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https://www.scribd.com/document/899239966/Henry-the-Green-Engine-1951-Scanned-by-ThatERTLGuy
Page 60. Published in 1950, and retracted in 1972 from my quick research.
p64 of the document, p60 of the book
For the lazy who don’t want to look it up
It feels so out of the blue, so unnecessary. Like the writer had been bored. It’s difficult to imagine that this didn’t jolt readers out of the story, even at the time.
Languages change. Moron, idiot and imbecile used to be medical terms. Gay used to simply mean happy and excited. A fag used to be a term for a cigarette.
I really doubt it would have appeared in a mainstream children’s book if it were seen as at all offensive.
Words like “bugger” and “damn” used to be extremely offensive curses. Now they’re often used as very mild expressions of annoyance to avoid using the serious ones.
Fag still is a term for a cigarette…
Yeah, but only in old-timey countries, like England.
I had always heard that it originally meant a stick to be used for kindling and was adapted to smoking once the tobacco trade was a thing. Probably complete horseshit because no internet when I was a kid, but I never bothered to look it up.
A faggot originally meant a bundle of sticks or twigs, and they were used to light fires, but I don’t think this has any relation to “fag” as in cigarette. Etymonline says of the latter:
British slang for “cigarette” (originally, especially, the butt of a smoked cigarette), 1888, probably from fag “loose piece, last remnant of cloth” (late 14c., as in fag-end “extreme end, loose piece,” 1610s)
That meaning of faggot, interestingly, comes from the same root as the Roman symbol “fasces” which is a bundle of sticks from which we get the modern word fascism.
Another fun fact: there’s a traditional British dish called faggots which are a kind of meatball made from offal, somewhat similar to haggis but uncased.
Exactly. I started reading The Fellowship of the Ring again, and it takes some getting used to that “queer” is used in a completely different way than nowadays.
I must be old, since the original meaning is still what comes to mind first when I hear it in a non-LGBTQ context.
Queer is a strange one for me, growing up it was a straight up offensive slur for gay people but now the LGBTQ community has embraced it hard enough to give it its own letter.
This is from South Africa in the year 2000. It just means unusual in this context.
I wonder if Carlin ever tried sneaking that past the censors.
I don’t remember him really weighing in on that word. And if I’m not mistaken he was friends with Richard Pryor.
I genuinely don’t even understand what this means. Black people aren’t charcoal black.
Remember the meme about the guy being immune to BnW filter?
Alright, that’s actually pretty funny.
If you have never actually seen a person with dark skin that’s how you might imagine one. Or so I did when I was a kid, growing up in a bunghole village in the impenetrable forests up in northern europe where the darkest skin I’d seen was that greek girl (not very dark at all).
My friend is also charcoal black, so that’s definitely a possibility too, human skin is amazing, it can be black-blueish, chocolate, white or red (me in the summer).
In the 1950s … to average white people who might have never seen a black person before … they would imagine this
I can promise you that the vast majority of white Americans had seen a black person in the 1950s.
I know it’s difficult to grasp the idea that the world is larger than just the US. But you’ll just have to try.
I mean let’s be real minstrel shows are explicitly a western concept, and were huge in the US. Go down another comment and I addressed the UK as well, but really that’s going to apply anywhere Americans were during WW2 as well.
Anywhere that minstrel shows were popular by the 1950s most of those people would have at least seen a black person. America or otherwise.
Black people aren’t charcoal black.
According to old-timey racists, they are.
I mean I’m terrible with names but like, skin tones vary. Go back three generations and my great grandparents look very different from each other, only one of them is all that white but godsdammit they are the whitest shade of white that ever whited white. Albinos put on sunglasses when I walk by, I inherited it somehow from gamgam. You’d think it would have been recessive not dominant but here we are. I blame all the cheese we eat, gamgam loved cheese like I love cheese.
My point was there’s this gorgeous actress/model (I think she was a bond girl) who has an amazingly dark skin tone.
You mean Halle Berry?
No like two decades earlier. Opposite Connery or Dalton
Well done, Henry.
Came for the n-word, stayed for the story. Those silly trains.
Ah yes, “Thomas says the N-word by accident, while singing a rap song” episode, my favorite.
Thomas the Dank Engine
💀
This song will always live in my head rent free
Just so you know; there’s a bunch of gangster rap songs that fit the tune and they can be found on youtube.
byob by system of a down fits too
Unironically a great example for explaining the difference between 0 and null
Awesome now I have to hate Thomas the Tank Engine
Eh, pretty sure it’s referring to books published around 1945, after WWII (273242 days is ~75 years) so of course it’s going to contain inherently racist shit. I don’t think one should hate a whole series because it wasn’t talking about civil rights and equality in an era where those barely existed unless you were a white man. Heck, if Thomas & Friends was talking about that it probably would’ve been banned.
And you didn’t already hate them for the dark and depressing messages they made by saying if your friends or family get old and unable to take care of themselves, the best way to deal with them is to seal them in a concrete tomb still alive, and let them die in there as they cry out in horror?
That part never struck a chord with you?
The franchise was originally started by an avowed fascist … and it really shows through sometimes.
There was that Barney coloring book that advocated for blood orgies but they caught it and recalled it fairly quick
Please, tell me more.
I’d imagine anyone involved with that decision is dead today. Granted thats around 75 years ago. Still a crazy stat though. Mr. Roger’s TILL I DIE.
Oh boy. Here come the cancel train again
