Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Thomas the Tank Engine "sinister?"

Did you know that leftist parents don't like Thomas the Tank Engine? I did not know that. He is a popular attraction in Golden, Colorado. Mattel sells $1 billion worth of Thomas products every year. But Paul Kendall writes at the Telegraph that leftists say the seies is
“nasty”, “negative” and a “bad example” to youngsters.

“Thomas is a poor role model,” says one reviewer. “Lots of nasty competitiveness between the trains."

...in fact, the series, which is broadcast to more than a billion households in 300 territories each week, and prides itself on teaching children traditional values such as friendship, loyalty and resilience, has come in for regular criticism from Left-wing writers and academics for many years.

Several have attacked the plots, which normally revolve around an engine getting into trouble with the Fat Controller, the man who runs the fictitious railway, for selfish, lazy or thoughtless behaviour before eventually being forgiven and handed another chance to become a “really useful engine”.

More recently, the cultural critic Jessica Roake wrote an article for the American online magazine Slate - titled Thomas the Imperalist Tank Engine- in which she branded the series “sinister”.

“Something about Thomas & Friends gives liberal parents the creeps,” she claimed. “The conservatism of Thomas & Friends is not the conservatism of America. Key to the ‘pick yourself up by your bootstraps’ mythos in the United States is the notion that anyone can rise to the top with hard work and initiative.

The 70-year-old series was originally created by a father for his young son, Christopher Awdry, who is now 74-years-old, and is coming to the defense of his father.
Mr Awdry, 74, said the main moral of the stories was that “good triumphed over evil” and the principal values his late father, a railway enthusiast and a Church of England curate, wanted to instil in his young readers were a love of steam trains and an appreciation of what it meant to be a loyal friend and a useful member of society.
Read more here.

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