Just go read the plot of the Sad Story of Henry and know it is just one of many bleak episodes: https://ttte.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sad_Story_of_Henry
It might be due to me being a Pole, my upbringing, and our history of WW II, but it triggers a light connotation with labor death camps whenever I hear the line.
There is something deeply, deeply sad to me about thinking through what kind of family life he might have had that he even felt the need to ask that question. I didn't grow up in a great environment either, but I never had any doubt that I was doing good things that would be a point of pride to most parents.
Malcolm (1986) Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wffDBsSgS5Q
young children know what usefulness is, and they want to be useful, and they love being praised for being useful. "Everybody in the family pitches in and has a role to play to make dinner and set the table" types of repetitive lessons are very important to children; it's the type of emotional development that neglectful parents don't provide.
A lot of children's play is imitating what adults do, preferably alongside adults. If you are typing on a keyboard, either give your child another one or suffer them wanting to touch yours. I'm not an expert, but this ties in with an inherent sense of usefulness and participation.
The purpose of Thomas the Tank Engine is not to speculate on the ramifications of living in a world with sentient trains like some weird sci-fi novel. You are welcome to write that if you want, but fat chance producing something kids will enjoy.
Thomas the Tank Engine exists to delight children with the mystique of steam engines, and to provide the back drop for simple lessons on pro-social behavior that children can understand.
It's kind of weird seeing someone claim "lessons on pro-social behavior" in a direct reply to a quote on how the show depicts immurement as a reaction to refusing direct orders from the company owner.
Unquestionable obedience to the company owner under the threat of immurement is not a basic part of parenting.
I also question how formatting our children to unquestionably accept fighting and dying in armed conflicts as being healthy and in their best interests.
The Fascist motto was “believe, obey, fight.” It is in line with the ideas you're trying to pass off as good parenting.
The lessons of the episode are simple:
- you will not get what you want if you are selfish, mean, and unreasonable (Henry's paint is eventually spoiled anyway)
- if you disobey your parents, there will be consequences (like timeout). Note that Sir Topham hat (as a parental figure) while firm, was very patient with Henry.
My local PBS station showed Thomas the Tank Engine on almost infinite loop and so I came into the show in kind of the middle as a kid. I didn't know why Henry was so "bad" at his job and all of that, only that he was cranky and didn't seem to like everybody else that much.
Then this episode aired and my mother says I cried for two days over how Henry had been treated. (It didn't help that I was what was commonly called "a quiet child" and got picked on a lot for not wanting to play with other kids or just "being weird", something I think a lot of HN can relate to.) It wasn't long after that I stopped watching Thomas.
Years later, my kid picked up watching the show and learned how to record it on his TiVo. I made sure we watched that episode together.
Yep. Turns out I was autistic, but since it wasn't in a way that that was a bother other people had I no clue until my late 30's.
Reading the episode description is really something else. They managed to perfectly capture the phenomenon of real life regular people casually being horrible cunts to each other, though I think they were probably just going for "shut up and obey".
Then I watched Shed 17.