read the book when I was 6-7 years old and even then it completely killed my suspension of disbelief. Between that and Roald Dahl's fucked up idea of 'poetic justice', I've never been able to enjoy his books.

[checkerblob.livejournal.com]

I think that book, though very hyperbolically, made a very, very good point.
Teachers can really get away with damn near *anything* at my school. Teachers in my school carreer have thrown calculators at students, flirted with them, made fun of them for their weight, made fun of them for their height, flagrantly tossed around their political opinions as fact, preached creationism in social studies classes and made fun of anyone who disagreed, and traded 100's for "I <3 Boobies" bracelets, and all of this was just looked at as funny by everyone witnessing. And even if it wasn't, who cares? Who's going to believe a kid? A kid accuses a teacher of something, especially something sexual, and immediately it's not "oh, the poor kid," it's "oh, the poor teacher, this brat's trying to get him in trouble." People are always bitching and moaning about "ohh, public schools are too politically correct, when I was a lad teachers could give us a good thrashin' and we all turned out just fine I hate this stupid century" but that couldn't be further from the truth. (Or maybe my school just sucks, idk.)
I don't mean any disrespect to all the good teachers out there. I think good teachers are some of the most incredibly hardworking, influential, important people there are and I really look up to them. Bad teachers