The case for Tintin's homosexuality. Excerpt:
Billions of blue blistering barnacles, isn't it staring us in the face? Sometimes a thing's so obvious it's hard to see where the debate could start. What debate can there be when the evidence is so overwhelmingly one-way? A callow, androgynous blonde-quiffed youth in funny trousers and a scarf moving into the country mansion of his best friend, a middle-aged sailor? A sweet-faced lad devoted to a fluffy white toy terrier, whose other closest pals are an inseparable couple of detectives in bowler hats, and whose only serious female friend is an opera diva.... . . And you're telling me Tintin isn't gay?
Consider my blue barnacles blistered. Heh.
(Via -- who else?)
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I can't believe that Matthew Parris got paid to write that piece. Who gives a flying leap what Tintin was/is?
The lengthy comments by "NightLad" at 6:10 PM are wise. If you just entered this thread I suggest that you scroll up and look for it and read through it. The money quote for me from "NightLad's" post is this one: "Can’t two guys just be really good friends? Can’t a couple of totally straight men have a deep and meaningful relationship without being called ‘gay’?"
Re: the place of sex in human life, our culture has swung from one extreme to another: from Victorian prudishness in the 19th century to hyper-sexualization in the early 21st century.
"Hergé wasn't gay. Quite the opposite, he was a conservative Catholic, even being accused of being a Nazi sympathiser and a Rexist after WWII."
Well, in [i]that[/i] case...
It's practically unheard of, of course, for the homophobia of both the far-right Church and the secular far-right to mask, er, "true feelings". Larry Craig will tell you all about it.
Maybe I should have clarified my "conservative Catholic" comment. What I meant was that he was married for many years, albeit unhappily (and he did have affairs with other women). But the fact stands that there's no evidence that Hergé was gay.
Did someone actually say, "homophobia"?
[yawn]
Matthew Perry hasn't written for a week--his tongue is still stuck in his cheek and requires surgery.
Herge had good reason to make Tin Tin Goody Goody Two Shoes. Read the recent story in the Economist (hardly a gay bashing magazine) and you will discover that the French after World War II past legislation forbidding anything unseemly in young folk's literature and slanting the rules to prevent an invasion of American comics. Leaving out amorous subplots and giving Tin Tin a French speaking boy scout image gave him a much bigger audience than that of tiny Belgium.
Describing this as "one of Europe’s more startling laws. In 1949 France banned children’s books and comic strips from presenting cowardice in a 'favourable' light, on pain of up to a year in prison for errant publishers. It was equally forbidden to make laziness or lying seem attractive. The law created an oversight committee to watch for positive depictions of these ills, along with crime, theft, hatred, debauchery and acts 'liable to undermine morality' among the young.
"Taken literally, the law suggests that an ideal comic-book hero would resemble an overgrown boy scout, whose adventures involve pluck, fair play, restrained violence and no sex." (Economist, December 18th, 2008.) Sounds like Tin Tin, no?
We have gotten great pleasure from Tin Tin (and Asterix) and have never had to have the worries about what our kids are doing when they are watching the tube. We even have Tin Tin movies in German as a sneaky way to have them learn another language. (As parents get older they try to make up with guile what they have lost in vigor.)
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