TOPSY AND TIM - The DARKNESS that LURKS BENEATH

[DaveCinzano]

Topsy And Tim - a series of bright, colourful children's books reflecting a cheery post-war optimism, created by Jean and Gareth Adamson in the early 1960s, but rumbling on into the present day, notching up more than 160 adventures, and even spawning a live-action TV series.

Topsy, a girl, and Tim, a boy; raven-haired twins living in a suburban semi with their Mummy and Dad, getting into the mildest of scrapes (high jinks at a jumble sale, getting new matching lunch boxes, learning how to cross the road safely), and generally being totally content with life.

Or is there more to it than that? Were the Adamsons hinting at more sinister aspects of noble Albion?

Exhibit 1: The Milkman






Cream and ‘extra’ for the weekend? ‘Nobody heard him come’? That look?

Take that, model nuclear family, with your bourgeois dreams, gender role stereotypes and absentee fathers! Your world has been shattered by a simple free-wheeling dairy deliverer and his libertine free expression! And Mummy will not be shackled by her apron strings any longer, no more will she wear that housecoat like the hairshirt of a condemned prisoner! Vive l'amour! Mort au somnambulisme de la société du spectacle!

Exhibit 2: Classroom 237

Not even the simple geography of the books can be trusted.

Here at nursery school, Topsy and Tim and their friend Janet were working at the table in front on the open window on the right.

Note the window to its left. The door through which Janet's mother has come must be further to the left of that window.



...But here we are on the outside looking at the same classroom - and now the open window at which the children were working has moved to the middle



And consider the message we are being transmitted here.

Look how miserable those children are who are - from their perspective within the school - trapped on the extreme right:



Compare their expressions with the blank faces of those perched at the middle window - the centrists, if you will:



And finally, contrast both with the untrammelled joy of the children at the far left who have not just opened a window a tiny crack, but pushed the door wide open, affording Tim the opportunity to run free, literally, and into the figurative garden of Eden:



All pretty clear, really.

 

[Orang Utan]

You need to get out more. Oh wait

 

[DaveCinzano]

That milkman, though

 

[Sue]

So it was a long time ago, but iirc they had a mixed-race(?) sibling who was in one or two books then disappeared. Is this true or some weird kind of false memory?

Eta.A mysteriously appearing/disappearing sister and brother apparently. Topsy and Tim's sister AND brother - an update - Being Mrs C

 

[kittyP]

Excellent analysis!

 

[DaveCinzano]

And FUCK TONY WELCH

 

[DaveCinzano]

So it was a long time ago, but iirc they had a mixed-race(?) sibling who was in one or two books then disappeared. Is this true or some weird kind of false memory?

Eta.A mysteriously appearing/disappearing sister and brother apparently. Topsy and Tim's sister AND brother - an update - Being Mrs C

 

[kebabking]

Isn't the concencus of opinion that Joy drinks during the day, and is a LibDem?

I fucking hate Topsy and Tim, and fucking Waffle....

 

[mauvais]

Exhibit 2: Classroom 237

Not even the simple geography of the books can be trusted.

Here at nursery school, Topsy and Tim and their friend Janet were working at the table in front on the open window on the right.

Note the window to its left. The door through which Janet's mother has come must be further to the left of that window.

View attachment 208487

...But here we are on the outside looking at the same classroom - and now the open window at which the children were working has moved to the middle

View attachment 208488

This is easily reconciled if you consider that the idea of the open window is the writer's clumsy literal representation of the Overton Window which is ever moving rightwards. In fact the important perspective here is the external one. We see the children on the left trapped in the socially obsolete discussions of owning the means of production, marked by the sorry-looking remnants of the Labour rosebush, unreachable and useless now. We see the fascist children on the right, the open blue door presumably representing unchecked extremist public discourse on Facebook and Twitter, able to run amok. The teacher and parents are gone, likely killed. They are, perhaps, the licence fee.

The only humour to be drawn from this scene is found in the escaped painting, signifying the Lib Dems of course, who are literally ruined garbage now, reduced to a joke of a performance art piece. Finally far better that we laugh at their destruction than rate them seriously as an ouvre. Perhaps this could yet unify the troubled working class.

It's interesting that inside the classroom the omnipresent surveillance arm of the state goes unnoticed and unmentioned, despite being one of the most obvious elements.

 

[mauvais]

It's curious to see how the politics of T&T translates internationally. For example in this British scene we see another dark episode of populism:



and yet across the Channel, this would not work so well, and so the (badly-translated) local version had quite a different telling of events:

 

[Mrs Miggins]

Christ on a bike

 

[Proper Tidy]

I didn't know topsy and tim had such historic roots, I just know the telly show with real people they have on cbeebies. One of my daughter's favourites.

The mum and daughter are alright but the young lad is an annoying whiney do gooder type, little shit, and the dad is too cheerful and comes across as a bit creepy. Also there is an old fella, not a relative, who is in it sometimes and I would not fucking trust him around my own, fuck that

 

[fucthest8]

Sleep deprivation is a terrible thing

 

[maomao]

I didn't know topsy and tim had such historic roots, I just know the telly show with real people they have on cbeebies. One of my daughter's favourites. I'm

The mum and daughter are alright but the young lad is an annoying whiney do gooder type, little shit, and the dad is too cheerful and comes across as a bit creepy. Also there is an old fella, not a relative, who is in it sometimes and I would not fucking trust him around my own, fuck that

I only ever hear cbeebies from the kitchen so I could sing the theme tune but didn't understand quite how boring it all was till we got a set of the books. God they're fucking boring.

And FUCK TONY WELCH

Yes fuck him and his unnecessary surname. It's not like there's even another Tony around.

 

[girasol]

I fucking hate Topsy and Tim, and fucking Waffle....

Topsy and Tim are really annoying. But I kinda like Waffle. Shame my grand daughter doesn't watch it anymore. She's obsessed with Horrid Henry

 

[DaveCinzano]

O.M.F.G.

 

[DaveCinzano]

Excellent analysis!

I studied at the feet of giants

 

[DaveCinzano]

Sleep deprivation is a terrible thing

I call this piece ‘Critic, Critiqued’






Edited because THE EYES

 

[Mrs Miggins]

The eyes!

 

[DaveCinzano]

The eyes!

Fixed

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Why do they have a postbox inside their house?

 

[Proper Tidy]

Why do they have a postbox inside their house?

View attachment 208596

Mail fraud. Wheel it out to a street corner and pick up those juicy cheques. Made it out of tin so thin it would dent in a breeze. Robbing bastards. Defo tampering with their meters too

 

[Mrs Miggins]

Fixed

You did look somewhat manic....which was not really a surprise given the content of this thread.
You seem to be close to the edge mate.....step back!

 

[mauvais]

Why do they have a postbox inside their house?

View attachment 208596

This raises the great question that divides the world of Topsian analysis. In DaveCinzano's already highly confused interpretation of the work, where he reversed the political spectrum, he confidently asserts the setting to be a nursery. If this were the case, why would Janet bother to state that the painting was 'done at school', the very place she is right now? Is Janet in the business of serving up self-evident prolixity? Is Mother an absolute moron, too intoxicated to know what's happening? Possibly, on both counts, yes. But this may be the smoking gun that proves the theory false.

And yet! The mother clearly arriving from some externality to this scene, the suggestion that Janet was already present. Certainly Topsy and Tim's paintings are already gathered here for reasons unknown. Perhaps the trio have previously held a session to collectively review their artistic endeavours. Perhaps, however, Janet has bourgeois and selfish aspirations of building upon her would-be peers' pieces and, for example, profiting from exhibiting their works rather than labouring under the same terms. Or perhaps this is a school.

 

[DaveCinzano]

You did look somewhat manic....which was not really a surprise given the content of this thread.
You seem to be close to the edge mate.....step back!

That wasn't me

 

[JuanTwoThree]

The semiotics of the ankle socks:

White socks; purity, Persil, innocence. But also Tsarism and reaction.

Red socks; gaiety, self-expression and popular revolution and a hint of the state capitalist road of Bolshevism. Paradoxical?

Black socks; Anarchy and Mourning. Depression and Practicality.


Food for thought.

 

[fucthest8]

The eyes!

Christ, was that your reaction to my actual eyes??? Or had that horrible twat Cinzano done horrible things to me?

 

[Mrs Miggins]

Christ, was that your reaction to my actual eyes??? Or had that horrible twat Cinzano done horrible things to me?

Now i'm really confused as to who that picture is of. Is it you or DaveCinzano ?

And yeah sorry....the eyes were a bit....intense!

 

[DaveCinzano]

So you saw a pic of fucthest8 and thought, “Now that is a guy with a theory about children's story books, no mistaking it!”

 

[Orang Utan]

This thread reminds me of those Mr Men reviews on Amazon. Were you responsible for them too, DaveCinzano ?
Here's an example:
"
'1984' or 'The Trial' had been a children's book, Mr Messy would be it. No literary character has ever been so fully and categorically obliterated by the forces of social control. Hargreaves may well pay homage to Kafka and Orwell in this work, but he also goes beyond them.

We meet Mr Messy - a man whose entire day-to-day existence is the undiluted expression of his individuality. His very untidiness is a metaphor for his blissful and unselfconscious disregard for the Social Order. Yes, there are times when he himself is a victim of this individuality - as when he trips over a brush he has left on his garden path - but he goes through life with a smile on his face.

That is, until a chance meeting with Mr Neat and Mr Tidy - the archetypal men in suits. They set about a merciless programme of social engineering and indoctrination that we are left in no doubt is in flagrant violation of his free will. 'But I like being messy' he protests as they anonymize both his home and his person with their relentless cleaning activity, a symbolism thinly veiled.

This process is so thorough that by the end of it he is unrecognizable - a homogenized pink blob, no longer truly himself (that vibrant Pollock-like scribble of before). He smiles the smile of a brainwashed automaton, blandly accepting what he has been given no agency to question or refuse. It is in this very smile that the sheer horror of what we have seen to occur is at its most acute.

Somewhere behind this blank expression though is a latent anger - a trace of self-knowledge as to what he once was - in the barbed observation he makes to Neat and Tidy that they have even deprived him of his name.

The book ends with a dry reminder from Hargreaves that just as with the secret police in some totalitarian regime, our own small expressions of uniqueness and volition may also result in a visit from these sinister suited agents."