displacement activity

Tuesday, June 11, 2002

 
When Thomas met Karl

"The real fruit of their battles lie not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. .... And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years."

Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto

"Thomas, you are a Really Useful Engine"

W V Awdrey, The three railway engines

One day the Fat Controller came to see Thomas in the Engine Shed.

"There's a new engine coming to join you today. He's from Germany and his name is Karl. I want you to look after him on your branch line."

"Yes Sir," said Thomas, who was very excited because he had never met an engine from another country, unless you counted Donald and Douglas who were from Scotland.

When Karl puffed into the yard, Thomas thought, "What a funny little fellow." Karl was a little pot-bellied tank engine whose wheels squeaked as if he had not left the shed for a long time.

"You must be Karl. I'm Thomas! The Fat Controller said that I was to look after you today" Said Thomas.

"Hello Thomas." Said Karl, "I've just met the Fat Controller. I was amused by his appearance. Have you ever noticed that he is dressed as a parody of a nineteenth century American railroad baron?"

"No," said Thomas. So Karl showed him a picture of JP Morgan.

"Gosh," said Thomas. As they chuffed along the branch line together, Thomas though hard about what Karl had said.

"Nevertheless," said Thomas, "originally the Fat Controller was called the Fat Director. His name was changed when the railways in the UK were privatised."

"Interesting," said Karl. "So the means of communication and transport has been centralised and placed in the hands of the state."

"Yes," said Thomas, who then added doubtfully, "or at least, in the hands of the Fat Controller."

"So all you engines are now equal?" asked Karl.

"Well, we're all equally Really Useful." Said Thomas.

"Of course," he continued, thinking out loud, "only Gordon and Henry are strong enough to pull the express train. James tried once when Gordon had been naughty. He only got halfway up, then Gordon had to help him."

"So there is no real hope of advancement for an ambitious engine like James?" asked Karl.

"Not really. James had some extra wheels added, and Henry was sent to Crewe to have a new boiler fitted to make him as strong as Gordon, but otherwise no. We are prisoners of our size and strength."

"I notice you look different, too." Said Karl. "You and Percy have little round noses, whereas Gordon and Henry have straight, patrician ones. They look altogether nobler."

Thomas thought, James has a round nose too. But he said, "That's not necessarily a class comment though. Have you considered that we're younger brothers, and Henry and Gordon look more adult? It could be a metaphor for a boy's position in the family."

"Or," said Karl, "it could be a bourgeois model of pre-war society. Consider this: WV Audrey was a clergyman and the son of a clergyman. The Fat Controller is God, presiding over an established hierarchy of society. At the top you have the executive, aristocratic class, Henry and Gordon, who are granted the privileges of strength, speed and long-distance travel. Beneath them you have James and Edward with their bourgeois ambitions. And beneath them, the petit-bourgeois tank engines, given authority like non-commissioned officers over the wagons."

"Wagons? How do they fit into this? Wagons are just naughty."

"Wagons are always portrayed as objects to be derided and feared. They are interchangeable, few even have names. They are subversive, the id to the Fat Controller's super-ego. They are destructive to a suicidal degree, and will happily plunge down a ravine, cause a crash or push an engine off a rail. Remember Scarloie's advice: never trust wagons. You will note Gordon's particular hatred of wagons: when he's made to push them he does so violently. You and Percy simply humour them or ignore them."

"Yes," reflected Thomas, "We don't talk to them unless we have to, and we never talk to them about other engines."

"And who broke that taboo?" Asked Karl.

"Diesel." Said Thomas.

"Ahhh. Diesel. Diesels are an interesting case. Diesels are also figures of hatred and fear in your world," mused Karl. "Diesels don't share your taboos. Diesels are basically wagons with engines: amoral and brutal, but able to act on their own, instead of waiting for an engine to shunt them around. Diesels are modern. You are old-fashioned."

"The Fat Controller says that Diesels won't replace steam trains on this line," said Thomas.

"The Fat Controller is trying to shore up a world view that has had its time. The Diesels are the new, very concrete 'other' in a Hegelian dialectic which defines the your world. In this sense Thomas the Tank Engine conforms to Theodore Adorno's notion of great art as sudden allegorical flashes of historical truth.."

"Cinders and ashes!" said Thomas in a whoosh of steam.

"You will note that Diesels are associated with cities, with industrial sites and large-scale works. You steam engines are rural, your stations connect small, isolated villages. As I once said, the bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. When one of you goes to a city, bad things usually happen. Notably your friend Stepney, who is constantly in danger of being buffered into the scrapyard by Diesels, every time one is close by."

"For Adorno the central historical moment is the decline of the "heroic" phase of bourgeois society and the emergence of mass capitalism in the mid-nineteenth century. He singled out Charles Baudelaire as the poet of this moment. However Baudelaire never characterised the machine age as vividly as you do, Thomas. You are a nineteenth century machine with a face."

"Goodness, we are clever." Said Thomas proudly.

"Indeed. Have you ever noticed how many of your stories are enactments of Senecan tragedies? A transgression is committed (talking inappropriately to trucks, hubristic boasting) which leads to the protagonist's resolve to 'Pay him out' - in other words, to exact revenge? Sometimes the results are Tragicomic, like your race with Bertie the Bus. Others are Tragic, like Duck's confrontation with Bulgie the double-decker bus. Bulgie, as you will remember, paid the ultimate price and is now a chicken coop."

"The Fat Controller again takes on a Godlike persona, here a kind of deus ex machina and chorus rolled into one. Capital, as far as you engines are concerned, is amassed in the form of your standing with the Fat Controller. For some, such as the stoic Duke and brave little Rusty, this is a constant. The Fat Controller holds them in high esteem. The price of this social capital is consistent Usefulness. Gordon, Percy and you are inconsistently useful, so your stock with the Fat Controller rises and falls. 'Paying him out' is often actually a transaction of cultural capital, gaining praise from the Fat Controller at the expense of another's loss of face. Only rarely, such as in the television series' Christmas specials do all the engines win."

Thomas thought about this as he pushed the naughty trucks around. He noticed that Karl was talking to the trucks a lot.

The next day, some Diesels came and buffered Karl away to the big city.

"Where did Karl go?" Thomas asked the Fat Controller.

"He went to the smelter," said the Fat Controller. "The branch line is no place for intellectuals. He will be made into little metal Thomas the Tank Engine lunchboxes, which will be sold for £20 each. Although the Thomas books were bought from the Rev. Audrey for a mere sixty thousand pounds, this global franchise is now worth billions. I'm not having it ruined by some bolshie smart-bogie."

(nice overview of Thomas here)

Brian Millar 11:09 AM link