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Thomas The Tank Engine and the coming fascism?

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    Thomas The Tank Engine and the coming fascism?

    Still very concerned about my five year old boy Dara's favourite series, Thomas The Tank Engine. Its creator, the Rev W Awdry seems to have been a hateful man. The messages it puts out seem to be pathologically anti-child while his vision of society, as represented by the Island of Sodor, seems to be analogous to ancient Greek society, which consisted of two tiers; prosperous citizens enjoying the leisures and benefits of democracy, and slaves.

    Thomas and his friends are, make no mistake, the slaves; underage slaves at that, despite the locomotive appearance they assume. Stories see them behave the way kids do; show off, tease one another, only to suffer for their folly. "Thomas, he's the cheeky one," runs the opening theme song but unless you consider lines, as addressed to the Fat Controller, such as "Yes, sir. Sorry, sir." as the height of saucy backchat, I think not.

    The Fat Controller; they throw in that reference to his corpulence to soften the blow of what he actually is - The Controller. If Thomas, or Percival or any of the other engines dared to make reference in his earshot to his circumference, they would be scrapped on the spot. For such is the terror that permanently clouds their lives - the fear of being scrapped, taken apart limb by limb as it were. It crops up in every other episode.

    All that preserves them is that they are deemed to be useful by The Controller (let us drop the false jollification of the "Fat" soubriquet). Kindness, compassion, fellowship, none of these obtain with this joyless martinet. All that matters is their "usefulness" - they are mere economic units of utility, not sentient beings deserving of love or care for their own sake. The use of a Liverpudlian narrator is especially resonant, reminding us as it does of Bleasdale's Boys From The Blackstuff, in which we see what happens to sentient beings when they are deemed surplus to industrial requirement.

    For the time being, Dara plays with his Thomas trains and wears his Thomas pants with pride. By the time he is alive to the sick propaganda belching like engine steam from this most insidious of shows, he’ll be way past his Thomas phase, onto Horrible Histories or something. Still, have a care, parents, I urge you; have a care.

    #2
    And as for upward social mobility, forget it. Woe betide any engine who gets ideas above his, er, station.

    As you pointed out once, the episode where they actually walled Henry in in a tunnel is barbaric.

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      #3
      I'm not sure if this is something that has always bothered me or a though that's occured on recent reconsideration.

      Why can't the engines and the carriages/goods get along? Why is there no solidarity? Why can't they literally pull together?

      My memory is probably wrong about the antagonism between engines and trucks isn't it?

      But what other stories are there about trains? I'm fully for making sure children are reminded by how awesome trains are.

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        #4
        The "Chuggington" series are a lot less fash and a lot more friendly all round, I'd say. Also a very catchy tune.

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          #5
          Don't forget the scrap yard where engines who are no longer of use are dismembered, fully conscious and apparently feeling every degree of the heat from the cutting torch.

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            #6
            Chuggington is quite good, as TonTon suggests.

            I remember an erstwhile condemnation of TtTE as racist because the hero steam engines puffed white smoke and the villain diesel engines produced black smoke. Nobody had pointed out to the campaigner that steam engines produce steam which is white and diesels produce exhaust fumes which is black.

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              #7
              In the books I read 40+ years ago, there was also a Thin Controller, who I remember as a nasty piece of work, unlike the Fat one, who was firm but sort of fair.

              They were just The Railway Stories then, Thomas didn't get star billing, in fact I remember James, Henry, Edward more than him. And Gordon the express, who I liked although he was stuck up and wouldn't pull dirty carriages.

              The (complaining, difficult) carriages were all female, weren't they? It's about gender politics as well as fascism.

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                #8
                If Thomas and the engines are slaves, what are the diesels? Helots?

                it was the crane, Cranky(?) that had it worse, he couldn’t even wander off every now and then

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                  #9
                  I was upset as a kid that Toad was sent to prison for 20 years for repeated instances of reckless driving.

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                    #10
                    Ha ha. Reminds me of the spoof over-analytical reviews of Mr Men books a few years back. Possibly done by another bored parent pulling their hair out as a young child asks to be read the same bloody story again and again...

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                      #11
                      When I was watching Cbeebies, I became obsessed with the lack of back story of the Numberjacks. Just who did build their sofa?

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                        #12
                        The Railway Stories are a reactionary series written mainly in response to nationalisation and the British Railways Plan which was going to replace all those lovely engineered steam trains with featureless boxy diesels. So there's a reason why the feudal system of a railway being owned by a rich (fat) person. He's been renamed in later media as Sir Toppham Hatt, and he isn't called a Controller any more. But he's still.the embodiment of original Victorian and Edwardian railways, as opposed to the communist national network run by the Government.

                        Of course the Isle of Sodor can't really be a fascist state otherwise the trains would always run on time.

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                          #13
                          I never met my paternal grandfather but he was a rail gang foreman from the mid-1920s until he retired in the 1960s and according to my Dad, he thought the worst thing that ever happened to the railways was nationalisation.

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                            #14
                            Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post
                            The Railway Stories are a reactionary series written mainly in response to nationalisation and the British Railways Plan which was going to replace all those lovely engineered steam trains with featureless boxy diesels. So there's a reason why the feudal system of a railway being owned by a rich (fat) person. He's been renamed in later media as Sir Toppham Hatt, and he isn't called a Controller any more. But he's still.the embodiment of original Victorian and Edwardian railways, as opposed to the communist national network run by the Government.
                            This sort of post, and the info within, is much of the reason why I'm here.

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                              #15
                              I was very keen on Ivor the Engine who seemed to have had a bit of an anarchic, anti-shunting agenda and was way cooler, what with having a mate who is a dragon and inspiring a Bad Manners B-side.

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                                #16
                                Oh god I loved Ivor

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                                  #17
                                  I had a toy train set with yellow plastic tracks and a green engine and the engine was Ivor when I played.

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                                    #18
                                    Ivor the Engine is a far superior character. Definitely an equal of Jones the Steam.

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                                      #19
                                      Chuggington is indeed the municipal socialist railway to rival the reactionary oligarchy of Sodor.

                                      Unfortunately, our son is obsessed with Thomas, which while it generates a certain amount of fun building model train tracks for his many Thomas & Friends engine, also means having to read the Rev Audry's thinly-disguised anti-working class tirades.

                                      I mean the "troublesome trucks" blatantly translates as "bolshy union organisers" doesn't it?

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                                        #20
                                        Did cutout Ivor look as terrible to contemporary eyes as modern kids TV CGI looks now?

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                                          #21
                                          We’ve watched way too much�children’s television during this pandemic, and I’ve noticed something about representation of female characters that starts out looking like a form of empowerment, ...

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                                            #22
                                            E10, in the hope that it may ease your burden, ursus minor went from being an all in Thomas obsessive to being a committed communist.

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                                              #23
                                              E10, maybe try his on Geoff Marshall's YouTube channel some time, if you want to introduce him to the value of state regulated enterprise.

                                              Ivor The Engine is wonderful. I'd forgotten how surreal it is when I revisited it a few years ago.

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                                                #24
                                                That one where Henry doesn't want to come out of the tunnel so they just brick him up, that's some horror movie level shit there.

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                                                  #25
                                                  Originally posted by Levin View Post
                                                  Did cutout Ivor look as terrible to contemporary eyes as modern kids TV CGI looks now?
                                                  No. It was a common technique for kids TV at the time. TBH I think 50 years on it looks better than most cheap CGI.

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