WEEK 3 Popular Genre 

1.   How and why have Tintin’s gender and sexuality been question? 

Herge stated in an interview that Tintin was not gay nevertheless Tintin shows no romantic interest in dating the opposite sex, getting married or having children one day which leaves his sexuality open to interpretation. It appears Herge intended to leave Tintin’ personal life out of his adventures like family, favorite food and clothes, sexual preferences etc. These stories were written with children in mind, understandably, it would be too traumatizing in 1929 when Tintin was created to deviate from the norms of the time. 

Tintin is a teenager aged somewhere between 15 –18 and as such be going through puberty. In boys this starts as early as 10 years of age when fluctuations in the sex hormone testosterone stimulates libido and growth and ends at around the age of 16. Daily erections and wet dreams are common and a normal part of puberty that happens to all boys. Why Herge didn’t give this matter any thought is baffling considering the use of more adult themes of drugs, crime, violence, political propaganda, religion, racism, sexism and so on.  

On the rare occasion woman are included they are not the cliché damsels in distress that need saving by our hero. Women take a back seat and are depicted as irritants at best and at worst nags (Mountfort, 2020). In no way is this confirmation Tintin is gay due to lack of evidence or him running around with a campy toy dog breed terrier, or frequent compulsion of getting dressed up in disguise, or Dorian Gray-esque of staying young as most fans would be more inclined to see Tintin as asexual. 

There however seems to be more substance than meets the eye between Tintin and Captain Haddock friendship which has homoerotic overtures. When they first meet on board Captain Haddocks cargo ship ‘Karaboudjan’ in The Crab with the Golden Claws, Haddock is drunk and is consoled by Tintin when he finds out his mutinous crew are diamond smugglers. Tintin shows his feminine side of caring for Haddock when he comforts him by tenderly holding both his shoulders from behind then Tintin saves Haddock life by helping him jump overboard and escape in a rowboat. Tintin then saves Haddock from an airplane crash and a group of men in this Golden Claw episode and each time Haddock calls out for Tintin to save him. Sexual tension is symbolized when Haddock dehydrated in the Sahara Desert and imagines Tintin is a bottle of champagne and jumps on top off him.  

Their actions towards each other suggest a kind of intimacy and devotion, spending a considerable amount of time together and sacrificing their lives for each other and I believe Tintin is gay. 

REFERENCES.  

Paul Mountfort (2020): ‘Tintin, gender and desire’, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, DOI: 10.1080/21504857.2020.1729829 

W3

What gaps are there in Hergé’s representations of women?

The adventure of Tintin (1929-1986) has achieved in popular culture and receive much love more than four decades after the last public album. Women are absent over the entire albums and if they have voices in Tintin is hardly flattering. In the adventure of Tintin, women take a back seat. Herge resits and ignores women in his life and work by treating women less important in his works. Tintin works with funny drawing and exaggerates some of the features which can be comedic. This is shown by Herge’s claim that: ‘[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’ (quoted in Sadoul [1975] 1989, 93). 

Tintin au pays des Soviets has women but without speaking role, and they like a background in the stories where they don’t have mere figures in the crowd. African women critical Tin tin for the scene that causing a bump to her son’s head, and sad feeling to her husband’s illness. The women in Tintin remind background figures. Chinese women in an album praised by Claude Levi-Strauss depicted three generations depress and practice to reject as a western stereotype whereas in reality women were still suffering a lot in their action 1930s (Keeling 2008, p11-17). In the adventure, female’s tears are particular preferences and reproducing nineteenth-century women input as the psychologically ‘weaker sex’ (Fauvel 2013, p1). Herge depicts the assignation of labour roles in the early 20th century, ‘he ignores female aviators, intellectuals, writers, artists and other barriers breakers’ (Mountfort, 2020). The feminism’s second wave by the 1960s and 70s describe the women role is just like wallpaper in the album such as roles of wives, mothers, housekeepers, maid and nurses. Female labour is housekeepers, housewives, and mothers. Women were described as unidentified, nameless women, their visible agency voices metaphor as ‘absence, exclusion and erasure’ (Parkin and Karpinski 2014, p3). Herge said that he likes women too much to caricature them, but the women are still like a background in his books.

The women sought to free them from effective second class citizenship at the same time challenges to gender stereotypes with no reflection in decades. As Herge tell us, ‘women have nothing to do in a world like Tintin’s’ (Mountfort, 2020). That means women are the absence of useless like a background in Tintin’s stories and have a less supporting role in this. At the very start, Tintin explains how women are so associated with effect in the way they don’t want to live at a consequence depict as an annoy of caricature; Herge’s claim disregard to his opinion. The women status is low, it limits their roles in the family or society, and no career option as well as restricted their jobs.

While reading Tintin, we saw that women are excluded; their voices are covered and block in the way of how the society works at the time. The women have no voices, no place in the world; they are like a supporting role for man, and all women can do is working like a wife, housewife or subordination for a man that is present in last century as well as in Herge’s stories.

References:

Fauvel, A. (2013). “Crazy Brains and the Weaker Sex: The British Case (1860–1900).” Clio: Women, Gender, History 37: 1–25.

Keeling, R. (2008). “The Anti-Foot-binding Movement 1872–1922: A Cause for China Rather than Chinese Women.” Footnotes 1: 11–19.

Mountfort, P. (2020). Tintin, gender and desire. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 1-17.

Parkins, I., and E. C. Karpinski. (2014). “Introduction: In/Visibility: Absences/Presence in Feminist

Theory.” Atlantis 36: 3–7.

Sadoul, N. [1975]. Tintin et Moi: entretiens avec Hergé (Tintin and Me: Interviews with Hergé). Tournai: Casterman.

W2

How would you characterise Hergé’s politics, and how did they change over time?

Herge was the most popular comics artist with patriotism in the twentieth century; he has a sense of nationalism emerge in his early Tintin adventures surrounding his politics and significant critical reception. The Blue Lotus is a work that Herge’s representation of ethnicity in the mid-1930s; in this work, he recreates of his imagination workspace. This work is a masterpiece and helps Herge to recall what is happening to other people. Particular the action set in Russia, the Congo, the Mideast and Mitteleuropa that is looking for the style of the title surrounding the subaltern in general with the critic describes as ‘internal European other’ (Wallace 2004, p.46) (Mountford, 2011).

Herge compels his view based on Russia of the ‘vices and depravities of the regime’ (Farr 2001, p12), he is directly untalkative to the subject of the Nazi occupation of his Belgian homeland (Mountford, 2011). It is hard to say whether Herge’s politics play in his works or not because his work is more focus on style in specialist representations to express it in the series (Mountford, 2011). Indeed, there is tacit in his works where his heroic journeys an expressive style that plays well to its audience ideas and hard to avoid raising the seize of nationalism in European at a time when Germany poised the National Socialists to increase their size (Mountford, 2011). Herge and Leon Dagrelle, leader of Belgium’s own in fascist movement, agree to share an excellent rapport with their thinking, though they were not personally a member. At the same time when the serial was performed with the explore of Land of the Soviets, some weeks later the opening scenes of Tintin in the Congo (1930) enacted by the same actor (Mountford, 2011).

The Blue Lotus was public in 1934. Herge’s Chinese art student encourage him into such Sinophobia stereotyping. Chang Chong- Chen introduced Herge to Chinese art, poetry that helps Herge to achieve for a bigger and better result in his art than the previous album. Herge uses Chinese line drawing and stylistic elements that he learned to contribute in his signature clear line style to portray of China’s situation during the Mukden incident and invasion of Manchuria. Herge creates Chan Chong-Chen real life under a character in The Blue Lotus fiction of the youthful Chang, whom Tintin saves from dying in the Yangtze River. Herge may remark himself as political in metonymy in his story. He disguises himself to attempt in his earlier chauvinism. It is shown more in his Tintin in Tibet (1958-59), its fictional avatar show ideas and how the situation changes that have affected for real Chang to experience earlier critical and involved in this album (Mountford, 2011). Herge felt torment by the more his book was getting an enormous amount of selling the more he was worried of the books would getting less affected and influenced to people through time (Assouline & Ruas, 2009).

Tintinologists delicate to fans the value of collection resources, token of appreciating occupy the middle; Alph Art was late issued in 1986 and then 2004 in English while black and white albums of the series have similar issues as a copy (Mountford, 2016). The characterised by obscenity Tintin in Thailand (1999) to take an example from not on the target to that ranges from political to pornographic (Mountford, 2016). Tintin in the land of the Soviets and Tintin in the Congo are not include the politically explore, while it should have in the public one, such as the public of the critical Red Indian scenes in Tintin in America and activities that are illegally in Coke en stock/The red sea sharks (1958) (Mountford, 2016).

References:

Assouline, P., & Ruas, C. (2009). Hergé: the man who created Tintin. Oxford University Press.

Mountfort, P. (2016). Tintin as spectacle: The backstory of a popular franchise and late capital. Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture, 1(1), 37-56.

Mountfort, P. (2011). ‘Yellow skin, black hair… Careful, Tintin’: Hergé and Orientalism. Australasian journal of popular culture, 1(1), 33-49.

Question week 2

2. What is the alleged connection between Hergé’s early comics and propaganda?

Tintin is a character many of us grew up with and loved. Although the series evolve around a heroic, and in many ways relatable character there are a darker side to Hergé’s popular illustrated series. Stereotyping, suspect politics, racism and anti-Semitism are just some of the issues that people still argue about. The two first Tintin publications are the ones who receives the most critique and are still cause of argument today.
Hergé’s political outlook was shaped by extreme right-wing anxieties of retro-colonisation, something that’s common in Belgium, Britain and France (Frey, 2004).

The supposed connections between the early Tintin comics and propaganda takes root in Hergé’s own political connections and viewpoints.  
There have been many discussions because of the issues around extreme-right wing ideologies in the Tintin series, especially in Tintin au Pay Soviets (Tintin in the Land of the Soviets) and Tintin au Congo (Tintin in the Congo).
 According to Laser-Robinson (2005) Tintin au Pay Soviets is considered a work of anti-communist propaganda and it had a strong “right-of-centre” view against Stalinist Russia, while Scorer (2008) describes the comic as “an unabashed piece of capitalist propaganda satirizing Soviet Russia.”
Hergé himself distanced himself from the accusations in his earlier years but have later said that Tintin au Pay Soviets and Tintin au Congo were “sins of youth” (Scorer, 2008). You could argue that Hergé was well aware of what he was doing considering his collaboration with Léon Degrelle.
          Degrelle was the Belgium far right-wing leader and Hergé worked for him as an illustrator (Frey, 2004). Hergé worked for him during the Nazi occupation of Belgium (Scorer, 2008) and illustrated a cover for one of Degrelle’s pamphlets (Frey, 2004).
Hergé also continued to publish Tintin in Le Soir which was controlled by the Nazi occupants (Frey, 2004).
During this period Hergé published L’E ́toile mystérieuse (The Shooting Star) a story where the villain was a cliché corrupt Jewish banker (Scorer, 2008). The character is named Blumenstein and embodies anti-Semitic stereotypes. The stereotypes were commonly used by the Nazis and Francophone extreme right-wing (Frey, 2004). Hergé changed this character when the comic was republished after the war (Scorer, 2008).
          Le Lotus bleu (The Blue Lotus) is the fifth volume in the Tintin series, although Hergé had changed and tried to be more considerate this is still a publication with traces of propaganda. According to Laser-Robinson (2005) the Japanese people in the comic looks like “living breathing propaganda posters”.
The way Hergé is similar enough to war propaganda form the same period to suggest that Hergé used the same techniques as propaganda artists used (Laser-Robinson, 2005).
McCarthy (2006) says that Tintin’s political origin lie on the right, and that there is a good reason to why Hergé and his legacy continues to be accused for racism, stereotyping, suspect politics and so on.

Sources:

Scorer, James. (2008). Imitating Incas and becoming llama – Tintin in Latin  America – or the Latin Americanin Tintin? SAGE Publications.
https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/doi/pdf/10.1177/1367877908089261?

Frey, Hugo. (2004). Contagious colonial diseases in Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin. Modern & Contemporary France.
https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/doi/pdf/10.1080/09639480410001693043?needAccess=true

Laser-Robinson, Alexander S. (2005). An Analysis of Hergé’s Portrayal of Various Racial Groups in The Adventures of Tintin: The Blue Lotus. Tintinologist.org.
https://www.tintinologist.org/articles/analysis-bluelotus.pdf

McCarthy, Tom. (2006). Tintin And The Secret Of Literature. Granta.

WEEK 2 POPULAR GENRE  

1.  How decisively did Hergé address this issue from The Blue Lotus on, and in what ways did it remain problematic? 

If you don’t know about something you intend to write about its usually a good to find out more about it somehow.  

When Herge announced that Tintin was going to the Far East, China he received a letter from Father Gossett, a Catholic priest and Chaplin of Chinese students at the University of Leuven. He wrote that if he made the mistake of drawing a Chinese with a pigtail or eating birds nests while shrieking “Hee, hee” he would cause much damage. Father Gossett encouraged Herge to do some research about China and their culture and introduced him to an art student named Chang Chongren. Chang taught Herge many things about Chinese drawing, poetry, religion and calligraphy which was a revelation for him. 

Chang assisted Herge in producing The Blue Lotus in 1934, considered his first masterpiece. Chang’s influence is seen on Shanghai streets scenes with Chinese banners and posters sayings about well-being and slogans on the walls of buildings with political messages of “Down with Imperialism” during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, China from 1931 onwards. 

Tintin was no longer just a children’s comic adventure book, it had become current affairs, contemporary journalism and strong political satire. The Blue Lotus was highly significant at that time and influenced every adventure after that. 

 During Tintin’s adventure in The Blue Lotus he saves an orphan boy from drowning who has the same name as Herge’s real friend Chang Chongren. Together they find the professor who develops a vaccine for the poison that makes people mad ‘Raijahjah’. Chang is adopted by the professor and here inlays the problem. 

Tintin being a ‘Hero’ and ‘Saviour’ of non-White, non-European people is the ongoing problem. This ‘Mighty Whitey’ trope was common at that time. It was expected that Tintin would succeed making him superior both to the local natives, even though he was sympathetic towards the Chinese (only, not all Asians). Additionally it is also reinforcing European superiority back home when people are saved by kindhearted white Europeans who know best. 

REFERENCES 

Mountford, P. (2020). Tintin: the franchise and Herge’s The Blue Lotus. Retrieved from https://blackboard.aut.ac.nz.