What gaps are there in Hergé’s representations of women?
In the story of the adventure of Tintin, women have always been disadvantaged. The image of women portrayed by Herge is basically neglected or rarely appears, even if they appeared, they are only referred as second-class characters as clumsy, foolish and suppressed by men. Just ike racial discriminations by Herge with intense meaning of stereotype.
Herge utilized the way that men are superior to women. As according to Mountfort (2020),’ Women have nothing to do in a world like Tintin’s’ shows the neglect of women, and the ability of women is worse than men, even if women are given some of the most important roles but merely to help men with chores as a secondary unit to men in order to reveal that men are superior to women. Nevertheless, the way Herge narrated women in his book has never drawn much criticisms, because, in the traditional era men supremacy was very common in every field of society at that time, this can be said as attributed by the patriarchal system at the time. As according to (Santos, 2019), patriarchy refers to the division of power based on gender, emphasizing the power operation mode of advocating masculinity and despising femininity, which means that women are always been devalued object, and compliance to men is the only option for women.
Many feminists advocate challenging patriarchy, they believe that patriarchy is the oppression of women and the main factor leading to gender inequality. However, as womens’ employment and education levels increase with times, the conditions and values of women have much improved, but the influence of the traditional patriarchal structure on many levels such as social habits and systems is still huge (Santos, 2019). At least, film and television work with sex discrimination rarely appear on the market. And the adventure of Tintin film directed by Steven Spielberg also used a rational way to eliminate stereotyped images of women, at least without any discrimination or harm (FEM, 2012).
Mountfort, P. (2020). ‘Tintin, gender and desire’. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2020.1729829
Pop Genres 2020 