Thomas the Tank Engine, Anti-Semitism, and the Sex Pistols

A friend told me a few months ago that she won't let her son read Thomas the Tank Engine stories -- or watch the TV series -- because of the anti-semitism contained within them.

That caught my attention.

I had been watching Thomas and Friends on TV for over a year (maybe once every two weeks or so) with George first, and now Cole too. I had found the episodes mildly entertaining. They mostly functioned as an opportunity for me to get up and do the dishes while the boys stayed on the couch.

Sure, I had noticed that irritating catch-phrase, "You are a really useful engine!"

And come to think of it, certain values -- industriousness, respect for authority, devotion to duty -- seemed to underlie the stories.

And, well, now that you mention it, Sir Topham Hatt, the bald, black-top-hat-wearing Chairman of the Railway, has a kind of obsessive, ruddy-faced concern for the status quo...

But what of it?

For a few months I scoffed at the idea that the series is "anti-semitic." My friend's comment seemed in line with the regrettable tendency for political pundits, when cornered, to compare their adversaries to Hitler. But her comment continued to nag at me.

So I started thinking about the show in its particulars.

Written by an Anglican minister, the Reverand W. V. Awdry, beginning in 1943, for his son Christopher, these stories have a modest, typically English concern for the trivial concerns of everyday life. (Orwell wrote marvelously about how the English character, molded by the familiar details of small town life, resists the dangerous lure of abstraction, in his essay, England Your England.)

But everyday life in the world of Thomas the Tank Engine comes with a difference. It is hyperclean, without regrets, unreal. Watching the episodes of the TV series "Thomas and Friends" you will notice immediately a kind of utopian dream in the clouds and greenery that introduce the Island of Sodor. We enter an idealized place, where everything can and will be resolved within the span of a single episode.

Bridges may need repairing, helicopters may threaten the trains' self-image, Cranky the Crane may dump a crate of fish on a newly-washed train (usually James). But everything is manageable. It's all good for a laugh.

There's certainly something clean-as-a-whistle and safely conformist about this island and its inhabitants.

Then too: the lines of authority on Sodor are unmistakable. Sir Topham Hatt's word is supreme. The trains are encouraged to run on time, avoid risks, help others, and most of all, obey.

Vanity proves wasteful. Paranoia proves unfounded (rest assured, that red hot-air balloon will not take business from the trains after all; it will merely provide another attraction on the island!).

Kafka would have a lot to say here. The Kafka of Sodor would grapple with all those sticky, ugly little concerns which are otherwise pushed under the oncoming trains. But Sodor has no Kafka. It has no subversive current running through it at all.

You start to realize that if only these primary-colored engines (Thomas, Percy, James... the whole gang) could just repress any vestige of unique personality, they would show themselves to be, at last, once and for all, "really useful engines."

On the surface all of this is harmless. And I don't worry about any damage I may have inflicted on George and Cole's psyches.

But it got me thinking: "Wouldn't it be great if just once a rainbow-colored, feather-bedecked engine came whistling down the track?" "Wouldn't it be great if this engine didn't have to justify itself by proving its usefulness?"

Which brings me back to the anti-semitic charge my friend made.

No, I'm not saying that Jewish people have a proclivity towards rainbows and feathers (though a visit to the open-air stalls on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley on any given Saturday may suggest this surprising connection). But let's revist the arguments in 1930s Germany directed against the Jewish population of Europe.

Anti-semitism has always used the language of "usefulness." Relegated to minority status, and in most cases restricted from owning property, Jews throughout Europe developed roles outside of the traditional agrarian ones. They charged interest (gasp!) for money-lending, and their religion's reliance on the word of the Talmud led many Jews to find work in journalism, academic pursuits, literature and the arts.

Degenerative Art. "The Non-productive few." Pseudo-scientific concerns about hygiene (in the amazing documentary on the Holocaust, Shoah, the Nazis who are interviewed reveal their disgust for the dirt and disease of those in the ghettos -- which they mistake for a cause, instead of an effect, of their actions). It would all seem perfectly natural in the world of Sir Topham Hatt.

I don't mean to say that Sir Topham Hatt is a closet Nazi. I don't mean even to say that the Thomas the Tank Engine series is overtly anti-semitic. Or that W. V. Awdry was a Nazi sympathizer while writing children's stories for his son during the aerial bombardment of his country by the Nazis.

But the parallels are there. The conformist outlook in the series does match that of regimes (throughout history) which favor social control and work to restrict, or even criminalize, individualism.

What kind of values do I want my children to internalize? I would prefer individualism, thank you.

In the end, we kept our Thomas books around. I still read them to the boys some nights. But my dishwashing innocence is gone. I am now more aware of the need to balance out the conventional values of the Thomas books with the downright weirdness of my bedtime stories.

Less trains meeting their schedules.

More pirate ships which sprout orange trees from the mast...
only to be eaten in one gulp by a giant squid...
which then spits the orange seeds out, along with the rum-drunk pirates...
until they land, in a heap, orange seeds, eye-patches and all, on the shore... making an orange-flavored pirate rum cake.
Something like that anyway.

Let weirdness prevail in all of your bedtime stories.

For a taste of Thomas the Tank Engine (fittingly, an episode called "Escape"), see below.

For a taste of the subversive current running through England ("God Save the Queen / the Fascist Regime / That made you a Moron / Potential H-Bomb..." etc.), see here.

Comments

[Ajf 6]

I like your blog, because we have similar outlook and outlook on life!

[Rick Brock]

Sounds like a lot of over analyzing for a kids show. But to address the "clean" appearance of the show, it seems consistent to most animated kids shows that I remember, perhaps a bit more.

However, since it is a young kids show, maybe it helps focus on the story line and the lesson to be learned during each episode.

I say, let's give kids an opportunity to not be distracted by other things injected by the real world; for now. There will be plenty of shows with more realism added as they get older.

Just my 2 cents.

[Dr. G]

It looks like the reference from Slate is reviving some interest in this blog. Interesting take on this children's series. I'm 32 and I never watched or read this series as a kid. It makes sense that there may be some reference to Germany in Nazi era, especially given the time period it was written in. I don't know if it's necessarily anti-Semitic.

As an aside, I was looking at some of the other posts and noticed you're not writing too many blog posts. You should keep it up, kids or no kids, you seem to have really interesting things to say!

http://getaheadwithdrg.wordpress.com/

[NoOne18]

I find a lot of children's shows to be disturbing - but that's because they are simplistic. Let's look at one of my favorite culprits, Barney (I suppose I'm dating myself, here...). Most people complained that he was too goody-goody sweet. That didn't bother me - I figured my kids would learn soon enough that not everyone is nice. But what bothered me was the same thing that bothers you about Thomas the Tank Engine: an air of fascism. Yep, that's right! Ever notice how no one ever really disagrees with Barney? If anyone on the show ever wants to do something else that what the majority is doing, s/he is soon talked around. The bland conformity is almost Stepfordian - must be why my kids tired of it so incredibly quickly.

[You have got to be kidding me]

REALLY???

Thomas, an imaginary talking train is a anti-semite., but pirates who in rel life rape and kill are ok?

[plocktontraveller]

time on your hands, keyboard in front of you, kids tv show playing in the background, a reckless disregard for logic and a large tumbler of gin and tonic. Yeah, I can see how you came to the anti-semitic conclusion.

[bill]

Wow....put down the progressive kool-aid and step away from the internet....

[Frank]

This is slandering a harmless children's story. God help your poor kids if something this innocent doesn't pass your political litmus test.

[What!]

I'm Jewish and I think this is complete nonsense. I can't even call the charge of anti-semitism a stretch. Its totally absent. Poor old Thomas!

[Greg]

The fact that some anti-Semites have been in favor of cleanliness and orderliness, does not mean that being in favor of cleanliness and orderliness is anti-Semitic.

A person can be clean & orderly or not, and a person can be anti-Semitic or not. It's possible for a person to be clean & orderly but not anti-Semitic, and it's also possible for a person to be anti-Semitic and unclean & disorderly.

[James Sanders]

The author seems to be unaware of the idiomatic British use of the the term "useful" to mean "good." One might well hear an English person saying "I'm fairly useful at tennis," which as no meaning in the sense this author describes (how would one be "useful" in an activity that has no purpose except fun?), unless one understand that it simply means "I'm a pretty good tennis player."
Please remember Mr. Wilde's point about the America and British being two great peoples separated by a common language before waxing quite so grandly.

[Elle Leibsker]

I agree with the author. There was a PhD thesis written some years ago comparing Thomas and Bob the Builder to Nazi Youth comic books that pushed the idea of "fleissig" or industriousness as the highest good in mankind. Sodor has no real art or dissent or humor, I've always hated this damn show.
I took it as an opportunity to discuss the value of unions with my nephews. It's always bothered me that the engines seem to be at the beck and call of their master day or night. This stupid series has also made it impossible to buy brio trains without characters on them. So down with Sir Topham Hat, evil tyrant of Sodor. ENGINES UNITE!! I propose a brotherhood of trains, black and red and green and brown! We'll sing "Solidarity Forever" and turn Sodor on it's ear!

[JP]

You want to know what's really anti-Semitic? Saying that being in favor of cleanliness and orderliness is anti-Semitic.

If one believes that being clean and orderly is anti-Semitic, doesn't it logically follow that one believes that Jews are dirty and disorderly?

Yeah, I can see that there's some capitalist brainwashing going on here, but I really don't see anything remotely anti-Semitic about TtTE.

[Democratdad]

JP, read it again. That was the whole point. It was part of Nazi propaganda to associate a Jewish people with uncleanliness, and this went along with a host of other forced associations (disorderly, unuseful, etc.), neural networks established by sheer repetition. Thomas has an eerie resonance with this same frame, this same neural network (minus, importantly, the murderous part). Though I would agree with those readers who say this is a stretch, I thought it was curious -- and a good way to provoke readers, as my friend's comment did for me, into reflecting on the messages and values encoded in seemingly superficial children's shows. I agree with previous comment about the surprising lack of any solidarity among the trains when confronted with Sir T's demands -- I hadn't focused on that but it too provokes some thought!

[JP]

Well, I guess if all you're doing is trying to provoke your readers, then you're on the right track. Thomas the Tank Engine is a Nazi; Tom and Jerry are Commies; Bugs Bunny is an anarchist; and Tickle Me Elmo is a child molester.

[Yiftach]

"the messages and values encoded in seemingly superficial children's shows"

The messages and values encoded in these shows FOR the kids are "ask your parents for these toys next time you see them at the store and every waking moment besides."

Children don't have the frame of reference you (and your friend) do, and therefore can't make the leap, stretch, or baseless conjecture you and other adults make in this and countless other cases of overanalyzing children's TV and books.

Generally speaking, kids' shows try to teach teamwork/helping/cooperation, being nice to one another, and other vanilla lessons and values that very few people would argue with. Some do this more hamhandedly than others, and some are so annoying or bad (in terms of writing quality and/or production value) that they suck, but they're rarely evil or intended to pass along nasty messages.