- Why might the queering of Tintin offer new life to the series?
We’re in a new era of LGBT representation. Moving past the stereotypes that used to be the only way to write queer characters; the overtly feminine gay man, the promiscuous bisexual/pansexual/polysexual, or the classic sexually deviant lesbian. Where Triple A video games can have an LGBT cast as their main characters, and not simply NPCs to fulfill quotas. Where Netflix’s revival of ‘The Baby-Sitter’s Club’ can rewrite one of the sitter’s clients as Bailey, and have an entire segment of Mary-Anne calling out the prejudice of the doctors who purposefully misgendered her. The LGBT community is louder than ever, asking for appropriate representation from writers; where they don’t simply die because the writers don’t know how- or worse, don’t want- to write a satisfying end for them.
We’re also in an era of remakes, with companies picking up old stories and modernising them. Disney’s newest projects have been remaking all their old animated movies into live-action, Dreamworks picked up ‘Voltron’- a badly dubbed show from the 80s- and attempted to make the story into something cohesive; horror movies have also been doing this for a while longer, from classics like ‘The Thing’ and ‘Evil Dead,’ to less known horrors like ‘Let Me In’ and ‘The Crazies.’
Other remakes have even revived themselves with LGBT rep in them. As the mentioned above ‘Voltron,’ has a gay man and a non-binary character within the main crew, or ‘She-Ra’ with both protagonist and antagonist as lesbian women- which isn’t even mentioning their entire cast of characters. So, remaking Tintin with either Tintin himself as a part of the LGBT community or with a crew of representation, wouldn’t be too far out of a concept.
The creators of Spongebob have- again- confirmed the title character to be asexual (since, y’know, sea sponges do reproduce asexually). A lovable character created in the 90s confirmed to be within the LGBT community. While this was confirmed back in the early 2000s, the news again made a resurgence when Nickelodeon let out a tweet hinting at his sexuality. I bring this up to show that even an iconic character like Spongebob Squarepants was met with positivity and support.
Reviving Tintin which included LGBT rep will certainly bring in a larger audience as well; while Tintin is widely known, a lot of people haven’t actually seen or read any of Tintin’s adventures. If a new series was to be made and made with new characters for this purpose, Tintin lovers would certainly go view it and it would also attract us LGBT folk who are starved for good representation.
References:
Flood, A., & Cain, S. (2017, September 25). Is Tintin a girl? Philosopher says his theory was ‘fake news’. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/25/is-tintin-a-girl-philosopher-says-his-theory-was-fake-news
Gupta, S. (2017, September 23). Tintin is a girl, probably asexual, claims French philosopher. Deccan Chronicle. https://www.deccanchronicle.com/lifestyle/books-and-art/230917/tintin-is-a-girl-probably-asexual-claims-french-philosopher.html
Mountfort, P. (2020). ‘Tintin, gender and desire’. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2020.1729829
Opie, D. (2020, June 15). SpongeBob Squarepants’ queer identity is more complicated than you think. Retrieved from https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/a32866498/spongebob-squarepants-asexual-lgbtq-queer-gay/
Pop Genres 2020 