Whip Me, Beat Me, Make Me Buy Dumb Things

From Spank While you Sell: Corporal punishment imagery in print advertising:




Of particular note:

Schoolboys in Disgrace

This is a record sleeve, which I suppose is a kind of advertising. The album, by that most uncompromisingly British of veteran rock bands, The Kinks, dates from 1975. This cartoon image (credited to one Mickey Finn) was already the height of retro when it first appeared, and the era alluded to is probably really the late 1950s, when Kinks leader/songwriter Ray Davies and his brother Dave were at school in suburban north London. The lyrics of one song on the disc, Headmaster, clearly refer to getting the cane. From a cultural historian's point of view, it's extremely interesting that there is such a clear reference -- in the lyrics and in the drawing -- to bare-bottom canings, since even in the 1950s that was not at all the norm for ordinary local secondary schools:

Headmaster, this is my confession,
I've been such a little fool.
I've dishonoured one who trusted me,
I have broken all the rules.
I've been such a little fool.
Don't tell all my friends I bent over,
Don't tell them you made me cry.
Don't tell them I've been sacrificed,
Don't tell all my friends or I'll die.
Headmaster don't beat me I beg you,
I know that I've let you down.
Headmaster please spare me I beg you,
Don't make me take my trousers down.