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The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”

newyorker.com

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Re: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”

#3

Post by rjromero »

My mother didn’t let me watch anything but Thomas and Friends. She said after watching Rugrats or Spongebob i would turn into a disobedient brat, but after watching Thomas I was apparently well mannered and well behaved.

I ended up becoming a soft well mannered programmer. Fuck you Thomas!

Re: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”

#7

Post by twiss »

The next episode [1], aired two days later, contains the conclusion of the story, and he gets out of the tunnel. I do agree that 2 days is rather long to leave kids with the conclusion of that first episode though.

The final lines are: "Henry doesn't mind the rain now. He knows that the best way to keep his paint nice is not to run into tunnels, but to ask his driver to rub him down when the day's work is over."

It might be a bit authoritarian, but it can also just be interpreted as "don't run away from your problems, instead, ask for help and you will be helped", which is not such a bad lesson and much better than the usual version, which is just "don't run away from your problems".

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWtNGzGZTCo

Re: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”

#8

Post by umeshunni »

modeless wrote: post #4

I am certain that this story was inspired by the reporter reading this recent reddit thread that pointed out the absurdity of this show: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/6zgpig/what_is_t...

Modern "journalism" is mostly copy pasting content from Reddit. BuzzFeed turns AskReddits into listicles, higher quality publications turn Reddit posts into long form content.
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