From: [popa 0200] at [PO-Box.McGill.CA]
Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 11:05:57 -0400
Subject: TINTIN (2/2) - Essay- Long

The reconstruction of the Tintin novels in colour, and the
substantial revisions that that undertaking entailed, are regarded by
Herge's supporters as support for the claim that Herge was a
perfectionist about every facet of his work. Thompson contends
that the books were not redrawn to remove elements of racism
from the originals in the wake of Herge's postwar troubles and the
decline of European fascism, but rather Herge was simply
reconstituting the books in a form in which they had always been
intended to be read. This assertion is betrayed by the number of
errors which crop up in the books which were not substantially
redrawn in the postwar period. Prisoners of the Sun was the first
Tintin story to be printed in colour in its serialized form, and was
the first work Herge published in Tintin magazine. The dramatic
climax of that book, which finds Tintin, Haddock and Professor
Calculus about to burned at the stake by the sun's rays channelled
through an enormous Incan magnifying glass, is predicated on the
assumption that the Incas, notable for their developments in
astronomy, would be both unaware of, and terrified by, a solar
eclipse. In instances such as these the strident racism of the earliest
Tintin serializations was replaced by a general ignorance and
infantilization of non-European cultures which continued to be
bested by the Belgian boy scout. Of more significance than the
obvious errors which continued to plague Herge's work is the
question of determining which versions of the Tintin novels should
be regarded as the definitive or completed work. The Blue Lotus,
for instance, has been published with six substantially different
variations to the art: the original serialization in le petite vingtieme,
the slightly redrawn black and white novel, the completely redrawn
Casterman edition, a slightly altered British edition, as well as
reworked versions for Japanese and American publishers. The
question of which text can be regarded as privileged cannot, of
course, be determined in an absolute or permanent sense. Clearly an
argument can be made that the original serialization of the Tintin
pages should be privileged as these came first historically and
functioned as a source for the books which were to follow them.
Yet on the other hand it is the Casterman colour versions which are
the most widely circulated of the Tintin texts and have contributed
most significantly to the ongoing popularity of Tintin as a popular
hero. As Bennett and Woollacott have suggested in their discussion
of the relationship between the James Bond films and the James
Bond novels, following this line of enquiry is a largely unproductive
road. Rejecting the notion, derived from Eco, that texts exhibit a
moment of emission which can be fixed as singular, Bennett and
Woollacott argue that popular texts which circulate via the
mechanisms of the market enter in a variety of forms for both 
cultivated and mass publics and are thus ushered forth
simultaneously into different social and ideological relations of
reading. However, in this particular instance one important reading
possibility is opened up by the privileging of the reconstructed
Tintin novels that is closed off by the focus on the serialized work
as originary: namely the status of Herge as an author. By privileging
the post-war work as the true Tintin material, and by extension the
fullest flowering of Herge's thoughts and ideals as Thompson and
others do, they are able to provide the "expert knowledge of an
authorial intention" to borrow Foucault's phrasing, which moves
the Tintin novels from the popular to the literary.
	
This tension between the popular and the literary in the figure of
Tintin is played out in interesting ways in two Tintin books which
were not created by Herge or by members of his studio. The first of
these is Frederic Tuten's 1993 text novel Tintin in the New World.
The direction which Tuten's novel wishes to take Tintin is obvious
from the cover alone, a Roy Lichtenstein painting of Tintin and
Snowy seated in front of a Matisse, commissioned and painted
specifically for the book. The book's credentials as a valid
extension of the Tintin mythos is likewise extended by the book's
dedication "to the memory of my friend George Remi", which
indicates the master's blessing of the non-canonical work. Tintin in
the New World is an attempt to recontextualize Tintin along
properly highbrow lines. A postmodern novel, Tuten returns Tintin
to the Peru which he visited in Prisoners of the Sun, the site of
Herge's first break with his pre-war and wartime Tintin writing and
the original era of the reconstruction of the Tintin mythos, and
more specifically to the heights of Machu Picchu. There Tintin
meets some of the characters from Thomas Mann's The Magic
Mountain, debating with them questions of humanity's moral
obligations to truth and the soul, questions of economics, political
theory and history. Perhaps most significantly it is in Tintin in the
New World that Tintin for the first time is provided a love interest,
Claudia Chauchat, to whom he loses his virginity and, in a long
dream passage is married, grows to be a grandfather, retires from
adventuring and dies at Marlinspike, Haddock's ancestral home.
The most significant challenge for Tuten, however, is to
psychologize Tintin, to strip away his static personality and to
develop in him lust, anger, jealousy and greed. Predicated as it is on
the reader's ability to locate a number of modernist references
solely through textual clues, including a veritable catalogue of
Modernist paintings from a variety of movements and schools,
Tintin in the New World seeks to organise the Tintin books along
culturally stratified lines, to aestheticize Tintin in such a way 
that pleasure and cultural capital are confirmed in the superior vantage
point afforded in comparison to merely vulgar readings of the
books. By stripping the book of any real social, political or
historical context, in much the same way that Herge erased those
elements from his own early works, Tuten participates in what
Bourdieu has termed a game of culture, a process whereby the
valourisation of texts becomes a means of valourising readers -
establishing their economic currency by cultural means - separating
them and justifying their economic destinies.
	
In opposition to virtually every element of Tintin in the New World
is the 1989 graphic novel Breaking Free. Published by the British
based Attack International and credited solely to Jack Daniels the
book is clearly not authorised by the Herge Foundation, nor blessed
by the master himself. Dedicated "to all those fighting against
capitalism" and devoid of copyright and freely reproducible by any
revolutionary group' the book is a fantasy of communist revolution
in late 80s England. In this adventure Tintin is not a reporter but a
construction worker and soccer fan who passes the time starting
brawls in wine bars. When a friend of his is killed in an accident at a
construction site Tintin and Haddock are amongst the crowd who
agitates against both the company and the union in order to begin a
wildcat strike. As the strike stretches on more sites are brought out
in solidarity strikes, and thanks to the keen organizational skills of
the lesbian militia members who occupy the squat next to
Haddock's soon all of London, and indeed England, has taken to
the streets for a final battle with the remnants of the army. What is
at work in Breaking Free is the highly conscious inversion of
virtually every attribute of Tintin and the other characters from his
books. Where Herge humiliated his non-white characters Breaking
Free makes them leaders, where Herge ignored women virtually
altogether Breaking Free places them in the central role of
educators and organizers, channelling Tintin's hostility and 
class-rage in appropriate directions. In arguing for the mythic status of
Tintin Bourdil notes that "If we glance at a few politically inspired
sketches we find them to be extremely poor. They require from the
reader an explicit political knowledge which kills the myth".
Certainly Breaking Free does attempt to kill the myth. By
reinscribing politics back into Tintin, particularly oppositional
politics, Breaking Free seeks to undermine the carefully
constructed, and reconstructed, image of Tintin. Breaking Free
rejects the connoisseur based reading which Tuten's novel suggests,
it is dependent not on a studied relation to the source Tintin
material, but only to Tintin as an image to be inverted: the boy
scout turned class warrior and saboteur, a position which champions 
the vulgar readings which Tuten's work disavows and
seeks to strip the image of Tintin of its long sought literary status
and return that image to the popular, and indeed to the people.
	
In conclusion then, what should be evident is the degree to which
both the literary reputation of Herge and the popular image of
Tintin are not the product of a fixed or stabilised set of texts, but
rather are the result of a complex interplay of text sets in a variety
of different cultural and ideological reading formations. If the
difference between high and popular culture is primarily a
representational one then greater attention must be paid to the
classificatory and institutional practices through which the relations
of texts are organised and represented, especially when those texts
are being differently valourised. What is most interesting to my
mind at this point is the degree to which the Tintin novels can only
be regarded as a literary oeuvre if and when the historical moment
of their production is suppressed in favour of a greater degree of
aestheticisation. It is imperative therefore, at this time, to revisit the
popular texts of the past in an effort to understand more concretely
the ways in which they have been de-valourised at the expense of a
variety of reading publics.