Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 1:00am

Thomas the Right Wing Tank Engine

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Christopher Johnson, a non-Catholic who has taken up the cudgels so frequently in defense of the Church that I have named him Defender of the Faith, brings us the latest news from Leftist Crazyland:

 

 

 

Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Tracy Van Slyke, authoress of the SINGLE dumbest thing ever written:

Thomas [the Tank Engine] and those friends are trains that toil away endlessly on the Isle of Sodor – which seems to be forever caught in British colonial times – and, on its surface, the show seems to impart good moral lessons about hard work and friendship. But if you look through the steam rising up from the coal-powered train stacks, you realize that the pretty puffs of smoke are concealing some pretty twisted, anachronistic messages.

ANNNNNNNNND we’re off.  What kinds of “pretty twisted, anachronistic messages” can be worked into a kid’s TV show, Tracy?

For one, these trains perform tasks dictated by their imperious, little white boss, Sir Topham Hatt (also known as The Fat Controller), whose attire of a top hat, tuxedo and big round belly is just a little too obvious. Basically, he’s the Monopoly dictator of their funky little island. Hatt orders the trains to do everything from hauling freight to carrying passengers to running whatever random errand he wants done, whenever he wants it done – regardless of their pre-existing schedules.

Because he’s a human being and they’re…talking machines?

Inevitably, the trains get in a fight with or pick on one another (or generally mess up whatever job they are supposed to be doing) until Hatt has to scold one of them about being a “really useful engine”, because their sole utility in life is their ability to satisfy his whims. Yeah, because I want to teach my kid to admire a controlling autocrat.

Trace?  Sweetie?  You do know that Sir Topham Hatt isn’t the central focus of that show, don’t you?  And that sentient trains don’t actually exist?

But there was one particular episode that caused me to put the brakes on Thomas for good. It revolved around James, a red engine who is described in the opening credits as “vain but lots of fun.” (Wait, it’s OK to be vain if you can show others a good time occasionally? Great – that’s going in my Parenting 101 book.) In the episode “Tickled Pink”, poor vain James, is ordered by Topham Hat to get a new coat of paint. But while James has only had an undercoat of pink slathered on, Topham Hatt interrupts and demands that James go pick up Hatt’s granddaughter and deliver her and her friends to a birthday party right now.

You all know what pink means.

James is mortified that he has to travel while pink and proceeds to hide from all the other trains along the way. When he’s caught, the other trains – including Thomas – viciously laugh and mock him.

Thomas the Tank Engine.  Gay basher.

“What are you doing James? You’re a big pink steamie,” says Diesel, the bad-boy engine. (For the record, all the “villains” on Thomas and Friends are the dirty diesel engines. I’d like to think there was a good environmental message in there, but when the good engines pump out white smoke and the bad engines pump out black smoke – and they are all pumping out smoke – it’s not hard to make the leap into the race territory.)

Check that.  Thomas the Tank Engine.  Racist gay basher.

But once James gets back on the rails and picks up Granddaughter Hatt and her friends, all seemingly ends well because the girls love pink.

Well guess what? It’s not OK. You think a little boy watching Thomas is going to file away the lesson that pink is OK for boys? No, what kids remember is that James was laughed at, cruelly, over and over again, because he looked different and was clad in a “girly” pink color.

Whatever, kid.  Trace?  You’re right to be concerned.  If you play any given version of a British Thomas episode backward, do you know what you’ll hear?  Campaign commercials for the UK Independence Party (play an American version backward and you’ll hear a whole lot of people explaining why Barack Obama is the single worst president in the history of the United States of America).

Get help, Tracy.

Go here to read the comments.

Here is a post I did exposing the right wing orientation of Thomas the Tank Engine back in 2009, inspired by a link from Christopher Johnson, who obviously keeps his eyes on this subject.

Hattip to the ever vigilant Christopher Johnson at Midwest Conservative Journal.  My kids loved Thomas the Tank Engine videos when they were little back in the nineties.  Memories of those times still brings a smile to my face when I see some Thomas the Tank Engine trinket for sale in a store.  Now I learn that I was not only entertaining them, I was also indoctrinating them in my political views.

A Canadian academic, surprise!, Shauna Wilson, has disclosed the political subtext underlying the Tank Engine stories:

The show’s right-wing politics shows the colourful steam engines punished if they show initiative or oppose change, the researcher found.

She also highlighted the class divide which sees the downtrodden workers in the form of Thomas and his friends at the bottom of the social ladder and the wealthy Fat Controller, Sir Topham Hatt, at the top.

You know, I think she is on to something.  First, the two narrators of the cartoons, Ringo Starr and the late George Carlin, were members in good standing of the military-industrial-cartoon complex.  Second, if you play some of the cartoon videos backwards 20 or 25 times and listen carefully while running a high fever you’ll eventually hear something that sounds vaguely like “Vote Republican”.  Third, consider the below video.  On its surface it is a harmless tale of a train frightened by a float of a Chinese dragon.  However, for those trained to look diligently for a political subtext in every aspect of life, it is obviously a ploy to breed fear and hatred of Communist China in young minds.

Now I am sure there may be skeptics out there.  (I’m looking at you Tito!)  Some of you may even agree with the first comment on the story highlighting this landmark theory dreamed up on the Canadian taxpayer’s dime:  “She, like a lot of her kind, needs her arse kicking and throwing out in the street.”, but you are simply blind to this obvious attempt at political indoctrination.  I can’t wait for her analysis of the old Popeye cartoons they loved!

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Stephen E Dalton
Stephen E Dalton
Thursday, July 24, AD 2014 9:57am

These criticisms of the Thomas The Tank Engine Shows are a straight forward case of projection. This silly ditz is doing what Margaret Mead did with the Samoans. Mead claimed Samoa was a free love paradise, but later research by Derek Freeman reveled the Samoans had a very strict, severe, morality in pagan times, and when they became Christians, that severity was soften a bit by Christian mercy, but the moral code was still enforced. Mead simply projected her hedonistic, leftist morality onto the Samoans. ow, this silly twit is doing the same thing. I wonder how many times leftist morons like her have done this? A lot, I’ll bet!

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, July 24, AD 2014 11:06am

It’s far too easy to be a 21st century intellectual. All you need to know are: class envy, gender grievances, racial racketeering, and sexual orientation twaddletry.

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Thursday, July 24, AD 2014 2:38pm

Thanks- I enjoyed watching the cartoon… And this word! -twaddletry! Great.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, July 24, AD 2014 3:38pm

Re: “twaddletry”, I figured they can fabricate such a chimera as “gay marriage”, I could make up a new, nonsense word from the too-little used word: “twaddle.”

Paul W Primavera
Thursday, July 24, AD 2014 4:20pm

Liberal progressive Democrats never cease to amaze.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Thursday, July 24, AD 2014 5:27pm

You think a little boy watching Thomas is going to file away the lesson that pink is OK for boys? No, what kids remember is that James was laughed at, cruelly, over and over again, because he looked different and was clad in a “girly” pink color.

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Boys don’t need to watch Thomas to learn that lesson. They learn it by watching little girls. Who wear pink. A lot. Which is why pink is a girly color.

TomD
TomD
Friday, July 25, AD 2014 2:59pm

Heck, my parody machine always thought that Thomas the Tank Engine was anti-Catholic. After all, where does Irish Sodor Bread come from?

TomD
TomD
Friday, July 25, AD 2014 3:11pm

Also, isn’t Sir Topham Hatt just another Good Commie? All of the good commies in the Lord of the World, Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson’s 1907 dystopian novel of the AntiChrist, wore top hats. And the only time I ever heard anyone ask what was wrong with being “useful” it came out of the mouth of the Good Commie prison camp director to Puyi, the last Emperor of China in Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1987 film The Last Emperor. Heck, parody is so much fun!

Micha Elyi
Micha Elyi
Monday, July 28, AD 2014 1:39am

Strange. On Sodor men work to repair engines, set track right, farm, etc. and females go to parties. Of course, the ultra-feminist makes no mention of that because she considers it ‘equality’.

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