French fuss over "gay" Tintin

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Tintin, the eternal boy reporter, celebrates his 80th birthday tomorrow. Europe's most venerated comic strip hero is being feted across the continent and, thanks to an imminent Steven Spielberg movie, he is at last about to be introduced to Americans.

France has long adored Tintin as one of its own although his creator, Georges Rémy, known as Hergé, was a Brussels-based French-speaking Belgian. That may explain the indignation over the past couple of days over an amusing column by my Times colleague Matthew Parris. Matthew had the effrontery to recite a longstanding assumption in the gay world that the intrepid little foreign correspondent is homosexual.

"What debate can there be when the evidence is so overwhelmingly one-way?," asked Parris [his article]. "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?"

It's always fun to interpret innocent-sounding yarns in this way. Alice in Wonderland has been psychoanalysed to death and I remember a tongue-in-cheek US book subjecting Winnie-the-Pooh (A.A. Milne's version, not the Disney travesty) to psycho-sexual literary criticism. But French pride has been needled by the Anglais who has used Tintin's 80th birthday to depict the brave reporter as all-out gay.

"At this age, the hormones are usually asleep," sniffed Les Echos, the business daily. "But for Matthew Parris, it is never too late to wake up the houppette of the nice Belgian hero." Houppette means both quiff and powder puff. What next, wondered les Echos ? Astérix and Obélix as lovers ?  "That's perhaps the next subject for a column by Matthew Parris."

Le Figaro hammered Matthew for "reviving this old fable". It hauled in Serge Tisseron, a celebrity psychiatrist, to explain that claiming the hero as gay "is a lovely revenge for a homosexual". "The problem is that the sexual dimension is totally absent. Tintin is a creature whose sex is never defined. Beware of launching into a sexual reading of Herge's works... In reality all the characters in Tintin are children."

Figaro's article produced a torrent of mainly conservative internet comments pointing out that Hergé was drawing and writing at a time when boys' adventure stories were allowed to be violent (as Tintin was) but steered well clear of romance or sex. France Info, the public news radio network,  even got in on the subject this morning, pointing out that Hergé, who died in 1983, scoffed at the gay Tintin theory after it was aired by studies in the 1970s.

The French defensiveness over Matthew's piece seems a bit overdone. The same protective reaction appears when people investigate Hergé's work during the Nazi occupation of Belgium in the early 1940s and when Tintin is nailed as a proto-fascist.

I agree with Hervé Gattegno, a Tintin fan and well-known Paris investigative journalist, when he said a couple of years ago that it did not matter whether his hero might be gay or not. Born in the Catholic pre-war culture, sex and love were kept out of the stories, he noted. "The values which are defended in the Tintin adventures are those of comradeship, friendship, solidarity and fraternity."

I have been a lifelong Tintinophile. The play with those old-fashioned virtues are what makes Tintin enjoyable -- along with the stunning draughtsmanship of Hergé. His comedy, movie-like scenes and the loving detail of the period machinery, architecture and dress, are wonderfully atmospheric.

Most loyalists are worried about how Spielberg will turn the clean-cut Boy's Own lad into a global movie hero. But the producer need not worry about the Tintin being outed. Hollywood has never had a problem with Superman, Batman and the other clingy-suited, all-bulging, all-American super-heroes. 

Comments

[brian]

Tintin may be gay, but what is not in debate is that he isn't "blonde" but a red-head.

Why is Parris so afraid of the "ginger" word?

[brian]

Gay? Probably - although the stories were written in a different era.

However, "Blonde quiffed"? Tintin is clearly a red head!

[Kévin]

French newspapers indignation was more than anything else a pretext to criticize once more british authors, come on, who really cares about tintin's sexuality?

[Bill]

Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. Maybe Frodo and Sam were lovers, maybe they weren't. Beneath all this claim and denial and childish snickering lies a horrible homophobia which really concerns me.

[Enrique Puricelli]

Discussing if Tintin is gay is absolutely irrelevant and can only be explained by the gay community's continous need for icons to identify with. At the time it was written childhood heroes were assumed to be heterosexual with no necessary explicit imagery to confirm it. I agree with the view that all characters are really children. No further study or psychological interpretation is needed.

[Alex]

Regarding the hysterical French brouhaha over this, you cannot help but think of the old adage "It is the squeaky wheel that wants greasing"

[dot king]

Gay? Well, so what?
As Rod Steiger, playing the cross-dressing serial killer in "No way to treat a lady" said: It doesn't make you a bad person, you know" :)

[starling]

Lordy, I never thought anyone would take that article seriously.

[Do-re-mi]

Oh Dear, I watched Matthew Parris out Mandie few years ago on BBC2 news, and now it's Tintin, so? He can't help himself. LOL.

Yeah right, like Superman & Robin are not friends of Dorothy, all that leather and no girlfriends.

[gerry]

Of course, everyone knows, and this may interest toutes france, Matthew Parris isn't really gay at all. It's a charade because he's never been able to get a girlfriend!

[Ian Ferguson]

This reaction speaks more about the homophobia of the French press than the 'truth' about Tintin.
In reality, he is a neutral doll, superbly used as a prop to focus the reader on the stories. Ageless, sexless and with no clear identity (apart from vaguely being 'a reporter' in the earlier albums), the point is not that we don't know what his sexual orientation is, it is that he has no sexual orientation. You might as well ask whether Hergé's pen was gay.

[Frankenburt]

Tintin is clearly a lesbian.

[Dominique II]

Some people really have a need to see the world through a very narrow eyepiece.

Tintin is part of French culture but he never was claimed as French.

If bored gay bashers or eulogists want to sink their dainty claws into a French comic strip, let them choose Jacques Martin's Alix - the strip also was published at the same time in the family-oriented Tintin magazine, shared the same commitment to "ligne claire" and was such a well researched foray into the Roman and Hellenistic worlds that it was translated into Greek and Latin as teaching aid. Its main characters followed the usual post-war pattern of man-boy friendship in all kinds of adventures - but in later albums, they made no mystery of being lovers as well, and there was no fuss about it.

If that's not enough, the artist spent the war working in a Messerschmitt factory as part of the STO programme.

That should make Mr Parris water at the mouth!

[madmarce]

So maybe Tintin doesn't know he's gay. But I bet his mother has her suspicions.

[Matt]

Can't I have one childhood hero who doesn't turn out to be a homosexual?

[Fred]

What I dont understand is the complusive obsessiveness of some writers over if everything that walks is gay even if it is a simple cartoon? anybody?

fred
milton, canada

[RW]

The whole gay debate seems to be somewhat less important than the fact that Tintin was an instrument of colonialist propaganda. Has no-one else read Tintin in the Congo?

http://opoto.org/blog/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/tintin_congo_gd_ft.jpg

[Kevin Dunn]

And even more seriously: Why do he cats in Achewood have only two nipples?

[Robert]

What is so unpleasant about gays is not what they do in the bedroom, but that they insist I know about it.

[MArio]

Yo creo que Tin-tin es gay, hemos visto dibujos que se drogan, que son gay, y tantas otras cosas, que esto ya no debiera impresionar a nadie, menos a los europeos. Además ahora que el director de cine norteamericano realizará una pelicula sobre éste afamado reportero, las relaciones entre EE.UU y la Unión Europea, deberían afiatarse y dejarse de discutir por pequeñeses.

[Hugh James]

This is tabloid stuff. Do people have nothing better to do with their minds?

[Kevin Dunn]

That is all very well, but has anyone noticed that THERE IS ONLY ONE FEMALE SMURF?

[Do-re-mi]

Hey,

The shock I had when I learned that Nancy Drew was not written by Caroline Keenes but by ghostwriters and outlines by someone called Mildred Benson.

Tintin, phew, who question their sexuality these days?

Lex, I thought of another one, Nip/ Tuck and I reitirate I am straight.

[michele]

We Americans know all about Tintin, thank you very much! My children owned and read every Tintin book, and saved them to pass on to their own children!

[H. Steve]

Arguably, the silence over his sexuality in the texts might be read as a product of the fact that the types of relationships are congruent with those between lovers, and that such relationships are essential to Tintin's success in his adventures. It's not so much that a 'real' Tintin would have been gay, but that 'gayness' is essential to the success of the types of relationship found in the text. The French rejection of Tintin's gayness can thus be seen to be necessary in a society in which sexuality is constructed as an essence rather than as the result of practice (as it was in antiquity), in which sexuality is artificially compartmentalised into homosexual and heterosexual.

[andrew]

I assume Mr Parris, an intelligent man, is simply stirring the pot having little else to write about after a quiet Christmas. I still fail to understand, however, the obsession in the press with "outing" historic and fictional figures on extraordinarily flimsy evidence or mere suggestion. In most cases there is little or no evidence about an individual's sexuality at all. People will, nonntheless, gossip...

[cowfreak]

(Shh, don't tell anyone. He's not real. So he's not gay. Or straight.)

[robert]

That sex was kept out of stories in those confusing Roman Catholic days makes no difference to Tin Tin's sexual inclination. It's still there, and most convincingly demonstrated in the Tchang story.
Me think Tin Tin actually never had sex with anybody, but was desperately searching for romantic homosexual love, rather than persuing weird adventures just to please the reader or confront the reality of his sexual desires.
On the other hand, he was a darn good shot!

[malik]

lol, funny mr Bremner. ^^

[Roshan]

I think COWFREAK is spot on! welldone!

[Andrew]

Gay? no way. All characters on Tintin stories are finally KIDS, this whole thing is an absurd. Mr. Parris hasn't anything better to do with is time?

[Roshan]

Well I think that it was written in a complete asexual manner and anyone can interpret it the way they want. When I was a kid I read the whole series and none of it mattered.

I fail to see how it matters what his sexual orientation is? Its just someone looking for sensationalism.

[Imants, Riga, Latvia]

Mr. Parris' stupid article tells about Mr. Matthew Parris much more than he would like to tell. :D

[Elizabeth]

In the text: But French pride has been needled by the anglais who has used Tintin's 80th birthday to depict the brave reporter as all-out gay: what a load of nonsense, and who cares. But, if you pretend to know (about) French, please get the grammar/spelling right! In this context, it should be the Anglais, anglais (lower case) being either the language, or adjective.

[Welcome Elizabeth. I think you must be new to this blog. CB]

[Edward Johns]

Eureka ! So that's what was going on with George(ina) in Enid Blytons "Famous Five" stories--short haired tomboy-girl-no doubt a daughter of Lesbos! (where does this leave Timmy the dog?)

[Kat]

Is it important or significant? He's Tintin - that is what matters the most.

[gk.gibs]

Outing hypocritical politicians and evangelists spouting hate and living double lives is always justified. Applying tabloid standards to belittle the genius of Herge's creation is not.

[GUILLER]

C quois c conneries, vous n'avez donc que ça à pensser, propement à cette litographie ce genre de question ne se pose pas just adventure et immagination, une telle déblatération de connerie et trés décevante venant d'un journal aussi prestigieu que le The Times,dautant plus par un sois disant ancien députés.Charles Bremner.. god bless grand britain.. sortez vous les doigts du c et percute la planéte. Merci...... And for in[Iformation Tintin come from Belgium.

[Trop bonne la caricature. I think you must be one of our regulars in disguise. Un bon pastiche. And to those pointing out that Tintin comes from Belgium, you didn't read the post. CB]

[T Andre]

I thought he was Belgium!

[Dominique]

Did anyone ever questionned sexual habits of Asterix & Obelix?

[Andy]

I'm shocked at France Info. You know a Frenchman's on the back foot when he falls back on authorial intent as a defence. A generation of theorists will be spinning in their graves. Mr Parris must be onto something.

[peter kinsley www.peterkinsley.com]

This is just one more exammple of the insidious behaviour of the homosexual community with a nudge-nudge, wink-wink simper that all men are bent. The "jokes" in pantomime in London each year lean more and more towards a brain-washing of the audience of children that the world is homosexual, and the "queer" jokes always get a laugh. This is perhaps acceptable in the world of principal boy and principal girl cross dressing and when it is jokey, but there are some professional queens who insinuate ad nauseam that all men are "ginger" (Cockney rhyming slang : ginger beer or up your rear) and one in particular on the box who so blatantly wears his arse on his sleeve that he has not been done for slander.

[Lex Stevens]

Actually Peter, it is a classic example of camp humor, which is a staple in the Gay community. It is often based in tilting at sacred cows, and no doubt Mr. Parris found a French sacred cow quite tempting.

After seeing the clip of Coco Chanel that someone linked to the other day, I have no doubt that in the Gay nightclubs in Paris in the thirties and forties, Chanel was spoofed as being a Lesbian.

The primary difference here is that it is in pages of the Times -- or on your television -- and not in the underground world where it so long lived.

There are people who do check for homosexuals under the bed each morning; some in fear of them, and others hoping to find one. You are quite right that there are people -- whom I call orthodox homosexuals -- who think that far too many people are closeted or unaware of their true sexual preference. The problem that I have with these people is that they place a too rigid and simplistic definition on sexuality, just as their opposites do. The academic variety of the orthodox homosexual I find quite obnoxious and somewhat dangerous.

Good spotting on the 'ginger' comment.

"and one in particular on the box who so blatantly wears his arse on his sleeve that he has not been done for slander."

You must be talking about Graham Norton.

[Rick]

With a name like that, ringingly reminiscent of the high Pyrenean pastures in late summer, with a kiss-curl inverted and alert, how could Tintin be anything but a lonely curé’s ‘flight of fancy’?

Tintin’s creator Hergé claimed ‘the Catholic boy-scout movement rescued him from a “grey” childhood in lower middle-class Brussels’ [Economist]. What’s more, ‘he fell in with a slightly hysterical clutch of hard-right priests and nationalists’ [ibid.]. This latter included Hergé’s later employer, ‘an alarming priest named Norbert Wallez’.

Wallez le Wallon. Hmm...

[Deborah]

I'm too lazy to read the comments here, but after reading the post would just like to say that the agreeable thing about Tintin is that he is 'sexless', he must be because I always identified with him too (I am a hundred per cent female).

[azloon]

[Most loyalists are worried about how Spielberg will turn the clean-cut Boy's Own lad into a global movie hero.]

interesting that Herge wasn't worried about this. he was more interested in the money that he believed a slightly altered version of Tintin might make for him or his estate. he didn't pretend to believe that Spielberg, being american (from arizona), would be able to capture Tintin's essential french-belgian (dare i say Gallic?) sensibility. and he apparently didn't care.

he was an empire builder and a financially astute entrepreneur, and so made his decision about using Spielberg based on financial considerations. Spielberg, he believed, would alter Tintin in a way that would make him more universally acceptable and hence, a better money-maker in the world market. and since it would happen after he was dead, his creative integrity was not as big an issue as it might have been if this decision (made in the 1980s i think) had occurred earlier in his career.

perhaps Tintin is 'bi-sexual,' or polymorphously perverse? i am more interested in how subtle the Tintin comic strip is compared to the bombastic, steroidal american comic-book super-heroes.

btw, is there a Tintin clothing line, like Miss Kitty in Japan, and Disney here? school lunch boxes, notebooks, bookbags?

[A pedant]

"writing at a time when boys's adventure stories were allowed to be violent"? Writing at a time when people knew where to stick their apostrophes, too!

[It's called a typo, Ms Pedant. CB]

[Christopher Muir]

One looks forward to Mr Parriss soon doing a profound study of Billy Bunter's libido. The clownish English schoolboy, Bunter, had some very odd values and opinions. As for Greyfriars - I wonder what really went on behind closed doors. I much prefer the adventures of the athletic Tintin to the silly activities of the obese (and now departed) Bunter...

[christine langford]

you don't get it. You have to be French (or close enough) and born before the 80's. Tintin is completely assexual. Every hint of interest for the other sex being skillfully rubbed out. Of course, it doesn't work for today's society. Tintin was designed to be read by little boys around 7/8 years old, that magical age when girls are eurghhhh! and you dream of adventures in wonderful foreign unknown countries. Was Herge having a laugh? Maybe. But don't be surprised if people get offended, not by your reference to homosexuality (so what!),but by the fact that you write an easy article on a tired subject using the same old copycat comments... Herge and his work deserve a bit more.

[dada]

"French fuss over "gay" Tintin"
"I am a hundred per cent female"
"?"
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=ranbvICfJjk