What gaps are there in Hergé’s representations of women?
Throughout Hergé’s albums, there are notable gaps in his representation of women, specifically in how little they feature throughout the series, and the limited character development they are given when they do feature.
In many of Hergé’s albums there is an almost total absence of female characters, and the only women we do see are background characters who do not speak (Mountfort, 2020). For example, in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, women are only seen as figures in the crowd rather than fully realised characters who interact in the storyline. In Tintin in the Congo, while we do see a few female characters speaking, they are just one-liners served to move the plot along, such as the woman who is upset over her husband being sick, or the woman who bemoans Tintin for running into her (Mountfort, 2020). Hergé justified his erasure of women in his albums when he said, ‘[w]omen have nothing to do in a world like Tintin’s. I like women far too much to caricature them. And, besides, pretty or not, young or not, women are rarely comic characters’ (Mountfort, 2020, p. 2). This is problematic in the sense that under the guise of liking women, Hergé’s lack of female representation is really doing more harm by relegating them to background characters with no agency. This attitude is known as benevolent sexism, which are views towards women that may appear positive but actually do more harm (Glick & Fiske, 1996). This is because these ‘positive’ views, such as idolising women in the domestic sphere or romanticising them to the point of objectification, still imply that women are inferior and need protecting, and that men have a duty to protect them (Glick & Fiske, 1996). While Hergé’s justification for his near erasure of women may appear to have positive intentions, they are still rooted in misogyny.
Another gap in Hergé’s representation is that when women are featured they are given little to no character development and are relegated to the domestic sphere. For example, female characters are often portrayed as wives, mothers, housekeepers, nurses, maids and flight attendants, all roles that are serving others, particularly men (Mountfort, 2020). It could be argued that this is in keeping with roles women were able to do at the time, however, this argument holds little weight when we see that the first woman to have flown in space, Valentina Tereshkova, embarked on this mission in 1963, during the same time that female characters in Tintin are given less exciting domestic roles (Mountfort, 2020). This limits the amount of development and fulfilment female characters can enjoy. While the men in Tintin get to go on fabulous adventures and enjoy varied careers, women are portrayed as extensions of their husbands with no agency of their own (Mountfort, 2020). They are not well-rounded, fleshed out characters that help Tintin on his adventures, but are confined to the ‘ordinary’ world while Tintin gets to experience the ‘extraordinary’ world (Mountfort, 2020).
When women are given more fleshed out characters, their character portrayal is hardly flattering. In Tintin and the Picaros, Peggy Alcazar is portrayed as a domineering shrew who bosses around her intimidated husband (Mountfort, 2020). This trope reinforces the idea that women who are assertive and in control are dismissed as being bossy, and that the men in their lives are meek and only listen to them out of fear, rather than because they want to be an equal partner. Arguably Tintin’s most developed female character, Bianca Castafiore, is given much more depth than other female characters. She extends beyond the domestic sphere by being a self-made celebrity opera singer, and appears in multiple Tintin albums (Mountfort, 2020). While it’s positive to see a female character given more depth and exposure, one problematic element is that she is portrayed as annoying, shrill and intolerable. Her singing voice is so high-pitched that it shatters glass, much to the annoyance of Tintin and Captain Haddock (Mountfort, 2020). While not every female character needs to be well-liked and without flaws, it seems particularly problematic that one of Tintin’s only developed female character is found to be a nuisance to the male protagonists, further reinforcing Hergé’s statement that women have no place in the world of Tintin.
References
Glick, P. & Fiske, S. (1996). The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory: Differentiating hostile and benevolent sexism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(3), 491-512. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.70.3.491
Mountfort, P. (2020). Tintin, gender and desire. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. https://doi-org.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/10.1080/21504857.2020.1729829
Pop Genres 2020 