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I also never considered it supplicatory or belittling; that’s two knees. You can stand to fight quickly from one knee, not so from two.
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I’ve always suspected the UK establishment uses ‘bending the knee’ as opposed to taking a knee because the former sounds much more like prostrating before royalty...Well, yes, so the one-knee pose does have more supplicatory/belittling context in monarchic societies.
NB I'm not criticising it any way. Just interested in the cultural context/readings.
chez_jay-
Well, yes, so the one-knee pose does have more supplicatory/belittling context in monarchic societies.
Agreed, although tbh I always thought honour recipients were required to kneel more deeply, and on both knees. Perhaps the pic is a more modern way of bending the knee?
The averted gaze and lowered head in your pic also convey submission. In sports you just keep your gaze and head normal, which conveys a different body language. If it’s a truly awful injury then yeah people will cry, avert their eyes, put their head down...
The possible subliminal impact of ‘bend the knee’ vs. ‘take a knee’ are also interesting to me. I suspect They (politicians) know there’s difference in the meaning, even if the physical action is similar or the same. I suspect they purposely choose to use the former in order to conflate both actions in the public discourse.
Eseman
It might be US in origin, certainly that’s where I encountered it most often.
I grew up across the pond and played various contact and low-contact sports competitively from grade school to university. When a player was injured badly enough to stop play and potentially be taken off the field, the opposing team would always take a knee while the coaches or medics investigated how bad it was. (one would kneel in cases where it was expected to be bad).
I always understood it as a sign of respect for one’s opponent, as a recognition that it could happen to anyone and it was ultimately a game not worth serious injury (even in full contact sports with scholarships on the line*), and to signal that whatever caused the injury wasn’t in keeping with their team’s ethos or the spirit of the game.
Kaepernick started taking a knee during the US Anthem at NFL games to protest and draw attention to police killings of black Americans. I understood it from the first moment as a respectful sign of protest (vs. sitting down which would be disrespectful) signalling that what was happening was a tragedy that deserved recognition. Not once did I think he was disrespecting the US, the anthem, The Troops (TM), the bald eagle, etc etc.
I also never considered it supplicatory or belittling; that’s two knees. You can stand to fight quickly from one knee, not so from two.
I’ve always suspected the UK establishment uses ‘bending the knee’ as opposed to taking a knee because the former sounds much more like prostrating before royalty, or like a line from Game of Thrones. It irritates me, because it undermines an effort to address and extinguish racism.