A discussion of this tile will identify the crude and rude language that was expressed by both genders due to their equal fascination with bodily functions. Rather than using this language anti-socially, the evidence showed that both boys and girls used crude expressions to determine desirable norms of moral discourse and individual agency. As Foucault asserted (1995), political order is maintained through the use of biopower to produce docile bodies, which I would argue discourages critical perspectives. Walkerdine (1984:165) and Butler (1988) claimed that relations of power and resistance are constantly reproduced, both are in continual struggle and are constantly shifting, creating the potential for change.
In a boys’ Willow Pattern story activity group, it was evident that boy B2 introduced sexualised knowledge to encourage me to recognise his superior ‘male’ status through the use of a visual discourse:
183 B1: I’m going to colour my fish in.
B2: I’m ready for my scary bit. I’m ready for my silly bit. B3: What scary… I’m ready for my billy, silly-billy bit. B2: Now I’m going to put my willy on.
R: No, no. No. That's a button? Okay. B2: I’m drawing my willy.
R: No, no, we’re not being rude; otherwise I have to send you back to the class…
The boy’s use of ‘willy’ can be seen as an attempt to subvert the generational differences that can exist and to reposition me within their own sub-culture. It was evident that the freedom to resist the sexual repressive discourse was valued by them. I noted that I still adhered to the historical ideology of childhood innocence, by exercising a moral judgement on the anatomical sexual discourse revealing my own risk anxiety, as Levine (2002) and Blaise (2013) recognised. On reflection, an effective course would have been to address the children’s resistance to biopower with the use of appropriate anatomical terms, and to balance the power differential between us.
In a girls’ Paper Bag Princess storytelling group, girl G1 noted that in the illustration of Prince Ronald being carried away by the dragon, his trousers seemed to have slipped down to expose his bottom. Another girl declared she could see Princess Elizabeth’s boobies; however, she was drawing on her body memory as the androgynous illustration (Fig. 4.2) of the princess did not include any nipples:
R: Unfortunately, a dragon… You remember dragons. Smashed her castle, burnt all her clothes with his fiery breath and carried off poor Prince Ronald. Oh!
G1: Look, I can see his bottom!
R: That’s right, and unfortunately, she’s left with no clothes on. GIRLS: [Laughs]
G2: And I can just see her boobies.
As with the boys’ group, I consciously avoided any discussion involving sexuality, due partly to my fear of sexism that Saletan (2011) noted occurs in schools. Moreover, my own self-restraining practice following hegemonic heterosexual
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performativity limited the girls’ active exploration of knowledge and attitudes regarding gender and sexuality (Tesar et al., 2016). Although as Butler (2010) debated: ‘If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called ‘sex’ is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all’ (op. cit.:9). In retrospect, the girls’ freedom of expression may have been a rare challenge to my authority due to a growing familiarity, or simply a reflection that they had come to trust me as a co-female within the group.
Then at the end of the story, in response to Prince Ronald’s rebuke of Prince Elizabeth’s appearance, the girls suggested possible forms of punishment for his arrogant rudeness and ungratefulness; one that was feasible in the story world and one that was crude and subversive to feminine desirable behaviour:
G1: Maybe she should lock him back in jail again. G2: No, maybe punch him in the bottom [laughter].
In a girls’ Molly Whuppie oral storytelling, one girl tried to make sense of an ogre and his behaviour on her own terms. The other girls made fun of him with reference to their Ogre imagery memories from DreamWorks Animation’s Shrek (2001), which even filmmakers themselves have incorporated (Fig. 5.40):
Fig. 5.40 Princess Fiona observes the arrow that has landed in Shrek’s bottom.
Later in the discussion the girls seized the opportunity to explore the power these remarks have and to subvert their docile positioning, which can result in
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ostracization, as Foucault (1995) conjectured. This social self-regulating ‘othering’ was acknowledged by their request to express their crude comment speedily:
G1: Can I say something quickly…the Ogre could have stuff from his bottom… G2: The Ogre has a big bottom.
It was interesting that the girls carried the humorous Ogre body imagery throughout the story session, concluding with un-stereotypical aesthetic responses in both the story discussion and their drawings:
R: She married the prince and they all lived happily ever after. The end. My story is done.
G1: Can I have the ring?
R: Yes, I will just find it in my story bag. Yes? Not about the Ogre. G2: I would dress up as a nose and a bogey [Laughs loudly].
R: Okay. Shhh.
I observed that I again set a moral boundary as to what was acceptable for
discussion with the girls, imposing institutional moral restrictions on the girls ‘to be good’. Their drawings reflected the opportunity provided by the story activities to be culturally subversive to the desired feminine perfect bodies, by presenting
alternative revolting and crude images.
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One girl drew a large bold picture of an ogre with the captions ‘Big fat Ogre is a bogey brain’ and ‘don’t be mean’, thereby subverting the cultural gendered power ratio (Fig. 5.41)
Another girl drew the Ogre and Molly Whuppie in comparison to one another, like Beauty and the Beast. The Ogre was crudely drawn, with his large stomach and red belly button, in contrast to the traditional demure portrayal of femininity. The girl’s adherence to the desirable patriarchal interpretation of Molly Whuppie with feminine symbolism, flowers, revealed her own self-regulatory behaviour and resistance to the alternative robust femininity exhibited in the fairy tale (Fig. 5.42).
Fig. 5.42 A traditional interpretation of an alternative female character, Molly (school C).
Overall, the findings present a strong cultural desire for Foucauldian docility, and as Rousseau (2012:127) cautioned, restricting the children’s ability to generate ideas and be provocative. This study indicated how eliciting critical gendered responses can reveal gender bias; the girls were being actively discouraged from exploring the use of humour in relationships of power. They were being coerced to be humourless and passive, although some girls did draw humorous illustrations of the Ogre from Molly Whuppie based on their story media memories of Shrek. I observed that none of the female characters were drawn in a humorous fashion; rather the opposite. Notably, it was only the older girls who explored the ‘other’ - male body imagery -
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both in their verbal language and drawings, evidence of their curiosity of the Foucauldian biopower presented in the stories.
In a Hansel and Gretel storytelling discussion the older girls were more comfortable describing Hansel and Gretel’s stepmother in crude terms, as the boys had done:
G1: She looks bad and evil. G2: She looks horrible and… G3: She looks like a fart.
G4: She looks a bit like a pig [group laughs].
When the children were experimenting with self-regulating Foucauldian bio-power, I found that the conflict between my roles as a researcher and a teacher emerged, in determining the balance between maintaining the kind of control that adults exert over children in school whilst allowing freedom of individual expression and potential creativity (Clarricoates, 1978).
It was in the mixed groups’ storytelling discussions where the scatological humour was found to be innovative. For instance, in the Zog mixed storytelling group, a boy recounted how his Scalextric cars would rarely stay on the track, instead they would ‘widdle’ off it when he was racing them around with his father. His humorous return illustrated a home spun use of a lavatory word whilst flouting the cultural setting of the storytelling group. It was evident that the use of scatological humour had a positive influence on the boys’ responses to language by creatively using slang words, such as ‘widdle’. From their use of scatological humour, it was evident that hegemonic patriarchal positioning was occurring as Butler (1988) claimed; the girls following the boys’ lead rather than taking the initiative themselves to test the moral boundaries:
R: What would you like to get a medal for? At school. For doing something like running, helping…
B1: I want to be a trophy [group laughs].
R: Or a trophy. What would you like a trophy for?
B2: A trophy for being the best [group laughs] going to the toilet [group laughs]. G1: Stinkiest socks
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This cultural subservience is important to note for teacher mediation, to prevent any hidden discriminatory bias occurring in classrooms, as Clarricoates (1978)
observed.
This dominant performative behaviour became further stylised in a mixed Willow Pattern story discussion, where a boy manipulatively used scatological humour to undermine a girl’s reasoned response:
R: She probably loved him and didn’t like his decision. What do you think? G1: Because she didn’t like him and she wanted to kill him and she didn’t like him at all.
B1: No, he wanted to go to the toilet.
Later in the storytelling session, the boys experimented with the production of power to protect themselves against tyrannical authority by taking turns in forming
scatological responses to the father’s undemocratic ruling: R: …think about the end of the story…
B1: She turned into a bird and they didn’t want to do anything and they laid some eggs on the father…like they were flying and then the egg popped out of their bum and it landed on the father. They went, um, six eggs, on the father and then the chicks came out.
B2: It’s my go; I think she made the right choice because she wanted to be a nice bird. If my parents told me to do something, I wouldn’t do it, I would get one of my tricks like fake teeth and put it in their pants.
The boys’ subversive narratives are similar to those of Max’s imaginative response to his mother’s authoritative stance in Sendak’s (1963) Where the Wild Things Are. Significantly, it was the boys who reacted this way and rarely the girls, possibly because they are encouraged to be dependent on male figures. They are more aware of their vulnerability and of the danger of exclusion that leads to their own voluntary docility rather than equal empowerment (Foucault, 1995). Unexpectedly, in the Molly Whuppie mixed group a girl added a scatological comment, possibly seeking acceptance from the boys, the dominant social group.
189 R: Holds up ring
B1: Can I try it on? B2: You’re a girl… R: Make a wish!
B3: I would wish for…a hundred bananas! G1: I would hide under the toilet…
The girl’s wish to hide showed a degree of dependency due to the cultural
promotion of the desire to be protected. Meanwhile a boy was scorned by another for expressing a desire to try on jewellery, clearly deemed as a female rather than a male endeavour. As this question has investigated, their resistant responses to gender-neutral storytelling approaches reflected the polarised gender identification that was growing in some of the children, but was not as fixed in others. This evidence indicated the potential for overcoming resistance to transformative thinking, as Butler (1988:528) had recognised.