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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”

#261

Post by C0DEHERO »

CodeKommissar wrote: post #41
Twirrim wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's go to be the most annoying children's show character ever. That's saying a lot, when you consider just how many kids characters have zero redeeming qualities. He whines, about just about everything, everywhere. Relentlessly. https://youtu.be/cGo60pp_9IM?t=6m30s It got really annoying when my wife and I watched it with some of my nieces (and saw how the show influenced their behaviour) that when we had kids of ou…

I've watched all the bus episode (from the 6:30 mark), and I don't think it was that bad. He just complained for 10 seconds that he wanted to ride the school bus. "Minor" character flaws that I'd point out were that Caillou had to be told by his mother to say thank you to the bus driver, and that he gifted the bus driver with a drawing of himself riding the bus (what an egomaniac that Caillou). But yeah, I don't have…

This bus episode really isn't that bad, but there are terrible episodes where he is just constantly whining and being mean to his little sister, even pushing her around.

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

#262

Post by klibertp »

ux-app wrote: post #254
klibertp wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that's gross Sure, it is now. But it (probably) wasn't gross back when the bible was written. The bible is a piece of art/propaganda written to support the sense of tribal unity and to ensure political power stays with the right people. The God, therefore, is just a character - a literary device - from a book written 3k years ago for a very specific target audience. We are not that target audience and we lack the c…

>And it's not "whitewashing". Nobody denies that OT God is a mass killer. They just claim that - for a fictional character - being a mass killer (or a god for that matter) was very differently perceived 3000 years ago in a middle of a desert. sigh you've clearly never dealt with fundies. I was raised by people who taught me that literally every word was divine and that the entire bible is a historical document (there…

Yeah, I was thinking about HN in general and coldtea specifically when writing that "nobody denies" part. I don't see fundamentalists here often and I thought that we can talk about the bible on the literary and historical levels.

Then I read a comment saying that there is no morality without god and saw my previous comment above downvoted... I initially tought that you overreacted (not that I don't understand your reasons for it 100%!), but now I'm not so sure... :)

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

#263

Post by herdrick »

timsayshey wrote: post #209
humanrebar wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This analysis, while novel and interesting to me, is not supported by the bulk of events in the early Old Testament. Fair enough. But my point was that the analysis was the analysis of the New Testament authors. People are free to provide their own critical analysis, but they're disagreeing with Peter, Paul, and the Jesus of the Gospels even. I think people that hold this viewpoint and care to be rigorous about it…

Wow. I've just got to say thank you for some of the most rational responses I've seen on hn in regards to the Bible. It's almost always misrepresented here by people with little knowledge of it or just bad personal experiences. You can almost feel their anger and bitterness. Which I get because I used to be the same way. Man, I really wish hn had a follow button so I could read more of your level headed and insightfu…

Just in case you don't know about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=humanrebar

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

#264

Post by defgeneric »

Retra wrote: post #133
dingaling wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Never think for yourself Independent thinking is lauded ( Toad suggesting how to save the whale ), but unilateral action is not. > You have no value until you are 'useful'. In the wider context of society that's entirely accurate. Community doesn't exist unless people contribute to the group.

There is a risk of setting up a situation where "useful" is determined by presumed authority rather than any objective sense of utility. There's also the problem of how to deal with things that are not useful now , but presumably will be (in an emergency, for example.) There's also the problem of usefulness that is not communicated effectively; maybe we don't know how to express the usefulness of some activity. This…

The value of being useful is classic bourgeois ideology. It was the basis of bourgeois criticism of the aristocracy, church, etc. Everything was called on to justify itself in real-world terms. This was a good thing. And it certainly provided a better basis for authority than what preceded it.

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

#265

Post by pygy_ »

falsedan wrote: post #250
pygy_ wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't watch it as a kid, and only sampled a few episodes. From what I've seen, while they may break rules, they do so in order to comply with an order coming from the humans (or to fall into their good graces).

That's not the case at all, Thomas is always doing things he shouldn't for fun, like disturbing sleeping trains (Gordon), winding up trains with remarks (also Gordon), passing warning boards in mines, and falling into subsiding mines[0]. Then there's not being nice to trucks, refusing to pull trucks, panicking from a near-collision and running away, ignoring advice from more-experiences engines and losing a head of s…

> The ones where they do as they're asked to are the minority.

As I told you I only sampled a few episodes (4-5), and servility and/or racism (Diesel) were present in most of them, without any distance or criticism. I'm glad there are other themes, but I don't want to watch every episode before I show them to my kids, so I avoid the series altogether.

Edit: BTW, By Diesel, I meant Trucks, that's how they are called in the French translation.

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

#266

Post by pygy_ »

jawilson2 wrote: post #233
pygy_ wrote: post #178

Beside specific stories, there are two things in the general set up of Thomas that makes it IMO a toxic show. - The trains, who have children's minds, are unquestionably servile. They obey a pompous and capricious elite (humans) and the narrator goes along for the ride. Obeying is very important for Thomas (who's physically constrained to spend his life on rails). He'll do whatever is needed to stay in his master's g…

I don't think it's racist, more classist. The "new" diesels are threatening to obsolete the older, dirtier, less efficient "steamies", the the steam engines understandably resent them for it. It reminds me more of the dynamic in The Office between the warehouse and office workers than anything to do with race.

Tribalism due to physical traits.

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

#267

Post by WalterBright »

colordrops wrote: post #138
WalterBright wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been involved with various corporations. I have yet to be informed of what the national "corporate agenda" is. When I read the business news, it always seems that corporations are at each other's throats, always suing each other, trying to get the government to run each other out of business, lobbying against each other, etc. I'm curious if you can provide a link to the national corporate agenda. Maybe it's lowe…

http://www.businessinsider.com/this-chart-shows-the-bilderbe...

I go to tech conferences attended by people from scores of tech companies, too. They're a great way to explore business opportunities with other companies.

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

#268

Post by WalterBright »

andrewem wrote: post #155
WalterBright wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been involved with various corporations. I have yet to be informed of what the national "corporate agenda" is. When I read the business news, it always seems that corporations are at each other's throats, always suing each other, trying to get the government to run each other out of business, lobbying against each other, etc. I'm curious if you can provide a link to the national corporate agenda. Maybe it's lowe…

Here you go - for a link to a national "corporate agenda" that applies to large companies, see the conveniently titled "2017 American Growth Agenda" put out by the US Chamber of Commerce, the major big business lobbying group in the US: https://www.uschamber.com/about-us/the-2017-american-growth-... The fact that corporations battle with each other doesn't change the fact that groups of them work together to advance…

It looks like pretty much generic advocacy of a free market. I don't see anything wrong with that.

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

#269

Post by Retra »

lazyman75 wrote: post #185
Retra wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a risk of setting up a situation where "useful" is determined by presumed authority rather than any objective sense of utility. There's also the problem of how to deal with things that are not useful now , but presumably will be (in an emergency, for example.) There's also the problem of usefulness that is not communicated effectively; maybe we don't know how to express the usefulness of some activity. This…

The only way you can objectively judge utility of a human is by ignoring the part that makes us .. us (whatever it is) and look only at the physical part - how much calories you could gain from eating a body, how much energy from burning it, how well it would serve as a emergency flood barrier ...

.. or how well, if placed in a certain places and subjected to certain patterns of radiation and sound energy, there would result a cascade of events such that a human body ends up on the moon.

Objectively, we went to the moon. That's measurable, and that's us. We are entirely physical beings.

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

#270

Post by toyg »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #169
toyg wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm, "fat controlla" is alive and well in UK. I personally hate the character and agree with Ms. Tolentino, the whole setup is very regressive. What angers me most is that it exploits British pride in their early railway industry (which is basically dead now, ok, but is still venerated, especially outside of London) to peddle a worldview completely based around hierarchies and the duty of subordinates.

More passengers are carried on the British railways now than ever before, so I wouldn’t call it dead. (Posted from the comfort of an HST on the rural Cotswold Line, slated for part closure 40 years ago and now thriving.)

Dead in the manufacturing sense, sorry it wasn't clear. There is basically one manufacturer left in the country, Bombardier, which is actually Canadian.

The network is alright, although still shamefully behind most of Europe (very little electrification, still no high speed, etc etc).

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