Cinemas Greatest Scenes: The Burning Sanitary Napkin Scene from ‘To Sir, With Love’ (1967).

Sidney Poitier was well known for choosing roles in which his characters embodied virtues of dignity and strength. Interestingly, many of his most important roles during the 50s and 60s leading to the release of To Sir, With Love tackled issues around race and or racial tolerance. While he was occasionally criticised by sections of Black audiences and critics alike, as a “pseudo-white sellout”, he didn’t waver from his conviction to bring forth likeable black heroes to the screen. His role as police detective Virgil Tibbs in In the Heat of the Night (1967) is often cited as one of the best performances ever by a Black actor, in which Poitier rises to the occasion in a small Mississippi town where he is not welcome. It is also the film in which the hero delivers a racist bigot a backhanded slap they say was felt ‘round the world.

In James Clavell’s To Sir, With Love, Poitier plays another likeable hero called Mark Thackeray, an out of work Black engineer-turned-high school teacher, who gets the best out of his trouble-making British students. It was exactly the type of role Poitier thought would turn heads. Moreover, it’s a rare film performance which upends the white saviour trope (where a white character rescues people of colour). This time round it’s Poitier who saves the day. While his student have every reason to believe that Poitier’s Thackray is just another teacher to bully, they eventually change their mind realising that his sincere interest and empathy towards is genuine. It fosters a win-win relationship between teacher and students based entirely on respect. However to get there Thackeray must endure a humiliating moment where in the only time in the film he loses it. 

In arguably the most talked about scene of To Sir, With Love, Thackeray walks through the school gates like any other morning unaware what his students have installed for him. He’s first tripped up by a water bomb at the schoolhouse entrance which puts him on high alert. Things go from bad to worse as he enters the classroom door to smell a foul odour in the air and see smoke billowing out of the classroom furnace. He soon discovers someone had thrown a sanitary napkin into the stove. He abruptly orders the boys out of the classroom and for the first time loses control of his temper at the girls. He bellows how sickened he is by their “sluttish manner” and that “only a filthy slut would have done this thing”. He reprimands the girls and demands they remove it before storming out of the classroom and into the staff room to recompose himself.

In the staff room though he finds himself in the presence of his colleague Miss Blanchard. When she asks him what’s wrong, he replies “I lost my temper. The one thing I swore I would never, never do.” Next he continues to rant and carrying on how disappointed he is himself, especially how quickly his students managed to get him so streamed up. Then as if a light bulb had come on in his head, he quickly comes to understand that he has been looking at it all wrong. To truly connect with his students he realises he has to stop treating them as kids.

Re-entering the classroom, he ceremoniously throws in the trash bin his study guides and says, “Those are out, they are useless to you. I suddenly realised you are not children, that you will be adults in a few weeks. With all the responsibilities that it implies.” From now on in his classroom he declares they will learn life skills to prepare them for adulthood and in the process they will learn to behave and treat each other as responsible adults. In doing so they will observe certain courtesy like referring to him as “Sir” or Mr. Thackeray. The young ladies will be addressed as “Miss” and the boys by their surname. When Thackeray is asked what will they talk about? He simply replies, “About life, survival, love, death, sex, marriage, rebellion. Anything you want.” It’s a tall task but one that Thackeray must commit to, if he hopes to challenge and change the students in his supervision.