Foot Whipping - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• It exists, alongside other BDSM whipping practices, as a fetish/paraphilia.
• Foot-whipping scenes were shown in the 1978 film Midnight Express where the main protagonist is punished in this manner in a Turkish prison. Later in the film the same is administered to a group of schoolboys, though less severely.
• Foot whipping is a form of punishment for women in Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale.
• In The Godfather, Don Corleone's son, Sonny, has three men "thoroughly bastinadoed" by his bodyguards.
• In the 1994 film Quiz Show, Charles van Doren – imagining what tortures the Senate hearing might hold – suggests foot-whipping, along with the rack and the iron maiden.
• In the Criminal Minds episode "Revelations," Dr. Spencer Reid has the sole of his foot beaten as a form of punishment for perceived sins.
• In the TV series Bones, Dr Brennan notes that Agent Booth had been subjected to beatings on the bottom of his feet as a prisoner of war.
• In the TV series Spooks, a blown agent is subjected to the beating of his feet, consequently suffering a brain haemorrhage (2002).
• In The Scorpion Signal, a Quiller book by Adam Hall, falanga is said to have been used by Soviet counter-intelligence on the British agent Shapiro, causing "irreversible ischemic changes".
• In the film Ninja Assassin One of the students of the ninja clan was brutally whipped on the soles of his feet for making sounds when walking.
• On the 1987 album Jackamo by industrial artist Little Annie Anxiety Bandez, track two is titled "Bastinado."
• In the film The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler (2009), falaka is used by Nazi Gestapo to extract information from main female protagonist played by Anna Paquin.
• In the French film Empire of the Wolves (2005), a murder victim is noted by the investigating officer to have been tortured by falaka. In this case, the bones of the feet were badly broken.