Week 3

How are Hergé’s generally represented when they do appear?

the way i have interpreted this question is how does herge generally represent women when they appear? The way that Herge has represented women in the Tintin comics using the mans words himself ‘[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) from this we can show that they do not play a major role in his comics nor does he see any need for women in his comics with the only female character with any real substance is Bianca Castafiore. Characters before Castafiore were mainly seen as nuisances that would distract from the adventure or boys club that was Tintins adventures but changed when Castafiore was introduced with her getting her own Album in the series called Castafiores Emerald.

Castafiore started off much like any of Herges other representations when she was introduced in 1939 where she was just an Obnoxious Opera singer but her character was revised in the 1950s where she takes on echoes of the Greek soprano Maria Callas(Figaro_Culture, 2015).She is now one of the most recognisable characters from the Tintin series along side Captain Hadock and Tintin Himself.

Women in the Tintin Series are sparce where in the Albums Tintin in the land of the Soviets there were no talking females and Tintin in the Congo where the only talking females were an African women who reprimanded Tintin for bumping into her son,a Woman lamenting her husbands illness and one telling her son that he wont be like Tintin if hes not good(Mountfort 2020). This shows that women during his early years at least were nothing more than background characters and they would only come out in either nagging roles or to further Tintin.

References

Figaro_Culture. (2015, September 20). Non,la Castafiore ne chante pas faux, c’est la Callas en BD. Retrieved September 06, 2020, from https://www.lefigaro.fr/musique/2015/09/20/03006-20150920ARTFIG00013-nonla-castafiore-ne-chante-pas-faux-c-est-la-callas-en-bd.php

Mountfort, P. (2020). Tintin, gender and desire. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics.