Thomas the Tank Engine is merciless and bigoted — that’s why kids love it

30 December 2009

Children love writers like the Revd W.V. Awdry and Enid Blyton not in spite of their narrow-minded conservatism, but because of it, says Rod Liddle. The young are natural fascists

It is very difficult, watching a Thomas the Tank Engine dvd with your young children, to escape the suspicion that the Reverend Wilbert Awdry was anything other than a thoroughly vindictive and authoritarian old scrote, with a spiteful streak the width of the Fat Controller’s stomach. You would not leave your kids with him in person. The errant rolling stock are subjected to ghastly punishments and humiliations — including one engine being bricked up in a tunnel for months on end while the others laugh at him.

As the Canadian academic Shauna Wilton pointed out recently, the programme does indeed ‘promote(s) a rigid class system that stifles self-expression’, as well as being sexist: the only females — Sodor, Annie and Clarabel — are carriages and are pulled by the males. None of the engines are poofs, although Henry’s livery seems to me a little camp and you can imagine the unctuous Thomas doing a spot of cottaging in his spare time, unwisely propositioning policemen, asking for his funnel to be polished and so on. They have mad, smug, spooky faces, the engines, and they rattle along through scenery dredged from a 1940s comic book to the accompaniment of a clunking piano motif written by a refugee from the 1960s Beatles wannabes, The Marmalade — a chap called Junior Campbell. I know of no parents who like the programme. ‘Take your idiotic chubby eyebrow-less face and your inane little stories and go jump...’ one Canadian mum wrote on a website, summing up the view of most of us. As I say, I know of no parents who like it. And I know of no young kids who don’t.

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Keith D

December 31st, 2009 2:20pm Report this comment

Shauna Wilton,have you seen her picture?
She would be far better off in nanny UK.

As for Thomas,my 2 year old loves him.Leave him alone.

Snowman

December 31st, 2009 10:20pm Report this comment

What? Roald Dahl only admired by the kids? Not me?

‘Next morning,
In comes Farmer Bland,
A pail of pigswill in his hand,
And piggy with a mighty roar,
Bashes the farmer to the floor…

Now comes the rather grizzly bit
So let's not make too much of it,
Except that you must understand
That Piggy did eat Farmer Bland,
He ate him up from head to toe,
Chewing the pieces nice and slow…’

That’s the raw stuff that has longevity written all over it rather than Duffy’s ’12 days of Christmas with Condor calls from the USA’ transient lament.

Jez

January 2nd, 2010 12:51am Report this comment

Shrek and The Gruffalo were the winners in our household this Christmas / New Year, with the mandatory 70 to 80 episodes of SpongeBob Square Pants per-day... just to keep them all going.

"Oh, wholivesinapinapple, undertheseee?"

It's Spongebob, Rod. It's bloody' Spongebob.

Yam Yam

January 4th, 2010 2:02pm Report this comment

'Pipkins' did wonders for social inclusiveness during the 1970s. The character Pig showed children that Brummies too have made an astounding contribution to our national life (even if Pig did drive Hartley Hare batty with his disgusting eating habits).

IndependenceFirst

January 4th, 2010 9:46pm Report this comment

Enid Blyton wrote for her time and place, at the height of Empire. Her work was not intentionally racist nor was it seen as such, at the time. To assign a political viewpoint to the Wind in the Willows or the Famous 5 is quite simply absurd.

Laban Tall

January 7th, 2010 5:15pm Report this comment

Enid Blyton was not a great stylist, to put it mildly. But her storylines were great. The Magic Faraway Tree is terrific.

Joy Val

February 3rd, 2010 11:07pm Report this comment

Laughed so much. As a child I read every Enid Blyton book and had them displayed proudly on my book shelf and ignored comments from those who looked down on them. Of course I read other books and with my children read all Roald Dahl wrote. Now it "Thomas" with the grandchildren.

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