By God, She Can Leap
It’s been a while since we’ve had a classic Guardian sentence. Thank goodness, then, for Tracy Van Slyke, who can conjure elaborate grievance from a cartoon about sentient trains:
For the record, all the “villains” on Thomas and Friends are the dirty diesel engines. I’d like to think there was a good environmental message in there, but when the good engines pump out white smoke and the bad engines pump out black smoke – and they are all pumping out smoke – it’s not hard to make the leap into race territory.
You see, that “leap into race territory” isn’t hard to make because dirtier cartoon train engines producing darker cartoon smoke obviously constitutes a “message about race.” When she’s not explaining the devilish racial subtext of animated puffer trains, Ms Van Slyke “writes about the intersection of social justice and pop culture.”
Via Tom Foster in the comments here.
”Sodor’ is the most sinister place name in children’s fiction’.
Whereas ‘the Desolation of Smaug’, ‘Tashbaan’ and ‘Cybertron’ are positively homely …
The worker’s paradise had no use for communications degrees
Well, quite, it’s the free market that gives us those
Not unless you define ‘free market’ as any economic system with less than total state control. In America at least employers are forbidden from attempting to measure job applicant intelligence themselves because racism, so they’ve had to substitute requirements for credentials signifying educational achievement. It turns out that not everyone is capable of educational achievement as classically understood, so other credentials have been invented for them.
Communications degrees are a response to government-inflicted distortion of the free market.
Steve “…and barely subsisting on organically grown GM-free turnips…”
Since the thread topic is racism, I recently learned via Terry Pratchett that ‘swede’ is a British synonym for ‘turnip’. So is that raaaacist? Or is it impossible to be racist towards people who are so blonde?
Enoch Powell commented that “putting the word _social_ in front of another word, gives it its opposite meaning.”
“…gives it its opposite meaning”
Thank you David. Well said.
Steve, don’t listen to David.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVInBsib04M
The Evil That Cartoon Trains Do (lives after them?)
… when the good engines pump out white smoke and the bad engines pump out black smoke – and they are all pumping out smoke – it’s not hard to make the leap into race territory.
When I was a kid watching those Westerns, I couldn’t help but notice that the good guys wore white hats, bad guys black.
That there were never any blacks in these movies at the time made it hard to see how it was all about race.
But if you squinted enough, it became perfectly clear.
The irony is that Ms Slyke and the like are a product of competitive market capitalism. It is because the Graun is desperate to make a profit, or at least a vague turn towards one, that they publish this sort of dreck.
The Graun’s inability to make a profit proves once again, as if further proof is needed, that the market for collectivist rubbish is very small indeed.
The Graun is still digging.
She fills every requirement for the Graun fem beat:
✓ Shrill
✓ Smug
✓ Harpy
✓ Judgmental
✓ Killjoy
ReasonJust want to mirror the thoughts of others who noted that Tracy’s “about face” after a massively negative reaction to the article is reminiscent of modern artists who do something “shocking” (i.e.: complete crap) and then claim that the almost universal condemnation of their work is in fact an affirmation of it. In short, it’s a shameless attempt at saving face.
@ Jeff Guinn re: the Princess article. That’s Australia’s very own Myf Warhurst, long time employee of the ABC, on both television and radio. Of *course* she’d write for the Guardian. There are no right-of-centre people employed by our national broadcaster. Not a one. (OK, except Amanda Vanstone, but that’s on “Counterpoint”, the only radio program that nominally offers a different viewpoint to relentless and prevailing orthodoxy).
Whats she going to say when she learns that they use white smoke at the Vatican to signal the Pope’s election?
And another thing. Isn’t it just a teesny bit hypocritical for Myf to say that girls shouldn’t aspire to attain some kind of exhaled position? Substitute the word “Princess” for “pop star” or “celebrity”. Every teenager wants to be famous, but almost none get to live that particular dream. And the “cattle call” auditions for shows like X-Factor cynically exploit the naive aspirations of young people. Nonetheless, some do indeed become pop stars, famous actors, and, yes, even occasionally, princesses.
So here’s Myf, who for several years was a TV star and fixture of ABC’s “Spicks And Specks”, and I assume she still has her national radio gig on Triple J. So clearly, she has a high profile, ordinary people know her by sight and by name, she gets to meet and mix with all kinds of A-listers, and, due to her celebrity status, she gets the kinds of opportunities that all of us ordinary folk would only ever dream of (hosting The Big Day Out, profiles in glossy weekend newspaper colour supplements, and even op ed pieces in The Guardian). Oh but noooo, the rest of us mustn’t get ideas above our station!
Steve, don’t listen to David.
Steve, don’t listen to ac1. That footage from the Guild of Evil’s rendering plant… er, I mean, processing centre… has been forged, obviously.
The cake is real. I repeat, the cake is real.
…and the processing centre makes shoes for orphans?
(Perhaps I spent too much time with LEGO space sets. The figures were all in space suits. Kindo of difficult to tell their gender that way.)
Oh man. I can resist anything except cake. Even if it’s under a grand piano precariously suspended by fraying rope, with a sign pointing at the cake saying “Obvious Trap”. It’s how my wife tricks me into giving the baby a bath.
pst314 – It’s not easy being racist against the turnip-fondling, flatpack-furniture-dealing, chunky-knitwear-enthusiasts of Sweden. But I am prepared to give it a go. We should invade Sweden in retaliation for Mamma Mia.
Patrick Chester – Did you not know that Lego is racist?
Not surprising since it comes from South Sweden, which they annoyingly try to obfuscate by calling it Denmark.
Cake, racist, Sweeden. All you gotta do is Google, people. It’s like a corollary of Rule 34
http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/04/but_is_it_art_swedish_culture_minister_in_worlds_most_racist_cake-cutting_scandal.html
WTP –
“According to sources Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth was invited to declare festivities open by performing a clitoridectomy on the cake, which she did by removing the cake woman’s labiums
Well, I no longer want cake.
“turnip-fondling”
I laughed out loud at that, Steve. Excellent!
“I can resist anything except cake.”
Here, have this cool portal gun.
I recently learned via Terry Pratchett that ‘swede’ is a British synonym for ‘turnip’.
Terry P is wrong. These are two different beasts although Scots sometimes use ‘turnip’ for both, being parsimonious sorts. Swedes are what I think Merkins call ‘rutabagas’.
“Terry P is wrong”
It is very possible that I am the one who is wrong–that I simply misremember what I read some years ago.
I’m late to the party, but let me remind people that Thomas was in trouble several times before. First and foremost, it’s sexist because all the engines are male and the only females were Clarabel and Annie (Thomas’ coaches). The makers sought to remedy this by creating Daisie the DMU who couldn’t or wouldn’t pull a truck. Of course such stereotypical female behaviour only went to prove how sexist the series really was.
Before that though the books were trouble because we have a world in which the fat controller was the ruler, the engines the upper classes, followed by the middle class coaches and at the bottom of the pile we had the trucks. Lots of them and they were dirty and unruly. Just like the working classes. No one can possibly fail to see that the story is an allegory for the class system. However the artist’s failure to challenge the social hierarchy makes it inherently bourgeois and reactionary.
Believe it or not I read something along those line 30 odd years ago in one of the SWP/IMG/RCP papers. Even my sympathetic mind was struggling to not laugh.
If Scots use turnip for both aren’t they instead being parsnipmonious?