What gaps are there in Hergé’s representations of women?
The Adventures have been criticised for not only the notable absence of women but the lack of positive or liberating representation of the female figures that do appear throughout the albums. Even where there are some exceptions, such as Bianca Castafiore and Peggy Alcazar, the overarching this-is-a-man’s-world mindset still prevails passively in their depiction.
Hergé’s claim to “like women far too much to caricature them” can also be read as not liking women enough to support their liberation. Women shown throughout the Adventures are consistently depicted as silent and domicile, and exclusively assigned roles in the domestic and maternal sphere: mother, maid, homemakers, caregivers – “[they] are visually and narratively backgrounded…mere figures in the crowd” (Mountfort, 2020). It is also blatant that there are no female speaking characters in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, and in Tintin in the Congo where a few women did have dialogue, they were only brief expressions of anger or annoyance, further instilling the image of women as irritants (Mountfort, 2020). Although some may regard Tintin as a product of prominent ideologies of the time – as this is how he justified his crude representations of Congolese in Tintin in the Congo – it remains problematic because he ignored challenges to women’s subordination despite the waves of feminism that occurred throughout his life (Mountfort, 2020). The resistance of female liberation does not completely if at all excuse this, especially in considering the many ‘barrier breakers’ that emerged during this period – female aviators, intellectuals, writers and artists to name some (Mountfort, 2020). It is also ironic in understanding that the second wave of feminism focused on issues of equality and discrimination, with an emphasis on dismantling the role of women in the family and home (Burkett & Brunell, 2020). The issue here is not the expectation that Hergé should have feminist leanings, but with an awareness of the second wave of feminism being well underway in the 60s and 70s, we can see this prevailing, reductive depiction of women as Hergé “passively reinscribing gender dominants” (Mountfort, 2020).
There are a handful of female characters who appear to be deviations from these representations, which may signify Hergé finally waking up to women’s liberation. Hergé’s acknowledgement however is expressed in a parodied way (Mountfort, 2020). For example, Peggy Alcazar is depicted as the bossy woman of the house, often depicted barking orders, with curlers in her hair (ibid., 2020). We also have Castafiore who surpasses the female servitude motif but although she is the most developed female in the albums for extending beyond the maternal, domestic sphere, it is problematic that her she is portrayed as a nuisance. It is worth noting that the feature of the medium Madame Yamilah and other female roles we see that are outside of the realm of the home and family such as flight attendants and nurses, are problematic because they are nameless for the most part, and these are commonly hypersexualized and hyperfeminized “fantasy fixtures of the male gaze” – Madame Yamilah represents the mystical oriental trope, and roles such as the flight attendant and nurse are still constricted to the idea of servitude.
References
Burkett, E., & Brunell, L. (2020). Feminism. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/feminism
Mountfort, P. (2020). ‘Tintin, gender and desire’, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. DOI: 10.1080/21504857.2020.1729829
Pop Genres 2020 