Fourteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

This paper considers one of the most famous American children’s book series, Thomas the Train Engine. Not only does the series comprise books, but the creators have established a successful child’s television show and toy model trains. In the various Thomas & Friends media portrayals the train yard owner, Toppham Hat, encourages and compliments an engine by telling them they are “really useful.” The ultimate goal of the personified engines’ existence is to revert to an object solely used for the enrichment of the short, fat capitalist that seemingly always wears a top hat. This sort of propaganda is dangerous because it reifies these anthropomorphized engines with real and significant personalities, emotions, and relationships. After the climactic portion of the story, the capitalist materializes to tell a particular engine that it was “really useful.” Thus, the recently animated engine is thingified once more. The child receives the message that one day he/she will measure their worth like Thomas, being useful to someone that exists through their labor. Recently, the Thomas enterprise announced that they would expand to global markets. Children’s popular media is globally expanding at an alarming rate, thus convincing a wider generation of young international children that their way of life is subservient to the growing capitalist model.