Compared to ...the political agenda and hidden sexual innuendo in the alternatives?
The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”
81–90 of 279 posts
Re: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”
#82The 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 m…
Regardless of the story, I find it weird when kids shows split the story across episodes. As an adult I watch series in the right order. As a kid, I didn't know there was any timeline behind the shows. I watched every episode as a separate story, would miss a few, would watch the repeats of what I already saw on different channels, etc. Maybe that doesn't apply to everyone, but I wouldn't expect young kids to connect…
It matches my vague recollections. But with today’s kids increasingly using streaming services, both YouTube and the paid kind (e.g. Sesame Street on HBO), it’s probably becoming more common for them to watch a series in order, just like it is for adults.
Re: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Diligence and selflessness, I agree, but obedience is something to be earned by the person giving orders, not a trait to be expected in the receiver.
Do you expect parents to earn the obedience of their young children? They are the receiver in this instance.
Yes. My kids may love me and trust me more than other people do, but getting them to do a thing takes work. You can also do it through coercion, threats, or violence, but that... tends to fuck kids up.
Re: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
>it was still evident that he wasn't left in their forever, as he showed up again next time. "We shall take away your rails," he said. "And leave you here for always and always and always." They definitely wanted the viewer to believe it was permanent for purposes of that episode. And if you watch the scene (linked to elsewhere in the thread), the dominant emotional themes are stubbornness, arguing, physical confront…
The fantasy / fallacy that all things are forgivable in life and nothing has permanent consequences is also damaging. Just had a good friend’s nephew drown in a pool. He had snuck in a backyard pool, skirting past or under the fence. As a parent the whole thing was a nightmare for me to imagine, but I did think about how or if to communicate to my kids that there are things they can do that will have permanent conseq…
I'm sorry to hear that, and I share your hope that I can avoid any such nightmare by being sure to talk about those dangers to kids (in my case that would be my teenage siblings just starting to drive cars).
But at the same time, I like to think there's a reasonable amount of breathing space between noting the show's excessively haunting atmosphere and indulging in a fantasy of a world completely free from consequences, and that with sufficient good faith I can do the former without having to disavow the latter.
But I definitely share your observation about the show's tone, and it's interesting to note that different people can see value in the show for opposite reasons. Some see it as wholesome, others as delivering needed lessons on the severity of life.
Re: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”
#85Thomas & Friends is gold. The show is dignified and wholesome. It is always about respect, diligence, and humility. It isn't there for stupid antics and wacky laughs. It doesn't blast color explosions and ADHD-fueled off-the-charts mind-numbing exuburance to capture kids attention. And it's been doing that for decades (pretty much eternity, as far as kids TV goes). Not since Mr. Rogers has there been a better kids TV…
The comparison with Mr. Rogers is instructive. Both shows seem rooted in a minister's desire to encapsulate ideals derived from the Bible. But while Mr. Rogers is New Testament, the Thomas books are Old Testament.
Henry, for example, gets punished for the sin of VANITY -- he doesn't stop in the tunnel in order to shirk work, but rather to avoid getting his nice new paint messed up.
To see the difference between the shows, just try to imagine Mr. Rogers presenting a puppet show about bricking a character up in his room as punishment for not wanting to get his new suit wet in the rain. And imagine him, in that Mr Rogers voice, saying "I think he deserved that punishment, don't you?"
Re: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
So just to be clear I'm mostly talking about the US and western countries. Let's break it down: Corporate: the corporation has been the main organizational unit for most of society at least since the 40s. In fact the vast majority of Americans that have a vocation work under a corporation. Totalitarian: The definition of totalitarianism is "a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires compl…
Yes. I'm well aware of the definitions of a corporation, and totalitarianism, and dystopia. But a priest who appears to have spent the early 20th century pottering around the English countryside writing stories about trains was not informed by having lived in a corporate-totalitarian dystopia. So your earlier assertion that this is what Thomas the Tank Engine represents seems specious. It's a modern reinterpretation…
Unless he was a hermit living in a cave, he was well immersed in society. And in fact his stories are about one of the main symbols of modern corporate industrial society: The train.
Re: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Yes, we did live in a corporate-totalitarian dystopia in the 40s to 70s. I understand people like to interpret things through that lens now but like seeing Tolkien's work as an allegory for industrialization or the atomic bombs, it seems to me to be mostly post-hoc revisionism to do so. Reading the Wikipedia page of the author, I don't see any evidence of a "corporate-totalitarian dystopia" which would inform his s…
So just to be clear I'm mostly talking about the US and western countries. Let's break it down: Corporate: the corporation has been the main organizational unit for most of society at least since the 40s. In fact the vast majority of Americans that have a vocation work under a corporation. Totalitarian: The definition of totalitarianism is "a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires compl…
> In fact the vast majority of Americans that have a vocation work under a corporation.
I'm curious about that. The total # of government employees is about 22 million. Add to that over a million in the military. The total # of employees is about 127 million.
The number of people employed by the Fortune 500 is about 27 million, or 17% of the workforce.
http://fortune.com/2015/06/13/fortune-500-most-employees/
Corporations can be mom&pop companies, so how far down from the 500 do you want to go to be part of a "corporate agenda"?
Also, if corporations control the media, how is it you are able to post here?
Re: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”
#88The New Yorker turned into Pat Robertson and the 700 Club so quickly I didn't even notice. Robertson divined the nefarious gay-agenda purpose of Teletubbies and now Ms. Tolentino discovers the totalitarianism that is Thomas & Friends. One can only imagine the undisguised communism of Barney & Friends (caring means sharing!) awaiting discovery or the Satanic influences of Lyrick/HIT (owners and distributors of Barney…
In all fairness, Teletubbies had no dialog. With enough creativity, you could read whatever you want into it.
When an insubordinate train car is bricked up "for always and always" and the narrator comments "I think he deserved his punishment, don’t you?", well, um, I think it's OK to say there's some seriously old-school moralizing going on.
Re: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
So just to be clear I'm mostly talking about the US and western countries. Let's break it down: Corporate: the corporation has been the main organizational unit for most of society at least since the 40s. In fact the vast majority of Americans that have a vocation work under a corporation. Totalitarian: The definition of totalitarianism is "a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires compl…
Yes. I'm well aware of the definitions of a corporation, and totalitarianism, and dystopia. But a priest who appears to have spent the early 20th century pottering around the English countryside writing stories about trains was not informed by having lived in a corporate-totalitarian dystopia. So your earlier assertion that this is what Thomas the Tank Engine represents seems specious. It's a modern reinterpretation…
Priests are the public face of the most totalitarian dystopian corporation ever to menace humanity. I guess if we're talking about an English priest he probably worked for a different such corporation that split off from the original about 500 years ago... They didn't split in order to cut back on the dystopian totalitarianism!
Re: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”
#90"Thomas the Tank Engine" was written by Reverend Wilbert Awdry, a minister in the Anglican church.
As is the Christian tradition, he understood the ultimate authority of God, the creator, and as is taught in the Bible, the necessity of teaching obedience to children.
Since most of the early stories were written to his son, Christopher, it makes sense to me that they were about some of the key themes of his faith and his views for raising children.