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

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

#101

Post by paulddraper »

ashark wrote: post #40
ux-app wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The show is dignified and wholesome. really? I always found it to be quite creepy. The constant obsession with being a "really useful" engine. The shaming of engines who don't toe the line. Victimisation of engines who misbehave. The show makes me strangely uncomfortable for some reason.

Ha, I was just reading a couple of Thomas books to my son the other day and thought, “man, the class politics of Sodor are... really weird.”

A little odd, yes. It is set in an earlier time.

Nobility, top hats, steam engines.

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

#102

Post by paulddraper »

ballenf wrote: post #77
krapp wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would they be meant to identify with, then?

I don't know, but I'm pretty sure they don't feel like they have to identify with a particular character. When they watch a train crash episode, for example, they don't run into walls afterward, they pick up their trains and crash them together.

> for example, they don't run into walls afterward, they pick up their trains and crash them together.

Oh, mine do both.

Crash into the couch.

"Bust my buffers!"

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

#103

Post by paulddraper »

mcphage wrote: post #78
hirsin wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are kids not watching Mr. Rodgers these days ? That's really tragic. I think that was one of the best things on TV growing up, in retrospect. I'm biased however, having grown up with it, in Pittsburgh where its filmed.

> Are kids not watching Mr. Rodgers these days ? It's not really on the air anymore. The modern animated spinoff "Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood" is still on, and is quite good. But I'm not sure when you'd find the original still on.

They're on Netflix.

I watched a couple recently. I've gotten way too used to HD :)

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

#104

Post by alexilliamson »

rjromero wrote: post #3

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!

I thought I was the only one who wasn't allowed to watch rugrats! For the same reason!

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

#105

Post by daxorid »

paulddraper wrote: post #13

Thomas & 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…

Warning: a little offtopic.

It must be a lonely existence for you. Your Church is also the only faith in the United States, possibly the world, that is even attempting to push back on modern trends in ever-ratcheting-forward cultural degeneracy.

> This crap makes me mad.

It may be comforting to realize that the traditional values of Western Civilization are entirely dead, and that getting angry about it is futile. We lost, and the time for acceptance has long been here. It's much less stressful to accept the loss than to rage against it.

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

#106

Post by colordrops »

krapp wrote: post #92
colordrops wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>And in fact his stories are about one of the main symbols of modern corporate industrial society: The train. He liked trains. He made up stories about them as a child, imagining them as characters talking to each other, then wrote those stories down for his own son years later. He didn't consider trains to be a symbol of corporate oppression or dystopia.

You keep putting meaning to my words where there was none. I did not say that he considered trains to be a symbol of corporate oppression or dystopia. In fact the entire point of my original comment is that you can be completely unaware of any idea of a corporate dystopia and still write a story that includes symbols of corporate dystopia because you are just using the things you see around you day to day in your stories.

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

#107

Post by linkregister »

humanrebar wrote: post #99
dmlorenzetti wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

I think the New Testament disagrees with your characterization of the Old Testament. Pretty much the entire New Testament goes on about how the Old Testament is a series of stories about how cycles of rule making and rule breaking do not lead to real justice, peace, or life. In particular, both Romans and Hebrews (though not exclusively those books) cite Old Testament stories to make the case that the Old Testament (…

This analysis, while novel and interesting to me, is not supported by the bulk of events in the early Old Testament. I will name some examples of God personally meting out the death sentence en masse as punishment for sin in various books of the Old Testament.

1. The Great Flood (Genesis),

2. Sodom (Genesis),

3. The Plagues of Egypt (Exodus),

4. The Exile of the Israelites from the Promised Land (Exodus).

Redemption, mercy, and forgiveness are primary themes in the Gospels, and further continue as major themes in the rest of the New Testament. Aside from the Lake of Fire (Hell), which is worse than being killed for being a first-born Egyptian child, references to punishment are secondary.

As for Paul's opinion of the Old Testament, that is fine, he wrote that opinion. There is no shortage of contradictory and conflicting opinions and facts in the Bible since it is a work compiled, edited, and written by humans.

That said, the mainstream Christian opinion that the Old Testament is vengeful and the New Testament is merciful is prevalent for a reason. Paul cannot retcon, try as he might, the events of the Old Testament.

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

#108

Post by rukuu001 »

paulddraper wrote: post #13

Thomas & 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…

> It is always about respect, diligence, and humility

My 2yo nephew recently started watching Thomas. It was my first real exposure to it.

After watching a few episodes I remarked that the central messages of Thomas are:

- Authority always knows best.

- Never think for yourself.

- You have no value until you are 'useful'.

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

#109

Post by Aloha »

ux-app wrote: post #27
paulddraper wrote: post #13

Thomas & 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 show is dignified and wholesome. really? I always found it to be quite creepy. The constant obsession with being a "really useful" engine. The shaming of engines who don't toe the line. Victimisation of engines who misbehave. The show makes me strangely uncomfortable for some reason.

As an engineer, being "really useful" is a goal that fits within my worldview as good and noble.

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

#110

Post by guyzero »

Animats wrote: post #63
guyzero wrote: post #12

This is only news to someone who has never watched Thomas. It took me until the second or third Thomas book and I was pretty surprised how authoritarian it all was - and that was circa 2000. But the books are from the 40's and like a lot of things people keep buying them not knowing exactly what they're getting. Also kids love talking trains.

It's not just authoritarian. It's classiest. Sir Topham Hatt inherited the job. In episode 610, Hatt is unavailable and one of the engines, Hiro, tries to run the railroad in his absence. This is considered grossly improper.

Any children's literature from 1940's England is going to be classist to some extent, but sure, it's definitely classist as all get out.
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