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 show.
> Fat Controller
Better known as Sir Topham Hatt since the 1950s.
> Henry must be punished—for life
Even in the old non-US version (modern one makes it explicit), it was still evident that he wasn't left in their forever, as he showed up again next time.
Blue Mountain Mystery [1] A little green engine hides in the blue hills. Thomas learns that long ago, the engine accidentally caused another engine to roll overboard into the sea. He has been hiding ever since, in guilt and fear and shame. Thomas convinces him to return, and the story shows how silly the little engine's worries were. It's a moral of forgiveness and redemption. (Also, there's a great surprise about who that overboard engine actually is.)
This crap makes me mad. I have to stop reading stuff on the internet. Go back to watching Sponge Bob or Family Guy or whatever crap you watch with your kids.
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?"
> Better known as Sir Topham Hatt since the 1950s.
Seemingly only in the US ("the Fat Controller is always referred to by his real name, "Sir Topham Hatt" in the US"[0]). I was born in 1990 (UK), and as I recall he was almost always refered to as "The Fat Controller".
>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 confrontation, the giving & revoking of permissions and punishment. That's haunting, not wholesome.
I have fond memories of Mr Rogers, but really find it pretty unwatchable (and so did my kids when they were of age). They loved Thomas for a while and fortunately they didn't absorb the ideological disaster embedded in virtually every storyline (Topham Hat is a stand in for God and explicitly judges everyone at the end of most episodes based on being "useful" -- to him -- and obedient). There are no significant female characters (my children are girls so that was particular;y annoying; although Dora is more annoying despite having a female main character) and the merchandising is horrible (multiple redundant and incompatible sets of trains and tracks that are all horribly over-priced)
Spongebob is a far better show in all respects (I hated it until I had kids). Aside from being hilarious on several levels, it is remarkably socially conscious without being preachy. Oh and it even has some recurring non-pathetic female characters.
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.
I'd rather let my daughter watch SpongeBob or Octonauts or Ghibli movies rather than shows that tell her that every aspect of her self worth should be defined by how useful she is to the rich people in town.
And that's the underlying justification for a lot of the episodes: Thomas has an obligation to be grateful for his work and to do as he's told. Even when he doesn't like the job. Even if there are better things for him to do. Even if his friends are sad or in danger.
Spongebob is also pretty dignified and wholesome, so try to make your rant a little less "get off my lawn". You don't need to try to drag something else down to build your preferred show up.
> Not since Mr. Rogers has there been a better kids TV show.
I'm too young to have watched this show. Just googled it and it really does look like a lovely, wholesome show.
Personally my gold standard is the original Looney Toons (Mel Blanc era). I could watch that irreverent, slapstick all day. I'd rather my kid take a leaf from Bugs Bunny's F-you style than Thomas' meek, obey, do what you're told and stay on the rails message.
Agreed, and there are a few other TV shows that I really like for my kids for many of the same reasons: Curious George, Tumbleleaf (Amazon original), and maybe Backyardigans.
I just can't believe that a New Yorker article--some blogger's white-labeled ramblings or not--consists entirely of re-digesting wiki's and comment sections from other corners of the internet. It's really coprophagic.
It annoys me too. The interpretation ignores all the obvious positive lessons in TtTE and only accentuates the post-modern and political interpretations as if they're the major themes.
I remember one episode where the Fat Controller hires new engines to break a strike. There's obvious political overtones there that reflect the times it was written in perhaps. But in the context of the kids watching and learning, it's about not throwing tantrums to get your way, and the new engines being polite and humble in their work.
Conversely, a lot of the modern cartoons around are about breaking rules, getting away with stuff because the protagonist is 'special' and fighting.
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".
The book concludes the same way, with the train, rusty and dirty, finally being allowed out of the tunnel. The tenor is very much that punishment has rendered him meek and docile -- nothing to do with confronting your problems.
Similarly, there's a story where one of the trains gets off the tracks in order to smell flowers, or play, or something of that sort. The cure is to hide people in the field, who jump out and scare him back onto the track.
Overall, the message of the books is that if you work hard and never question authority, you can avoid punishment. The odd thing about them is that the authority figure (the Fat Controller) is presented as mildly risible.
My brother and I used to laugh / shudder at how much our nephews loved these books. I myself never read them until uncle-hood, when I was well past the age when the mere fact that they were written about trains had any appeal.
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 episodes unless explicitly prompted about it. Was my experience unusual?
As much as I love the New Yorker, my fondest hope is that one day the N.Y.C. media will free themselves from whatever repressive authoritarian soul compels them to put those dots in every single acronym and initialism, when the rest of the country abandoned the dots long ago.
They even put them in names that once were initialisms but now are genuine names on their own: they insist on I.B.M. even though the official company name is simply IBM. And F.B.I. even though the FBI's own website calls it the FBI.
As an old ham radio operator, the one that really got me was when they wrote about S.O.S. - when in fact SOS never was an initialism at all! No experienced radio operator would ever have sent "S O S" as three separate letters in Morse code:
dit dit dit (pause) dah dah dah (pause) dit dit dit
("S" is dit dit dit in Morse, and "O" is "dah dah dah".)
SOS has always been a "prosign", that is, a single Morse code unit with no pauses in the middle:
dit dit dit dah dah dah dit dit dit
In fact, SOS is properly written with an overscore above the letters to indicate that it is sent as a single unit. Of course that is not always possible given the limitations of modern typography, but it is never transmitted as if it were the three separate letters "S O S".
Why does the N.Y.C. media follow such an authoritarian rule even when it is factually wrong? It is a mystery to me.
The New Yorker also insists on typographical affectations such as coöperate and reëlect. Most publications have a "house style." The New Yorker's is particularly eccentric, and I think they like it that way.
IIRC the NYTimes at least used to have a policy where it if you pronounce the acronym out loud as a word it doesn't get periods, but does have periods if it would be said out loud as individual letters. E.g., "Joint NASA - E.S.A. space mission launch", "F.B.I. agents meet at FEMA office". As far as that rule would be concerned SOS is pronounced as letters and not as a word perhaps like "sauce".
But I've just seen some clear violations of that rule by them (they don't spell "SAT" test with periods) so maybe I'm misremembering or maybe they've changed it. Similarly to SOS, the letters SAT don't stand for anything, at least not officially anymore.
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.
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.
"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.
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 good graces. It is the perfect show to condition child slaves into compliance.
- The trains are racist, and it is normal and acceptable. Steam and Diesel engines loath one another. The show is presented from the steam team point of view, without an ounce of distance. The Diesels have inherent character flaws because of their engines. I just found a recent episode [1] where they kind of address that, but it is AFAICT a recent development.
For a more modern yet still dystopian talking-train kids program, check out Chuggington. It's also British, but instead of the Fat Controller, there's "Vee", a disembodied GlaDOS-like female voice who orders the trains around via loudspeaker and chastises them when they're naughty.
The 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 & Friends, Thomas & Friends, Bob the Builder, and a metric shitload of other child-oriented programming) given that the Veggie Tales owners bailed on a distribution agreement with them due to a lack of trust in Lyrick/HIT continuing to support the "Christian values" of that franchise.
Joseph McCarthy could not be reached for comment at this time, although George Orwell was heard to mumble "1984 was supposed to be a warning, not a guide."
I've always hated this show, in my PBS show rankings it's barely above Caillou, which was totally banned when my kids were little. Sir Topham Hat is such a fascist. I'd pay-per-view the episode where the trains revolt and Sodor burns down.
Once upon a time, there was an engine called Henry.
Henry was asked to help but refused.
So Henry was put in time out.
Henry didn't enjoy time out and wanted to be let out.
So was let out, and learned to be responsible and helpful.
The reason you teach a toddler this should be blindingly obvious.
Once upon a time, there was a journalist called Jia Tolentino. Jia was a special kind of stupid. Allegory, you see, was entirely lost on Jia. So, being neither helpful nor responsible, she called Henry's boss a fascist.
Compared to the original Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales which included such kid-friendly topics as child abuse, incest, murder, and cannibalism this doesn't sound too bad.
I definitely found the Henry episode weird when my daughter first saw it. She, being a kid, thought it was fine. They have a very punishment-centric worldview.
My son has a book with a bunch of stories in them, 3 little pigs, Goldilocks etc but I stumbled on one story about "The wolf and seven sheep".
At the end of the story, the mama sheep cuts open the wolf's stomach and fills it with stones and then tosses the wolf into a river. I was stunned.. but that's what stories are, they aren't always nice little things to make your kids live in some fantasy world.
Well, probably still beats growing up with fairy tails where giants eat children or where 2 children eat from a candy house and 1 ends up feeding the other until he is fat enough to be eaten by the witch. Or that nice one I heard at school where a woman turns into a salt pillar because god told her not to look backwards at the collapsing Sodom en Gomorra. And afterwards the two children that did survive get their dad drunk and have sex. Ok, I only heard that last part later.
You know, children hear stories from a wide variety of sources and they have parents to help interpret them and give them a place in their world view. Children ask questions to tweak this view and I don't think we should be to whiny about stories that don't seem to hit the exact educational, politically correct, wholesome, inclusive tone that you had in mind when your kid was born.
Almost all the content we've got is representative of "corporate-totalitarian dystopia", because we live in a corporate-totalitarian dystopia. Thomas the Tank Engine isn't some special case.
[+] [-] paulddraper|8 years ago|reply
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 show.
> Fat Controller
Better known as Sir Topham Hatt since the 1950s.
> Henry must be punished—for life
Even in the old non-US version (modern one makes it explicit), it was still evident that he wasn't left in their forever, as he showed up again next time.
Blue Mountain Mystery [1] A little green engine hides in the blue hills. Thomas learns that long ago, the engine accidentally caused another engine to roll overboard into the sea. He has been hiding ever since, in guilt and fear and shame. Thomas convinces him to return, and the story shows how silly the little engine's worries were. It's a moral of forgiveness and redemption. (Also, there's a great surprise about who that overboard engine actually is.)
This crap makes me mad. I have to stop reading stuff on the internet. Go back to watching Sponge Bob or Family Guy or whatever crap you watch with your kids.
[1] http://ttte.wikia.com/wiki/Blue_Mountain_Mystery
[+] [-] dmlorenzetti|8 years ago|reply
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?"
[+] [-] stordoff|8 years ago|reply
Seemingly only in the US ("the Fat Controller is always referred to by his real name, "Sir Topham Hatt" in the US"[0]). I was born in 1990 (UK), and as I recall he was almost always refered to as "The Fat Controller".
[0] http://ttte.wikia.com/wiki/Sir_Topham_Hatt#Trivia
[+] [-] glenstein|8 years ago|reply
"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 confrontation, the giving & revoking of permissions and punishment. That's haunting, not wholesome.
[+] [-] Tloewald|8 years ago|reply
Spongebob is a far better show in all respects (I hated it until I had kids). Aside from being hilarious on several levels, it is remarkably socially conscious without being preachy. Oh and it even has some recurring non-pathetic female characters.
[+] [-] ux-app|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] KirinDave|8 years ago|reply
And that's the underlying justification for a lot of the episodes: Thomas has an obligation to be grateful for his work and to do as he's told. Even when he doesn't like the job. Even if there are better things for him to do. Even if his friends are sad or in danger.
It's a pretty vile lesson.
[+] [-] Blackthorn|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rukuu001|8 years ago|reply
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'.
[+] [-] ux-app|8 years ago|reply
I'm too young to have watched this show. Just googled it and it really does look like a lovely, wholesome show.
Personally my gold standard is the original Looney Toons (Mel Blanc era). I could watch that irreverent, slapstick all day. I'd rather my kid take a leaf from Bugs Bunny's F-you style than Thomas' meek, obey, do what you're told and stay on the rails message.
[+] [-] grahamburger|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NegativeLatency|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nwah1|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samirillian|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justbaker|8 years ago|reply
"Go complain about it on the internet."
[+] [-] eradicatethots|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daxorid|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] westiseast|8 years ago|reply
I remember one episode where the Fat Controller hires new engines to break a strike. There's obvious political overtones there that reflect the times it was written in perhaps. But in the context of the kids watching and learning, it's about not throwing tantrums to get your way, and the new engines being polite and humble in their work.
Conversely, a lot of the modern cartoons around are about breaking rules, getting away with stuff because the protagonist is 'special' and fighting.
[+] [-] twiss|8 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] dmlorenzetti|8 years ago|reply
Similarly, there's a story where one of the trains gets off the tracks in order to smell flowers, or play, or something of that sort. The cure is to hide people in the field, who jump out and scare him back onto the track.
Overall, the message of the books is that if you work hard and never question authority, you can avoid punishment. The odd thing about them is that the authority figure (the Fat Controller) is presented as mildly risible.
My brother and I used to laugh / shudder at how much our nephews loved these books. I myself never read them until uncle-hood, when I was well past the age when the mere fact that they were written about trains had any appeal.
[+] [-] viraptor|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Stratoscope|8 years ago|reply
As much as I love the New Yorker, my fondest hope is that one day the N.Y.C. media will free themselves from whatever repressive authoritarian soul compels them to put those dots in every single acronym and initialism, when the rest of the country abandoned the dots long ago.
They even put them in names that once were initialisms but now are genuine names on their own: they insist on I.B.M. even though the official company name is simply IBM. And F.B.I. even though the FBI's own website calls it the FBI.
As an old ham radio operator, the one that really got me was when they wrote about S.O.S. - when in fact SOS never was an initialism at all! No experienced radio operator would ever have sent "S O S" as three separate letters in Morse code:
dit dit dit (pause) dah dah dah (pause) dit dit dit
("S" is dit dit dit in Morse, and "O" is "dah dah dah".)
SOS has always been a "prosign", that is, a single Morse code unit with no pauses in the middle:
dit dit dit dah dah dah dit dit dit
In fact, SOS is properly written with an overscore above the letters to indicate that it is sent as a single unit. Of course that is not always possible given the limitations of modern typography, but it is never transmitted as if it were the three separate letters "S O S".
Why does the N.Y.C. media follow such an authoritarian rule even when it is factually wrong? It is a mystery to me.
[+] [-] DavidAdams|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nerfhammer|8 years ago|reply
But I've just seen some clear violations of that rule by them (they don't spell "SAT" test with periods) so maybe I'm misremembering or maybe they've changed it. Similarly to SOS, the letters SAT don't stand for anything, at least not officially anymore.
[+] [-] merraksh|8 years ago|reply
Some old Nokia phone used to have a single-pitched ringtone for text messages that sounded ". . . _ _ . . .", which is Morse code for SMS.
[+] [-] tomcam|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guyzero|8 years ago|reply
Also kids love talking trains.
[+] [-] Animats|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] modeless|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sparrish|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] pygy_|8 years ago|reply
- 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 good graces. It is the perfect show to condition child slaves into compliance.
- The trains are racist, and it is normal and acceptable. Steam and Diesel engines loath one another. The show is presented from the steam team point of view, without an ounce of distance. The Diesels have inherent character flaws because of their engines. I just found a recent episode [1] where they kind of address that, but it is AFAICT a recent development.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1YUoBOEsB4
[+] [-] jpatokal|8 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuggington
[+] [-] fallous|8 years ago|reply
Joseph McCarthy could not be reached for comment at this time, although George Orwell was heard to mumble "1984 was supposed to be a warning, not a guide."
[+] [-] zwieback|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CodeKommissar|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thatsethnz|8 years ago|reply
The reason you teach a toddler this should be blindingly obvious.
Once upon a time, there was a journalist called Jia Tolentino. Jia was a special kind of stupid. Allegory, you see, was entirely lost on Jia. So, being neither helpful nor responsible, she called Henry's boss a fascist.
[+] [-] defen|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] udfalkso|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hitekker|8 years ago|reply
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=462KBuAhncU
A hidden gem of YouTube.
[+] [-] js2|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scandox|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasonmaydie|8 years ago|reply
At the end of the story, the mama sheep cuts open the wolf's stomach and fills it with stones and then tosses the wolf into a river. I was stunned.. but that's what stories are, they aren't always nice little things to make your kids live in some fantasy world.
What a bullspit article.
[+] [-] teekert|8 years ago|reply
You know, children hear stories from a wide variety of sources and they have parents to help interpret them and give them a place in their world view. Children ask questions to tweak this view and I don't think we should be to whiny about stories that don't seem to hit the exact educational, politically correct, wholesome, inclusive tone that you had in mind when your kid was born.
[+] [-] colordrops|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|8 years ago|reply