“As you’ve no doubt noticed, I’m trapped beneath the weight of childhood escapism!”– Infinity Train and the dangers of fiction
I rewatched infinity Train and realized that in Book 1 the train is a great metaphor for the way we use fiction to deal with– or avoid dealing with– problems in reality.
In book 1, the train represents escapism.
The season begins by introducing Tulip, who has thrown herself into making a video game specifically as a way to avoid thinking about her parents’ divorce. Tulip’s reflection calls her out on this later–pointing out that Tulip refused to talk to anyone about her problems, ghosted her friends, pretended not to hear her parents, and spent all her time making her game for game design camp (or pretending that she was working very hard on her game).
When Tulip discovers she can’t go game design camp, she panics– because the escapism of making her silly video game is the only thing that’s been keeping her emotionally stable. She has centered so much of her life around the hope of going to game design camp. Instead of using her game as a way to make herself happy, she’s been using it as a way to avoid introspection, to avoid thinking at all, and she’s been turning this “silly” escapism into the focus of her life. When she’s told she can’t go to game design camp, it feels like the end of the world.
So Tulip makes the dangerous choice to run away– because her escapism has become so insanely important to her that it’s taken priority over her real-world health and safety.
Tulip didn’t make it to game design camp, but when you think about it…she kinda did? The train is basically just a more dangerous (but more exciting!) version of the escapism Tulip was looking for when she ran away from home.
In the Grid Car, she literally remakes the characters from her video game and then is forced to throw them at the cockroach monsters that want to suck her soul bc the train is like a Game Design camp that can murder you!
Basically: I feel like the train represents different things in different seasons? And in Season 1, the train is (among other things!) a metaphor for the way we interact with video games/movies/fiction in general.
Every car on the train is its own self-contained story, its own self-contained little cartoon or movie or game with its own plotline or set of rules or cast of wacky characters.
A lot of the cars are clearly inspired by the imagery of nostalgic movies/games/toys. Many of them have cute dot-eyed denizens that feel like characters out of Adventure Time. There’s an Indiana-Jones-temple-themed car and a monster mash car, a car where a king sends Tulip on an epic fantasy “slay the monster” quest, a pinball car and a ballpit car. There‘s a funny juxtaposition between “fun nostalgic childhood games and stories :)” and “you are trapped here and cannot leave. :)” As The Cat jokes: “I’m trapped beneath the weight of childhood escapism!”
If you slow down and try to understand them, every one of the silly nostalgic cartoon cars has something it can help you with. The cars can help you work through difficult emotions, they can comfort you, they can make you happy!
…….or you can just mindlessly run through a million train cars without thinking about them at all!
This is what Tulip initially tries to do. In Season 1 Episode 3 Tulip starts running all the cars as fast as she can, ignoring all the interesting cute characters who try to stop her— thinking that if she just goes through as many things as possible, she’ll be able to get off the train.
This is like mindlessly consuming media not because you want to think or make yourself happy, but because you want to numb yourself with mindless escapism. It’s arguably the same thing Tulip was doing with her video game earlier— throwing herself into mindless escapism to avoid introspection.
Because what Tulip doesn’t understand is that the only way to escape the train is through introspection. Mindlessly going through as much as you can doesn’t help you, because the train is infinite— the only thing that can give you an exit is confronting your issues and understanding your own emotions.
The train can’t help you unless you let it help you— in the same way fiction can’t help you unless you let it help you. It can’t comfort you if you won’t let it comfort you, it can’t teach you things if you don’t want to learn, it can’t help you understand your emotions if youre not willing to think about them.
Amelia is Tulip’s antagonist/character foil because she represents the kind of person Tulip could’ve become. Instead of using the train to help herself process her emotions and accept the changes in her life, Amelia’s goal is to use the train to completely shut herself off from reality, never confront her emotions, and live forever in a mindless escapist fantasy.
There’s a parallel between the way Tulip ignores her father’s attempt to console her with a phone call and then runs away/ends up on the train— and the way Amelia ignores the people trying to console her and then runs away/ends up on the train.
Tulip ultimately uses the train as a way to help herself confront the difficult emotions she was trying to run from, while Amelia “breaks” the train by trying to force it to let her escape confronting her emotions forever.
Basically: I think Book 1 has this really interesting complex attitude towards the idea of escapism? Like: Tulip needed to spend some time going on wacky adventures with colorful cartoon characters! Spending time in an escapist fantasy world gave her a break from her bad home life, made her happy, and helped her grow as a person! In the same way, sometimes you need to take a break from reality and use fiction/games as a way to escape, for the sake of your own mental health, and it can genuinely help you understand yourself and make you happier.
At the same time, Book 1 is also about how escapism can be a trap— how trying to turn escapism into a permanent substitute for reality, as a way to avoid confronting things you need to confront, can damage you and the people around you.
Idk if this is coherent but like….to me, this season is about the difference between using fiction/games/escapism as a way to deaden yourself to your own existence, and using fiction/games/escapism as a way to make your life better and more meaningful.
