Tintin Coming Out In America?

by John Holbo on January 16, 2009

Hollywood is poised to make a Tintin movie, apparently, so we have two recent think pieces about comics’ greatest boy reporter in plus-fours. Matthew Parris declares that he’s obviously gay. The Economist somehow manages to take an exquisitely Economistesque line, getting digs in at the French while backhandedly praising Americans for their peculiar issues, while allowing that the Brits are probably somewhere in the middle. Here is the concluding paragraph:

Tintin has never fallen foul of the 1949 French law on children’s literature [making it illegal to portray cowardice positively]. He is not a coward, and the albums do not make that vice appear in a favourable light. But he is a pragmatist, albeit a principled one. Perhaps Anglo-Saxon audiences want something more from their fictional heroes: they want them imbued with the power to change events, and inflict total defeat on the wicked. Tintin cannot offer something so unrealistic. In that, he is a very European hero.

The Parris piece is mock-serious, otherwise I would have to ask: is he serious? But he sort of seems serious, so I’m wondering whether, on some level, he thinks Hergé really meant to imply that in the world of the fiction (oh, never mind, I’d just wander off into philosophy nonsense about true-in-the-world-of-the-fiction. Parris is obviously taking the piss.) So the question we’ve got to ask is: are Tintin and Haddock sex jokes likelier to be funnier, on average, than the corresponding Batman and Robin jokes, which we have certainly all heard by now? (Obviously it’s much funnier to make jokes about Tintin and Haddock being Batman and Robin.) But Parris makes some interesting observations. What do you think?

Let’s turn the question around: are there actually such things as old-fashioned adventure books for boys that don’t seem vaguely campy, hence homoerotic? Because all you need is: no women. (Except for mom, maybe.) A bunch of males doing things together that don’t quite make sense, but it’s all very urgent. The male characters talking funny.

I do concede that the Tintin books are far more exclusively male-populated that even the standards of healthy boys’ adventure would seem to demand.

One thing The Economist claims, in passing, which I’m not really sure about, is that Tintin is almost unknown in America. Obviously you have to judge by the standards of comics not, say, Paris Hilton. If you show the average American a picture of Tintin, will they not know who this kid is? I’ve have noticed that Tintin is oddly missing from some ‘best comics’ lists. Wizard’s list is hopelessly capes&tights, so no surprise there. But here’s another. No Tintin. [UPDATE: nope. He’s there, after all. I missed him because I searched for his name spelled correctly – Hergé – rather than minus the accent. Ahem.] I read Tintin as a child. Didn’t lots of other people?

{ 79 comments }

1

MH 01.16.09 at 2:00 pm

I’d recognize a picture of him, but that’s it.. I never read Tintin and couldn’t have told you what it was about. Not sure how average I am, but I am American.

2

ScentOfViolets 01.16.09 at 2:01 pm

I’m not so sure about this, about this comic being unknown. “The Adventures of Tintin” was popular enough to have made it into a popular kids animation. What’s next, the gay subcontext of “Clifford, the Big Red Dog”, or the ‘special’ relationship between Buster and Arthur, Francine and Muffy?

3

Stuart 01.16.09 at 2:03 pm

Some random link suggests that Tintin currently sells about 100,000 copies a year in the US, and apparently that makes it almost completely undiscovered.

4

ejh 01.16.09 at 2:16 pm

A children’s bookseller writes: Tintin sells regularly. More than Asterix, where I am, somewhat to my disapproval.

5

Linca 01.16.09 at 2:16 pm

Tintin is present in the second list you link to, with L’affaire Tournesol…

6

John Holbo 01.16.09 at 2:21 pm

I consider myself something of an unwilling expert on “Clifford, the Big Red Dog” and there is no detectable homoerotic subtext. But, in all seriousness, the thing that makes for the apparent subtext, in these cases, is always escapism about escaping from normal family life/girls. Emily’s family, in Cifford, is amusingly the opposite. You get to do something weird: own a huge red dog. And your otherwise totally vanilla normal family is unaccountably cool with that. (Maybe it’s a big allegory of how society is becoming more accepting of women’s sexuality. Clifford is like a great big, bounding, panting vagina monologue. But I honestly never saw it that way.)

7

Matt 01.16.09 at 2:23 pm

I didn’t read any Tintin until I was an adult (and I read lots of comics growing up) and then found them boring. I don’t remember having seen them at my local comic shops but maybe I just wasn’t looking. As for the Wizard list, it is skewed pretty heavily in one direction but I was glad to see some Valiant Comics titles in it (Solar and Magnus: Robot Fighter) and some Miracle Man, as those were all great super-hero comics. (Jim Shooter also had such an interesting life that I’m always glad to see him get respect.)

8

The Modesto Kid 01.16.09 at 2:24 pm

the 1949 French law on children’s literature [making it illegal to portray cowardice positively]

What a bizarre thing! Where can I find out more about this law?

9

The Modesto Kid 01.16.09 at 2:28 pm

Aha: perhaps in Comic Book Nation. (I read Tintin as a kid, so did most of my friends I think, it never seemed like an unusual sight, to see some Tintin books in a bookstore.)

10

Jacob T. Levy 01.16.09 at 2:29 pm

As a comics-reading kid in America in the 1970s, I no more encountered Tintin than I did Asterix. I learned about both for the first time in high school French class, and didn’t meet a real American Tintin enthusiast (that I knew of) until college.

11

John Holbo 01.16.09 at 2:29 pm

“Tintin is present in the second list you link to, with L’affaire Tournesol…”

Thanks. I updated. I only missed it because I searched for Hergé with an accent!

And yeah, I’m curious about that 1949 children’s literature law, too.

12

John Holbo 01.16.09 at 2:31 pm

OK, since people have gotten started self-reporting on U.S. Tintin readership, let’s just say where we were, growing up. In my case: Eugene, OR, a university town. So obviously it was the good influence off all those Euro-minded academics.

13

Chris Bertram 01.16.09 at 2:38 pm

A quick google reveals:

Thierry Crépin, “Le Comité de Défense de la Littérature et de la Presse pour la Jeunesse:
The Communists and the Press for Children during the Cold War” in _Libraries & Culture_ 36.1 (2001) 131-142 .

Available to me via Project Muse, but maybe not to you if you don’t have a university library connection.

14

MH 01.16.09 at 2:39 pm

Geography may indeed matter. I was raised in rural Nebraska.

15

The Modesto Kid 01.16.09 at 3:25 pm

I grew up in central CA (hence my handle). BTW, your Batman and Robin/Haddock and Tintin mashup made me think of a mashup I would love to see, Caravel and Aguirre (from Aguirre, the Wrath of God) as Haddock and Tintin. Alternately, I just wish very strongly that there would be a live-action film of Tintin, with Klaus Kinski playing the title role.

16

Nick 01.16.09 at 3:35 pm

Let’s turn the question around: are there actually such things as old-fashioned adventure books for boys that don’t seem vaguely campy, hence homoerotic?

How about Willard Price’s adventure books? The ones with titles like “[Fierce Animal] Adventure” and “[Exotic Locale] Adventure.” The main characters are brothers, which would seem to minimize homoerotic implications. Hmmm, on the other hand, I do remember a rugged Polynesian sidekick in several books.

I read Tintin as a child. Didn’t lots of other people?

Yup, Tintin and Asterix. I recently purchased “Tintin in Tibet” and ransacked my parents’ house for old Asterix books so thatthey are available when my boy starts reading.

How, I wonder, will Hollywood handle Captain Haddock’s creative obscenities.

17

Nick 01.16.09 at 3:37 pm

OK, since people have gotten started self-reporting on U.S. Tintin readership, let’s just say where we were, growing up.

Sorry. Middle East, then Pennsylvania. I was introduced to Tintin by some Trinidadian friends.

18

Jacob T. Levy 01.16.09 at 3:42 pm

New Hampshire.

19

The Modesto Kid 01.16.09 at 3:45 pm

How, I wonder, will Hollywood handle Captain Haddock’s creative obscenities.

Do you ever happen on a new word and think, I hope Captain Haddock used that one at some point — this happened to me recently with “Phaeacians”.

20

roac 01.16.09 at 3:46 pm

I was a kid a long time ago in the Midwest, and never saw or heard of Tintin. (I read some comics; Carl Barks’s Donald Duck was a long way my favorite, but I also remember being a fan of Little Lulu. It would be interesting to see if the latter preference had any basis in artistic merit.)

When I was a parent in northern Virginia in the early ’90s, shopping for stuff to read to the kids, Tintin was widely available in the children’s sections of bookstores. Like MH, I found him boring once I gave up looking for evidence that the author’s tongue was anywhere near his cheek. The kids never manifested any particular interest either.

(Asterix I was introduced to by a French-major friend in college, and found fairly amusing, though the jokes wore thin after a few titles. Somewhere I have an Asterix in Icelandic. What I remember about it is an owl which says “tweet-tweet” or the equivalent. There are no owls in Iceland.)

21

Dave Maier 01.16.09 at 3:49 pm

In suburban NJ, early 70’s, I read Tintin in monthly installments in a kid’s periodical of some kind. I was also given a few Asterix books (in English), which I liked better, because they’re hilarious – Asterix the Legionary was my favorite (the ending of which, incidentally, shows conclusively that that character, at least, is not gay).

22

Nick 01.16.09 at 3:51 pm

There are no owls in Iceland.

Yes there are. Snowy Owls.

23

harry b 01.16.09 at 3:53 pm

Class. If you read Tintin as a kid in the US you went to a school largely populated with children from upper-middle class educated and cosmopolitan families. (Exercise: look at the holdings of Tintin in elementary and middle school libraries, and compare with proportions of kids on free school lunches. I’ve done it in my district and the correlation is inverse). This is considerably less true in the UK, and not true in most continental European countries.

24

Seth Finkelstein 01.16.09 at 3:53 pm

I’d say “almost unknown” is reasonable, in a relative sense – compared to say Archie, Casper, or even Little Orphan Annie, sure.
CT readers are a bad sample, since they skew heavily Europhile.

I didn’t read Tintin as a child. I have a vague memory of picking up one book of it in a school library, and thinking the art incredibly dull compared to superhero comics. This would be urban New York environment.

25

Margaret Atherton 01.16.09 at 4:04 pm

I agree with Harry although I think what it important is family not necessarily schools. My daughter, who went to Milwaukee Public Schools, was an avid Tintin fan, but I plead guilty. She was able to pursue her enthusiasm unfettered when we lived in Germany and I remember shipping back Tintin memorabilia to friends of hers in the States.

26

Matt 01.16.09 at 4:08 pm

_If you read Tintin as a kid in the US you went to a school largely populated with children from upper-middle class educated and cosmopolitan families._

Since that’s about the exact opposite of Boise, Idaho, where I grew up, it probably explains why I didn’t even know of Tintin until college. The cosmopolitan part is especially unlike Boise, except for its strong Basque connections, maybe.

27

roac 01.16.09 at 4:11 pm

It occurred to me after posting that there might be Snowy Owls in Iceland. The Intertubes tell me that individuals wander there from Greenland; there are an average of about 5 records a year. They don’t breed in Iceland, because there are no rodents for them to eat. When not breeding, they are silent (the male does hoot during the breeding season).

None of this refutes my deduction that Icelandic children are not told that the owl says Hoo-Hoo.

28

belle le triste 01.16.09 at 4:28 pm

tintin in tibet features our hero crossing the world to rescue a chinese friend, chang in the english books, tchang in the french, who is lost in the himalayas after an air-crash; TT knows his friend isn’t dead because of a dream

the background to this, as hergé acknowledged, was the intensely close affection he had (aged what i don’t know) for a chinese friend called tchang, who he met (as a reporter) during the sino-japanese wars; he also claimed — so i believe — that the shock of this closeness with someone from a very different background caused him to reappraise his own earlier tendency to extreme cultural stereotypes (it never entirely vanished, but there’s a whole section in the blue lotus — which somewhat retells the story of herge’s and tchang’s meeting* — where western and eastern mutual misperceptions are exchanged and cheerfully mocked.

So there’s definitely a deep and fairly overt homosocial element there (as there is in lots of Victorian fiction): a bond beyond time and space etc (hence the dream) that it would be silly not to call love

*in the book tchang heroically saves tintin from drowning in a flooded river

29

belle le triste 01.16.09 at 4:31 pm

by “extreme cultural stereotypes” i mean cartoons of peoples that seem fairly racist in today’s eyes

(worth knowing that he redrew and republished several of his earlier books in the 50s and 60s, sometimes just to update the clothes and cars, sometimes to remove panels he was perhaps a bit embarrassed by)

30

harry b 01.16.09 at 4:55 pm

belle — I addressed the extreme cultural stereotypes issues here:

https://crookedtimber.org/2007/10/29/tintin-in-america-advice-for-librarians/

31

The Modesto Kid 01.16.09 at 5:01 pm

Turns out there have been live-action Tintin films (though sadly, Kinski was not involved) — this post at The Daily Kraken features a truly awesome still from Tintin and the Golden Fleece.

32

belle le triste 01.16.09 at 5:05 pm

oops so you did — anyway, the point i was making was his friendship with chang was life-transformingly deep, and the word for that is love

and here’s the link martin wisse provided on that thread:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang_Chong-jen

33

Russell Arben Fox 01.16.09 at 5:27 pm

Since that’s about the exact opposite of Boise, Idaho, where I grew up, it probably explains why I didn’t even know of Tintin until college.

Ditto what Matt said; Spokane, WA, may be a little bigger than Boise, but it sure isn’t any more cosmopolitan.

34

roac 01.16.09 at 5:46 pm

Possibly every commenter before me thought it would be obvious and therefore uncool to acknowledge the clever title of this post. But I feel a social obligation to clap vigorously.

35

David 01.16.09 at 5:52 pm

I didn’t learn about Tin Tin or Asterix until college either, and I also hail from the Midwest.

36

Righteous Bubba 01.16.09 at 6:18 pm

The main characters are brothers, which would seem to minimize homoerotic implications.

I was thinking the same thing about the Hardy Boys; that is past certain run-of-the-mill imaginings the sexy thrills are a feature of the reader and not the book. Of course I could be wrong.

37

harry b 01.16.09 at 6:26 pm

RB: Loudon Wainwright agrees:

38

Chris Bertram 01.16.09 at 7:44 pm

(Sorry, accidentally posted this in another thread … but the details of the French law ….)

http://www.commission-publications-jeunesse.justice.gouv.fr/index.php?rubrique=11150

” En France, les publications écrites destinées à la jeunesse font l’objet d’un contrôle a posteriori (après publication et dépôt) qui est effectué par la Commission de surveillance et de contrôle des publications destinées à l’enfance et à l’adolescence au nom de la protection de la jeunesse.

Cette Commission, instituée par la loi du 16 juillet 1949, a un champ d’application extrêmement large.

Elle contrôle, tout d’abord, les publications françaises qui apparaissent par leur caractère, leur présentation ou leur objet, comme étant principalement destinées aux enfants et aux adolescents.

Plus précisément, elle vérifie que ces publications ne comportent aucune illustration, aucun récit, aucune chronique, aucune rubrique, aucune insertion présentant sous un jour favorable le banditisme, le mensonge, le vol, la paresse, la lâcheté, la haine, la débauche ou tous actes qualifiés crimes ou délits ou de nature à démoraliser l’enfance ou la jeunesse, ou à inspirer ou entretenir des préjugés ethniques. Ces publications ne doivent pas non plus comporter de publicité, d’annonce pour des publications de nature à démoraliser l’enfance ou la jeunesse. Si les membres de la Commission estiment qu’un ouvrage ne respecte pas ces dispositions, ils peuvent demander l’engagement de poursuites pénales. L’éditeur poursuivi encourt un an d’emprisonnement et 3 750 € d’amende. ”

“… _ou à inspirer ou entretenir des préjugés ethniques.”

seems, unsurprisingly, to be a post-1949 addition, but the rest is verbatim from the 1949 law.

39

roac 01.16.09 at 8:08 pm

Can anybody fill in the social and political background of this law? I wondered if maybe the work of Frederick Wertheim proved especially fruitful in Gallic soil, but I see this predated The Seduction of the Innocent by five years.

(I don’t know French well enough to get more than the general outline, but I must say that le banditisme, le mensonge, le vol, la paresse, la lâcheté, la haine, la débauche ou tous actes qualifiés crimes ou délits ou de nature à démoraliser l’enfance ou la jeunesse sound far more appealing than any comparable list in English possibly could. Maybe that’s how the French acqiured the reputation they enjoy among Anglo-Saxons. “Yes, I’ll have le mensonge with a small portion of la débauche to follow, s’il vous plait.” )

40

mollymooly 01.16.09 at 8:43 pm

Ignorance runs both ways: till my 30s I only knew “The Archies” from their 1969 hit, “Sugar Sugar”. Apart from a cameo on the Simpsons, I have no other experience of them. (The previous sentence is true of a huge amount of American pop culture.)

41

kid bitzer 01.16.09 at 9:15 pm

i thought the parris piece was extremely weak–the lack of evidence, the thinness of connections, the implausibility of argumentation made it more like a refutation of the thesis than anything else.

or to put this differently: i think parris’ standards of evidence would make any other children’s characters you wish to name look far gayer–whether christopher robin or pogo or huck finn or biggles or the bobbsie twins or pretty much anything taken at random.

and: chicagoland, never read them as a child, only found as an adult through euro-trash friends.

42

MR Bill 01.16.09 at 9:16 pm

Tintin was featured in a magazine in the 50s thru 70s, the Children’s Digest, which had, I seem to recall, green tinted paper to reduce eyestrain. I was 9 in 1965, and grew up in Hayesville, NC, in darkest Appalachia, but pretty much hid from bullies in the town library….
And, as a guy with a taste for men, preferably with facial hair, I never detected the slightest hint of homoeroticism in Tintin comics; misogyny, perhaps, racism, almost certainly, but sex? Nahh.

43

Joel Turnipseed 01.16.09 at 10:19 pm

Duluth & Minneapolis and I only learned about Tintin when I saw them (and Asterix) in a girlfriend’s comics. But that relationship didn’t last long & I never looked at them again. Guess it’s time…

“A bunch of males doing things together that don’t quite make sense, but it’s all very urgent. The male characters talking funny.”

Actually, quite a few of the “Let’s go help Uncle Sam get himself an Empire” boy’s books were pretty free of this kind of thing (I have a pretty good library of Stratemeyer’s military adventure books). Of course, I think the Marine Corps pretty well fits that remark, too–but that’s a case I’ve never been sure about: too much protest and too much innuendo for everyone to be innocent, right?

44

Joel Turnipseed 01.16.09 at 10:21 pm

(plus: feel free to ignore the multiple, mealy-mouthed instances of ‘pretty’ in that last comment…)

45

andthenyoufall 01.16.09 at 11:16 pm

Growing up in Philly I owned all of the Tintin books by the time I was 8. I thought that was normal, and the chain bookstores always had them, but I guess it might have also been that my family is drowning in unrepentant francophiles.

46

Ben Alpers 01.16.09 at 11:41 pm

I read a lot of Tintin and Asterix as a kid. I grew up in Berkeley, but I think I was introduced to both Tintin and Asterix in London, where I lived for a year when I was seven. However I knew a lot of other kids in Berkeley who read both Tintin and Asterix books and had discovered them in the U.S. (in contrast to, say, Lucky Luke, which I remember reading in England, but never encountering in the U.S.).

47

Righteous Bubba 01.16.09 at 11:56 pm

Asterix was syndicated in US newspapers for a brief stint. This is funny:

Chief Vitalstatistix is the leader of the Gaulish village.

[…]

* French: Abraracourcix (“à bras raccourcis” – “with arms up ready to fight”) – this is the same in Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and (original) Dutch (although the “o” is usually dropped)

In English, his name is a pun on Vital statistics – the government birth and death records of a region and also an expression for a person’s measurements (a comment on his size). In the American translation, he was Macroeconomix from macroeconomics.

48

Righteous Bubba 01.16.09 at 11:57 pm

Sigh. Blockquote everything after “funny”.

49

ScentOfViolets 01.17.09 at 4:01 am

Let’s turn the question around: are there actually such things as old-fashioned adventure books for boys that don’t seem vaguely campy, hence homoerotic?

Oh, that’s easy. The Time Machine stories in Boys Life by Donald Keith. Hmmm . . . googling, I see that they were republished as two fix it ups, “Mutiny in the Time Machine” and “The Time Machine to the Rescue”. No homoerotic subcontext there. Lester Del Rey and Robert Heinlein wrote some credible boys adventure books that don’t seem to make the cut as well. In fact, I’m guessing that the whole genre is pretty aggressively hetero (when girls are mentioned at all) until sometime in the 60’s. There’s a whole bunch of adventurin’ boys right there.

50

John Holbo 01.17.09 at 4:33 am

But please note that when they made “Starship Troopers” into a film, the director decided to go all campy homoerotic with it. But point taken. If such things are not to come off as homoerotic, there needs to be some strong additional element – libertarian philosophical technocratic dreams, for example – that convinces you, the reader, that the clunky elements of the production have a motivation elsewhere than in the offstage sexual impulses of the characters. Heinlein isn’t campy because of his philosophical character. See also: “Slan”. Anything like that. But point taken.

51

notsneaky 01.17.09 at 5:18 am

“let’s just say where we were, growing up”

French class, 10th grade, in US. If you were good and finished your vocab exercises you got to go back of the classroom and “read” the Tintin comics in French.

52

notsneaky 01.17.09 at 5:25 am

And oh wow is that list crap. Cerebus doesn’t show up until 92.

53

kia 01.17.09 at 11:20 am

Fell in love with Tintin on reading King Ottokar’s Sceptre in Jamaica when I was probably about 10 years old. For a long time that and the one about the tinned crab were the only ones available. I had them both practically memorized. When my brother and I started traveling to England in our teens we bought every single Tintin and Asterix book we could get our hands on. Tintin wears better than Asterix. I’m pretty sure my brother still has the full set, 30-something years later. All the characters in Tintin had foibles and vulnerabilities, they were human: their feelings got hurt, they got angry about little things, interested in little things; even Snowy sometimes just acts like a regular dog and scrounges for garbage. All this gave the convincing impression that the world, and the characters’ lives, were bigger than the story. There was this beautiful balance between variation and consistency. And how each book has its own “theme” based on the setting of the story, and the artwork is a feast of realization of the theme, with cleverness and richness of detail, all done with subtle humor, lots of little visual jokes on the side, and an impeccable sense of style. So there was a lot of mental occupation in the Tintin books, very satisfying. And the characters’ names! And the way the characters looked like their names! And if Bianca Castafiore, the Milanese Nightingale, isn’t a drag queen, I expect she inspired some in Tintin’s fictional world. I certainly hope so. But I wonder if their apparent homoerotic themes arenpt more to do with the fact that they are addressed to preadolescent boys, who tend to envision freedom as the place without bossy females (sisters, mothers, aunts) in it, and whose affections are really reserved for their male friends.

54

Bloix 01.17.09 at 1:20 pm

How do you pronounce his name? If you really came to these books as an American, you would say Tin-Tin. If you’re reading them as a Francophile, you’ll say Tan-Tan.

55

novakant 01.17.09 at 3:36 pm

Parris’ point is utter nonsense, I hope he’s joking. There are structural reasons for male/male setups in both literature and film: unless you want your hero to soliloquize endlessly or to constantly encounter new characters, you need a buddy or a sidekick as a foil to keep things interesting. And this secondary protagonist is in most cases male, because a female would open up the love story angle, which most young readers find incredibly boring. Of course there are also female/female setups, though rarer, and if one wanted to write adventure books for a homosexual audience you would need a gay hero and a lesbian sidekick or vice versa (are there any?).

There is also something special about male camaraderie, no doubt, but it doesn’t have anything to do with homosexuality, else one would have to argue that there is a homosexual subtext to John Wayne and Robert Mitchum in Rio Bravo or John Wayne and Dean Martin in El Dorado (throw in Ricky Nelson or James Caan respectively and you have a gay love triangle) – and that seems rather far fetched. The absence of potential sex partners creates a special atmosphere that’s just appealing – this is true for both men and women, if in very different ways.

56

ScentOfViolets 01.17.09 at 3:45 pm

If such things are not to come off as homoerotic, there needs to be some strong additional element –

Well, Heinlein regularly gets excoriated for his didacticism (well, let’s call it what it is in his case: heavy-handed preaching with the authorial thumb on the scales), but the truth is, his juveniles are about the best thing he ever wrote. Perhaps this points to a general principle: the manly adventure stories for boys have as their subtext how to be a man. So you have boys adventure stories set in the Yukon where the plucky lads learn independence and the importance of being reliable and keeping your word. Or tearing riches from the asteroid belt with your homies through sheer pluck and stick-to-it-iveness . Given the times I mentioned, up to say, the mid-60’s, it’s no surprise that if there’s any teachings about sex to be absorbed from these stories, it’s going to be 100% straight-up heterosex, and that what you normally get taught is “A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave and reverent”.

<sarcasm>That’s in America, of course. Since Tintin is one of those Frenchie cheese-eating surrender monkies, it’s no wonder he’s a little bit gay too</sarcasm>.

57

Mike 01.17.09 at 3:51 pm

I never read any comics growing up, but I’m familiar with Tintin through an animated television show, which I watched in the early 90’s. Surely I wasn’t the only one who watched this. It seems like more people should be familiar with him through this show as to make him not totally unknown in America.

58

Jay 01.17.09 at 4:42 pm

I did and I’m a black kid from the southside of Chicago. I thought everyone did. Sheesh. I guess I was a nerd or something.

59

Patrick Nielsen Hayden 01.17.09 at 4:46 pm

I grew up reading Tintin; I think it started because Children’s Digest, a popular kid’s magazine back in the day, serialized The Secret of the Unicorn in 1965, when I was about six.

There was a point in the 1960s when two different translations of the Tintin books could be found in the US–one from British publisher Methuen, and one from gigantic American kid’s publisher Golden Books. The (much superior) Methuen versions are the ones now available in the US from Little, Brown.

60

Doctor Science 01.17.09 at 5:44 pm

You boys are so cute. *pats your fuzzy heads*

parris’ standards of evidence would make any other children’s characters you wish to name look far gayer—whether christopher robin or pogo or huck finnThere is also something special about male camaraderie, no doubt, but it doesn’t have anything to do with homosexuality, else one would have to argue that there is a homosexual subtext to John Wayne and Robert Mitchum in Rio Bravo or John Wayne and Dean Martin in El Dorado

In this corner, Eve Sedgwick. In that corner, Leslie Fiedler.

What you guys are saying is, “I’m the intended reader, and I don’t see any subtext, no sirree, so it must not be intended to be there! And only intentional subtext counts.” But there’s more than one kind of subtext, and one kind is where some readers — like, say, me — look at the text and say, “this is what *I* like, this is what *I* want.” And maybe what *I* like is hot guys taking off their shirts and rescuing each other. And maybe I’m not the only one.

Basically, We’r in Ur Boyz Own Adventures, Slashin Ur Boyz. Though TinTin isn’t my personal taste, it’s been done, and if the actors are cute my slash-o-meter says it will be done again.

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belle le triste 01.17.09 at 5:51 pm

the relationship that actually most NEEDS unpacking in the tintin series is the thompson twins! in french, dupond and dupont; in english, thomson and thompson — they are a buddy-buddy cop duo, comically incompetent, interested only in arresting tintin despite knowing him since almost the earliest adventures (whichever is earliest of cigars of the pharaoh and crab with the golden claws?); and identical (except for tiny curl of moustache) yet from different families…

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harry b 01.17.09 at 6:24 pm

The (uttely brilliant) English translator of the Asterix books is Oliver Kamm’s mother.

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kid bitzer 01.17.09 at 7:00 pm

doc sci–
no one is denying that you can write slash fiction from pretty much any basis.

indeed: that was part of my point. you can. parris did.

my further point was: tintin provides no *greater* resources for it than any other text or fiction you’d care to mention.
since you can play the same game with any text or fiction–can and may! go right ahead! you and eve and leslie and anyone!–then there is no point in having parris single out tintin as though it differed in this regard, as though it raised *special* questions or afforded *special* opportunities for slash treatment.

that’s why it was a weak piece.

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Doctor Science 01.17.09 at 7:25 pm

You’re right, kid. Though I would say TinTin is more-than-average slashable, as these things go — the absence of women is really quite thorough, and Thompson/Thomson is action waiting to happen. What “saves” it is that the characters are not particularly hot — do not doubt that women can be as shallow as men.

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kid bitzer 01.17.09 at 7:38 pm

“Thompson/Thomson is action waiting to happen”

“precisely! or rather: thompson is waiting to action thomson!”

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Doctor Science 01.17.09 at 8:57 pm

And whoa, Simon Pegg as Thompson. That means either “start your engines” or “run for cover”, depending on your preferences.

vrooooooooooooooom.

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strategichamlet 01.17.09 at 10:52 pm

“whichever is earliest of cigars of the pharaoh and crab with the golden claws?”

Pharaoh is earlier. Crab is when Haddock is first introduced.

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garymar 01.18.09 at 1:13 am

Well from the comments I would say that TinTin started to “come out” in the USA around the 70s. I grew up in a working class suburb of Detroit in the 60s and first saw an Asterix when my parents took me to Europe in 1967. [Cultural note: my father and I wore suits and ties to take the plane ride. First ride ever in an aeroplane.]I have a vague memory of seeing Tin Tin somewhere as a child, but it was a special treat, probably expensive, that would not be something for a ‘normal’ kid to have.

Our local stores, close enough for kids to walk to, featured Archie comics, Batman and other superheroes, as well as “Classics Illustrated” – The Hunchback of Notre Dame! Moby Dick! The House of Mirth! The Will to Power! for the kids to get some culture.

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Ben 01.18.09 at 1:00 pm

I grew up in Canterbury, England, and I read avidly all the Tintin, the Asterix, and all the Willard Price books; I never noticed any kind of homo-erotic subtext in them, though that could be down to the fact that at the age I was reading the books, I didn’t notice much of a homo-erotic subtext in anything.

Looking back, Asterix only verged on camp-for-comedy’s sake rather than as any strong intimation of homosexuality (I’m thinking of Roman legionnaires jumping into each other’s arms on being frightened, and so on).

It’s true that Tintin never really fraternised with women all that much, but as has been mentioned, I think that’s more to do with the fact the character is a boy-as-man. He is old enough to travel legitimately, and have adventures, but looks very young, and has a definite (and somewhat inexplicable) naivety. Believable fantasy for young boys.

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Doctor Science 01.18.09 at 4:58 pm

Ben:
Believable fantasy for young boys.

But Tintin isn’t for boys. It’s *about* a boy, and the books are marketed in the US as being “for boys”, but on its native turf Tintin is more “for children, but with jokes in there only the grownups will get.” Part of the goofy appeal is that it’s a young boy’s fantasy, but set in an adult-ish world.

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Ben 01.18.09 at 5:40 pm

Doctor Science: Sure, but part of that fantasy is being able to take part in, and be swashbuckling and daring in, an adult world. Part of the pleasure of reading them for me was getting those grownup jokes and allusions. They’re still quite enjoyable to read now, but nowhere near as exciting, since I now have the disadvantage of being absolutely sure that the adult world is nothing like Tintin makes out it is.

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bob kroonenberg 01.19.09 at 4:40 am

could i buy that asterix in icelandic??????

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Tracy W 01.19.09 at 11:48 am

But there’s more than one kind of subtext, and one kind is where some readers—like, say, me—look at the text and say, “this is what I like, this is what I want.” And maybe what I like is hot guys taking off their shirts and rescuing each other.

Well I liked imagining myself going to a boarding school in the Swiss Alps and talking to fauns, but I don’t think that I could make an academic career by writing how The Chalet Girls School or the Narnia books really clearly have a Tracy W sub-text. Especially since I was born after the works in question were written. There are things in books that clearly were put there by their authors – eg the Christainity subtext in Narnia, and I find analyses of them far more interesting than ones that are based only on the reader’s biases.

Also, I think that whatever drives slash fiction as a particular form of fanfiction is independent to the work itself. Eg there’s slash about the male characters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, despite the obvious existance in that TV show of several sexually-active, strong-minded women. (I am not launching a general criticism of slash fiction here, or slash-fiction about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I have no survey data to hand but I suspect it displays the same range of quality as any other type of fiction, I am merely talking about the decision to write slash set in a particular show or book or movie).

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Josh 01.19.09 at 4:24 pm

Grew up low-end professional class in a mixed (working class & lower-income pmc) suburb and read Tintin as a kid in the ’70s; have a friend from a more solidly working-class and urban background in that area (Youngstown –dunno if people regard that as Midwestern) who knew the comics too; my wife says that she woulda recognized the character as well. Liked the stories as a kid, although I recognized the racism in The Red Sea Sharks; still hold the art in high regard.

I pronounce the vowels as best I can in the French fashion because I would feel silly saying “tin, tin.”

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jpeeps 01.20.09 at 2:16 pm

Don’t owls go turwit-turwoo?

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Chris Bertram 01.20.09 at 2:23 pm

_Don’t owls go turwit-turwoo?_

No they don’t … at least not singly. Males make one sound and females respond with another (or vice versa).

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belle le triste 01.20.09 at 2:44 pm

yes, one of them ask “to wit?” and the other replies “to woo!”

it’s very civilised and romantic!

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ejh 01.20.09 at 3:13 pm

Could i buy that asterix in icelandic??????

Yes

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roac 01.21.09 at 5:33 pm

I can’t believe this thread is winding down with a discussion of owls, introduced by my casual parenthesis in no. 20. The bird under consideration is the Tawny Owl, Strix aluco, concerning which Wikipedia says:

The commonly heard contact call is a shrill, kew-wick but the male has a quavering advertising song hoo … ho, ho, hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo. William Shakespeare immortalised this owl’s song in Love’s Labour’s Lost (Act 5, Scene 2) as “Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whit; Tu-who, a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot”, but this stereotypical call is actually a duet, with the female making the kew-wick sound, and the male responding hooo.

As stated by Chris Bertram. This is a European bird not known to me personally. The North American equivalent is the Barred Owl, Strix varia, which hoots eight times in two groups of four with the stress on the last in each group. No sexual difference in the call that Wiki or I know of. In the Great Horned Owl Bubo virginianus, males and females both hoot but you can tell the sexes apart by pitch and rhythm. I have heard pairs calling back and forth in December, which is when they set up housekeeping.

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