Finger Post

[steepholm]

Whatever happened to the good old British V-sign? It may not date back to Agincourt, as popular legend has it, but it was a integral part of my childhood. Now it seems to have given way, at least among the young, to the middle finger. The finger is also a gesture of great antiquity, but in this context almost certainly an American import, like the grey squirrel and Trick or Treating (which has virtually put paid to Penny for the Guy).

Are there still a few colonies of V-signers in the Isle of Wight, I wonder, secretly practising their art?

I yearn to join them.

Comments

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

You should start a society and organise conventions at which old farts spend their time making V-signs at each other, in between discussing the precise angle of the fingers, regional variations, and documentary evidence on the history of the gesture. Of course there would inevitably be splits and schisms, but that would just increase the opportunities for using the gesture in anger.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Oh yes - I can see it now! Scuffles breaking out over the relative merits of the Wiltshire Moonraker and the Lincolnshire Flick, etc. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's already happened.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

Actually I wonder if that good old Brit Churchill scuppered it by adapting it as he did. I can never recall which way round is insulting and which isn't....

But it does occur to me that there's a sexual change involved. The v-sign is presumably basically a female symbol, implication either "your mother can't get enough of it" or "your masculinity is in doubt", whereas the finger is definitely phallic. Or am I misreading?

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I learnt in the playground that knuckles facing your, um, interlocutor was the insult, knuckles facing in the peace/victory symbol. But most of the Churchill pictures I've seen he has the back of his hand to the camera. And while we're at it, what happened to left hand in crook of elbow, right forearm jerked abruptly up, right hand usually in a fist, but perhaps displaying one of the finger signs as an embellishment. You only see that in period drama these days, usually referring to actual fucking rather than "fuck off" but it was current for "up yours" when I was a kid (hardly the Dark Ages).

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I learnt the same, re. the question of palm-in or palm-out - though I also remember being told that in Australia it was the other way round (can that be true?). As for Churchill, according to Wiki he started off palm in, in aristocratic ignorance of its offensiveness, but later changed to palm out. But the rules bent for him anyway, I suspect.

The elbow/fist combo was known to me as a child, but not much in use - perhaps because you couldn't do it effectively while riding a Raleigh Chopper. And yes, it seems to have gone the way of thumb-biting. Let not the V sign follow suit!

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Buster Martin of the Zimmers (the one on the right) does the single finger at the end of their video. But possibly he picked it up from those young whippersnappers from The Who.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Sorry, my point was that Buster's 100.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

When you're 100 you've the right to choose your own rude gesture.