yourdirt | INFO & WARNINGS

BOSS PAUL

Strong, mean, young, with a firm voice without a hint of doubt. He serves as the voice of Godfrey, is his system-spawned successor. Sadistic, vicious, unyielding, he is emotionally involved in his job. It is his life. Possibly he enjoys beating a man into submission rather than the passivity of the system going well. But this emotion humanizes him, for when a man feels, he can be reached. Thus, he represents some hope for improvement as Godfrey's successor.

—Cool Hand Luke dramatis personae, Frank Pierson & Donn Pearce.

in short: cw for prison brutality, violence, general sadism in his interactions with inmates, potential references to things we now understand to be child abuse, era-typical attitudes for a white cishet man in the 1940s rural south.

boss paul is a tertiary antagonist in a film about a man sentenced to serve time in a florida road gang in the early 50s - a prison guard who oversees grueling forced labor and routinely canes and kicks inmates if he feels they're not working hard enough, if he sees them "eyeballing" the free world, or as retribution for perceived disrespect. most of the time he treats prisoners with indifference and he's on speaking terms with the trustees, but as soon as someone crosses him, he's willing to participate in or even lead their torture and manipulation.

if your character's a fellow Free Man, however, he'll act pretty normally towards them, though he definitely tends toward introversion and isn't altogether that interested in starting conversations with people, to include his own coworkers. his life revolves around his job, so it may come up, with him speaking about prisoners in degrading or dehumanizing terms.

as the saying goes, every villain is the hero of his own story, and that applies to paul as well - he doesn't see what he's doing as wrong, he sees it as punishing men who deserve to be punished because they knowingly broke rules that were very clearly laid out before them. he also rationalizes his actions by telling himself that they can choose to behave and show respect at any time, that that subservient attitude is owed to him in the same way a child is expected to obey a parent or a soldier is expected to obey a commanding officer.

his attitudes toward corporal punishment cannot be separated from the place and the time in which he grew up. he was raised in a white conservative family in rural florida in the 1930s - as a child, he was "belted" - hit across the back or rear with a belt, potentially with the buckle, highly normalized then and in parts of the south today - spanked at home, and "paddled" at school if he misbehaved. he addressed his parents as sir and ma'am, and was given very, very little leeway as to what was considered acceptable and what was considered disrespectful. "backsass" in your average household in florida in that time, and still in many parts of the state today, would have absolutely been reason enough for his father to hit or belt him. because of that, it's really not a leap for him to see an extension of the same violence he grew up with from authority figures to be what's normal and deserved by prisoners who don't 'know their place', though he doesn't consciously make that connection.

there's a lot of overlap in your average upbringing in that time/location and what we now understand to be child abuse, so please let me know if discussion of that, if it comes up, is triggering for you or even if you'd just prefer to avoid it.

as for shipping-specific warnings, it's theoretically possible with women who aren't imprisoned, but given his status as an active member of the oppressing class in 1950s central florida, paul's ideas on what is appropriate and what is not, what a woman's role should be, what is attractive, etc are all very rigid and dated.

i'm only on memes with him as of right now and unless someone has a permissions page i generally don't tag out without asking first due to the nature of the character, but if you'd like to opt out pre-emptively please don't hesitate! comments on this post are screened, no hard feelings, etc etc