That's a question I asked Grok after reading "Plane passenger blasted for slapping man amid a panic attack in wild video: ‘You shouldn’t have raised your hand'" (NY Post).
Here's Cher's memorable slap (or, I should say, slaps):
Don't try that at home and don't try it in public either. Now, you might wonder, what if the man doing the slapping sincerely believed he was helping? (That makes me think of the episode of "Loudermilk" where the main character gives someone the Heimlich maneuver and gets sued.)
Here's Grok's answer, if you are curious. Excerpt: "The 'hysterical slap' is a common cinematic device rooted in early 20th-century ideas about treating emotional distress (once labeled 'hysteria,' now recognized as conditions like panic attacks, anxiety, or dissociation). Physiologically, a slap might theoretically trigger a fight-or-flight response by activating the sympathetic nervous system, increasing alertness through hormone release (like adrenaline) and potentially interrupting a panic loop via surprise. However, this is unreliable and short-lived at best, often depicted in media for dramatic effect rather than accuracy. In practice, it can backfire by provoking aggression, deepening trauma, or shifting the person from emotional distress to physical pain or anger, making de-escalation harder."
ADDED: What are some other ways to deal with emotion that the movies might make you think are a good idea? Grok's answers: 1. Throw a drink in somebody's face to express anger, 2. Kiss someone suddenly to interrupt their verbal argument, 3. Keep pursuing your love object after she/he has turned you down, 4. Grab someone by the shoulders and shake them hard while yelling "Get a grip!" right in their face.
Basically, the movies are full of bad ideas!
IN THE COMMENTS: I'm being savaged for my failure to acknowledge "Airplane!"
Now, I gotta get outta here!
Posts
92 comments:
How can anyone here weigh in on this? It was an Indigo flight from Mumbai to Kolkata. "Is it ever appropriate [in Indian culture] to slap someone in the face to calm them down or stop them from spiraling emotionally?" I don't know.
Thanks. I needed that.
Absolutely trust Grok to serve as modern Miss Manners. 🙄
Most people would have linked this instead.
Who could forget the sequence in the film Airplane in which a long line of increasingly lethal slappers forms to administer "help" to the panicked passenger?
Has Althouse never seen Airplane!?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0GW0Vnr9Yc
Maybe the guy was influenced by Moe's fine example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZgVRJ-H8U#ddg-play
"How can anyone here weigh in on this? It was an Indigo flight from Mumbai to Kolkata. "Is it ever appropriate [in Indian culture] to slap someone in the face to calm them down or stop them from spiraling emotionally?""
I can still ask the question the way I did. Grok could answer: It's appropriate in some cultures, etc.
In the first season of Grantchester, Robson Green slaps a murdered professor’s wife to calm her down. It was a too on-the-nose way to tell the audience the past is a different country, like the picnic littering scene in Mad Men.
RR
JSM
I’d want someone to slap me to keep me from getting on an Indian plane in the first place!
RR
JSM
I wonder if there's slap tourism, like sex tourism in Thailand, where people travel to countries whose rules and mores around slapping people are more liberal because they can't get satisfaction of their needs at home.
The guy doing the slapping wasn't trying to help anyone. He was annoyed. No excuse.
Also I am very proud of myself for not clicking on the Bizarre Beachy Sex Fetish thing.
Can we get in line? I can find a pipe wrench.
Poor Peter Lorre gets slapped by Bogart and Mary Astor in "Maltese Falcon" maybe Huston didn't like him. GWTW has a great movie slap of Prissy after she tells Scarlett she was lying, she "dont know nothin' about birthin babies".
Men in the movies are supposed to get slapped by women and like it. Occasionally, one will slap back. Cant think of a movie where that's done.
"Airplane" was also my first thought.
At work I've often wanted to take someone by the shoulders, shake them, and tell them to "Wake up" or "Get a grip" but refrained from doing so.
"Has Althouse never seen Airplane!?"
I saw the trailer when it was first coming out. I thought that was hilarious but also that I'd seen the whole movie. Seemed dumb to go out and sit there for the whole thing. Since then, I've seen many clips, but I have never watched the movie.
There are quite a few big movies I've never seen: The Sound of Music, Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Apocalypse Now... endless romcoms and action movies, virtually every superhero movie, etc. etc.
I'm sure I've seen that "Airplane!" clip before though. Just did not come to mind. And it's so on point.
Thanks for bringing it up and I've added it to the post.
Of course, Cage has an eminently slapable face, so there is that.
"Also I am very proud of myself for not clicking on the Bizarre Beachy Sex Fetish thing."
LOL. I clicked on it! I even kind of read it. But I still don't understand what people are doing with a beach ball... or if the beach ball was even part of it. I think I saw something about giantesses. Trying to forget. You can remember it for me.
Professor Plum: Maybe he was poisoned!
Mrs. Peacock: WAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!
Mr. Green: Sit down! Sit down, Mrs. Peacock!
::slaps::
Mr. Green: Well...I...had to stop her screaming...
"Airplane" was the product of the Zucker brothers, a couple of Milwaukee boys (Shorewood, actually) who ran the Kentucky Fried Theater in Madison back in the very early 1970s at Regent and Randall.
Yes. Shock and order in physics, chemistry, etc, and social phenomena, too.
"There are quite a few big movies I've never seen: The Sound of Music, Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Apocalypse Now..."
LOL - You didn't miss anything.
Billy wilder must have had weird thing against Shirley Maclaine because she's vicously slapped over and over again by Dr. whathisname in the Apartment (he's trying to wake her up after too many sleeping pills) and then has Jack Lemmon slap her in Irma La Douche.
Usually in the old movies, women were given the job of slapping other women, except in a medical emergency.
"tcrosse said...
Thanks. I needed that."
My first thought. Mennen Skin Bracer commercials.
You want to see slapping to the psychotic level google Russia Slap Contests. Brutal.
Airplane! is full of quotable one liners. I can understand going into teaching and law never watching it, but you’d stick out in aviation or aerospace if you didn’t recognize a line from Airplane!
"Basically, the movies are full of bad ideas!"
I think one reason we go to movies is to see things that can't be done in real life. We get to see our fantasies played out without cost.
Airplane! Someday I gotta watch that movie.
I love The Sound of music. I know it's a bit cheezy - but I don't care.
"Airplane" was a spoof remake of and older airliner movie called "Zero Hour." It matches almost scene for scene.
I've never watched Jaws or any horror movie except The shining. the shining did me in.
I watched airplane in grade school, with the class on some sort of outing. we laughed like grade-schoolers.
Sean Connery expressed a different view when it came to women, if i recall correctly. "schlappp"
The Cher slap was all about the love.
smacking someone on an airplane for any reason is a great way to ruin your own day, and deservedly so.
"New York" magazine had a contest feature or column, and one challenge was to make alterations to famous movie lines. The one I always liked best was related to GWTW, when Prissy says
"Lawzy miz Scarlett, I don't know nothin' 'bout obstetrics!"
On major airlines it seems probable that the flight attendants have received training on how to deal with passengers having panic attacks. Best to keep your untrained hands to yourself and let the flight attendants deal with the situation.
I saw "The Shining" in the theater when it came out, despite not really liking the genre, Stephen King, or the leads--I went because I admire Kubrick.
There are movies of his that I can enjoy rewatching, but that is not one of them.
Word has somehow got around that a split infinitive is always wrong. This is of a piece with the sentimental and outworn notion that it is always wrong to strike a lady. Everybody will recall at least one woman of his acquaintance whom, at one time, or another, he has had to punch or slap. I have in mind a charming lady who is overcome by the unaccountable desire, at formal dinners with red and white wines, to climb up on the table and lie down. Her dinner companions used at first to pinch her, under cover of the conversation, but she pinched right back or, what is even less defensible, tickled. They finally learned that they could make her hold her seat only by fetching her a smart downward blow on the head. She would then sit quietly through the rest of the dinner, smiling dreamily and nodding at people, and looking altogether charming.
A man who does not know his own strength could, of course, all too easily overshoot the mark and, instead of producing the delightful languor to which I have alluded, knock his companion completely under the table, an awkward situation which should be avoided at all costs because it would leave two men seated next to each other. I know of one man who, to avert this faux pas, used to punch his dinner companion in the side (she would begin to cry during the red-wine courses), a blow which can be executed, as a rule, with less fuss, but which has the disadvantage of almost always causing the person who is struck to shout. The hostess, in order to put her guest at her ease, must shout too, which is almost certain to arouse one of those nervous, high-strung men, so common at formal dinners, to such a pitch that he will begin throwing things. There is nothing more deplorable than the spectacle of a formal dinner party ending in a brawl. And yet it is surprising how even the most cultured and charming people can go utterly to pieces when something is unexpectedly thrown at table. They instantly have an overwhelming desire to "join in." Everybody has, at one time or another, experienced the urge to throw a plate of jelly or a half grapefruit, an urge comparable to the inclination that suddenly assails one to leap from high places. Usually this tendency passes as quickly as it comes, but it is astounding how rapidly it can be converted into action once the spell of dignity and well-bred reserve is broken by the sight of, say, a green-glass salad plate flying through the air. It is all but impossible to sit quietly by while someone is throwing salad plates. One is stirred to participation not only by the swift progress of the objects and their crash as they hit something, but also by the cries of "Whammy!" and Whoop!" with which most men accompany the act of hurling plates. In the end someone is bound to be caught over the eye by a badly aimed plate and rendered unconscious.
My contemporary, Mr. Fowler, in a painstaking analysis of the split infinitive, divides the English-speaking world into five classes as regards this construction: those who don't know and don't care, those who don't know and do care, those who know and approve, those who know and condemn, and those who know and discriminate. (The fact that there was no transition at all between the preceding paragraph and this one does not mean that I did not try, in several different ways, to get back to the split infinitive logically. As in a bridge hand, the absence of a re-entry is not always the fault of the man who is playing the hand, but of the way the cards lie in the dummy. To say more would only make it more difficult than it now is, if possible, to get back to Mr. Fowler.) ...
Thurber The Ladies' and Gentlemen's Guide to Modern English Usage
I remember seeing Airplane at a drive-in when I was 18 or so. I thought it was really stupid and juvenile.
Now I find myself saying "I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue!" about twice a month. And stop calling me Shirley!
I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now.
My high school English teacher recommended only a one-handed slap for female hysteria, avoiding the one from each side two handed slap.
The Airplane scene was the first thing that came to mind as I was reading, me too.
Another clip.
On the real situation, Muslims should always be slapped around on general principals. After all, routine slappings of "protected" Christians are obligatory according to the Hadith, especially after they pay the poll tax. (The non-protected kind are to be immediately killed.) After slapping the Muslim, good manners require the slapper to say, "There's your jizya, Abdul."
Ah two of my all-time favorite movies united in a slap. Slapping really only works on TV and movies. Put it in the same category as pillow fights and relationship exposition disguised as dialog: "You're my husband!" "He's your son!" "I'm your father!" etc.
Now I find myself saying "I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue!" about twice a month. And stop calling me Shirley!
Same. Since about 1980. Eminently quotable were Abrams Zucker Abrams. Loved Police Squad before that.
ah, makes sense now why that Waiting on Andre movie is your favorite if you haven't seen many of the populist classics.
"Basically, the movies are full of bad ideas!"
As I said before, the movies are fantasies; not realities. They often show things that people would like to do but shouldn't really do.
Not necessarily a slap but I did experience Dixie cups of water being tossed in my face. I had an issue with night terrors that lasted well past toddler stage. When it got bad enough my dad tossed cold water in my face to wake me up. Not a fun way to wake up as a four or five year old. Extremely startling. Looking back it would almost seem as though it couldn’t have really happened, but my sister says it most definitely did.
My son had night terrors and I did not toss water in his face. I’d rock him and sing to him until he finally quit screaming/crying. My husband and our next door neighbor would commiserate with each other after really bad nights as they got in their cars to go to work.
Both my son and I slept walk into our early twenties.
"Basically, the movies are full of bad ideas!"
A movie chock full of "good ideas" is a terrible movie.
Adam and Eve naked in the garden was a good idea, until they discovered their nudity and then it was a bad idea.
Here is Orson Wells on "the problem with movies".
Embryonic state ideas in the head are all great, I suppose.
Really, no one is mentioning the famous Patton slappings?
"Slap Hear "Slap Heard around the W ound the World": George Patton and Shell Shock
Alexander G. Lovelace
2019 Alexander G. Lovelace
ABSTRACT: This article addresses the motives behind General
George Patton slapping two soldiers in Army field hospitals during
the Sicily campaign. With a more comprehensive understanding of
the evolution of mental health conditions associated with combat
trauma, the complexities of battlefield leadership become clearer.
The Airplane! scene was what came immediately to mind for me, too. But I am very surprised that nobody has cried 'But muh Russians ! '. They take it very seriously, indeed.
Moe Howard.
If I was hysterical and got slapped back into lucidity, the only face-saving response would be a good manly, "Thanks, I needed that!"
You've never seen Airplane!? Surely you can't be serious.
Don't forget "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger, Third Eye"
I grok George Patton
The sin was that it was a man. Women can beat up on men and other women and nobody says anything.
They can even use a pockebook, umbrella, rolling pin or cast iron skillet and people will think it is funny. Not funny- strange but funny-humorous.
John Henry
Ann the blogger is permitted to express herself using "outta" in place of "out of" but Chuck Shumer was criticized for verbally dropping the letter "g" from words ending in "ing."
And his NYC accent obviously isn't an acceptable excuse!
Moe did it all the time to Curly. Sometimes even to Larry and Shemp. And I laughed and laughed. So, yes, face slapping is a good thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYF_-EhONJ8
You have to watch the long uncut version of Apocalypse Now.
The Horror, the horror. and Smells like Victory and Charlie don't surf.
Many memorable lines and memorable scenes in that movie.
Excuse me I have to play Ride of the Valkyrie very loud now.
Also, no shaking, grabbing, etc, which may be perceived as assault, trigger a disordered reaction, lawsuits, etc.
Women can beat up on men and other women
The days of the "lady and gentleman" social protocol are archaic and repressive. Now, the men identifying as women can beat women silly and women are expected to take a knee. Also, following progressive principles, the "burden" of evidence is aborted, sequestered in sanctuary states, under the umbrella of Planned Parenthood corporation, etc, lest a DEIst schism evolve a la grooming, CAIR, some Lives Matter, etc.
"She's my sister!" *slap*
"She's my daughter!" *slap*
"She's my sister and my daughter!"
That's the way that Hollywood does it. In real life, you're more likely to take hold of someone and say, "Snap out of it" (if it ever actually does happen).
I wonder why Madison Avenue didn't follow Hollywood's lead.
"Razzles is a candy!" *slap*
"Razzles is a gum!" *slap*
"Razzles is a candy and a gum!"
Finally a way to resolve whether it's peanut butter on the chocolate or chocolate in the peanut butter.
Slappy was the dwarf who took a lunch, then a siesta, and transitioned with a Sleepy launch. Ethics of the story: be wary of jackasses braying handmade tales, bearing scalpels.
In The Producers, Gene Wilder has a panic attack and Zero Mostel throws a pitcher of water on him. Wilder stops screaming for a second and then his panic attack resumes -- “I’m in pain and I’m wet and I’m still hysterical!”
Key and Peele: Fronthand/Backhand.
Movies must resolve the plot by the end of Act III and in 2 hours or less. A slap rapidly symbolizes "regaining emotional control" or "recalibrating emotions." This is great for a relationship transition plot point. However, with the Three Stooges slapping is the gag.
None of this is science, it's just Hollywood.
I'm gonna go do a Wile E. Coyote as I take a cliff selfie now. I'll be fine and walk back to safety. Hollywood said I could.
I love the sound of breaking glass.
Assault or battery, plus compensatory damages. RHHardin has me flummoxed.
A vid has been circulating of late, with an amusing way to stop babies in mid-meltdown. It’s hilarious. Much funnier than a slap across the face.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kJiRmI4Wl0
I love the sound of breaking glass.
I Love The Sound Of Crashing Guitars
Sometimes the standard trope is the best you can hope for.
How about the slap of one hand clapping?
Psycho-atrists recommend slapping, snipping, scalping a Planned baby. I would take their advice with an oceanful of salt.
Is it still forward-looking, ethically cleansed to perform a human rite, the fourth choice, when he or she starts pumping, respiring, later kicking in a hysterical fit to remain a viable object of her affection? The duplicity is breathtaking. #BLM
I've had panic attacks. They are entirely different than anxiety attacks. They are not to be messed with in anyway.
Slap me during one, and it's the Tasmanian Devil chewing off your face.
but Chuck Shumer was criticized for verbally dropping the letter "g" from words ending in "ing."
Maybe you could tell us what words he was dropping the gs for proper perspective.
Panic attacks do not = hysteria. Often times it's paralysis ... as in your body - piece by piece - starts going numb. Feet, hands, face, mid-section ...
It's quite enjoyable. /s
Kingsley Amis seems to have thought the slap method appropriate. About half-way through Chapter 16 of Lucky Jim, he gives a page-long description of the hysterical symptoms of Jim Dixon's horrible semi-girlfriend Margaret, then his housemate comes in:
"'Hysterics, eh?' Atkinson said, and slapped Margaret several times on the face, very hard, Dixon thought. He pushed Dixon out of the way and sat down on the bed, gripping Margaret by the shoulders and shaking her vigorously. 'There's some whisky up in my cupboard. Go and get it.'
"Dixon ran out and up the stairs. The only thought that presented itself to him at all clearly was one of mild surprise that the fictional or cinematic treatment of hysterics should be based so firmly on what was evidently the right treatment."
“In the Heat of the Night” has a great slapping scene.
"Waiting on Andre movie"
I don't know whether you did that mash-up deliberately, but it made me laugh out loud.
There are quite a few big movies I've never seen: The Sound of Music, Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Apocalypse Now
I've seen "The Sound of Music" and "Raiders of the Lost Arc". I haven't seen the other two, but I did go to a panel about the 50th anniversary of "Jaws" at SDCC. I'm still not that interested in seeing it. I did read the book when it first came out.
The best thing about "The Sound of Music" is the music. The second best thing is that their real lives were more interesting than the movie. Baron von Trapp was a U-boat commander during WWI and was responsible for sinking multiple Allied merchant marine ships and a couple of Allied warships (almost 700 lives were lost when a French warship was sunk). Maria was orphaned and raised by her atheist uncle. She really did enter a convent and plan on becoming a nun.
I've done it a couple times to male friends who were in drunken hysterics, and it was more than just a smack, more like a punch. One said "Thanks, I deserved that. The other said "Ha, you didn't even knock me out." In both cases the hysterics stopped and things were better after that, but I would not recommend it unless it's a very close friend.
Anybody want a close friend?
The one time I had to deal with someone's panic attack, I just waved my hand in front of their face and kept talking normally. They reconnected with reality after that, and to be honest, I have no idea if what I did made a difference. The group conversation proceeded as if nothing had happened, which defused an embarrassing moment.
The strangest thing was that I entered a surreal state the moment before the attack and could feel it coming on for the other person. It was like some sort of telepathy, and I don't believe in telepathy :)
The Professor is in a very funny mood tonight. Bravo.
You've always had a weird hatred of "The Sound of Music" among the liberal elite. They used to snark about it alot. Kael called it "The sound of Mucas". Gene Kelly (the ultimate midwit) refused to direct it, calling it a "Piece of shit". He went on to direct that other piece of shit "Hello Dolly".
I can remember liberal sportwriters snarking about some Football coach who said his favorite film was the "Sound of music". My...how "Middle American". Not our sort of people my dear. Not like the sophisticated" like "West side story". LOL. Its the sort of film derided by people who used to think Citizen Kane was the greatest movie ever.
I think the film snobbery has died down quite a bit. Maybe because people care so much less about film, and art in general.
Giving you a slap in the face is the mark of a real friend - or someone who dislikes you.
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