I just read on my local paper that the Times had run an article “proving” our national treasure to be gay. Everybody who is anybody in Belgian comicdom has been called to arms to write a reaction to this, which I think is quite odd. After all, it’s a non-issue, for three simple reasons :
1. Tintin is fiction, a creation by a certain individual who refined his character for more than fifty years. If that creator hasn’t come across a basic reason to give his character a certain personality trait, and leaves it undecided which way the character turns, than that’s it. All “evidence” the Times comes up with, is circumstantial, and of no value.
2. What if Tintin were gay? Is that a bad thing? Would it help struggling young gay men to know that a seventy-year old cartoon character were gay? Or is there perhaps a hidden agenda, and are Tintin books to be banned because they promote a so-called “gay lifestyle” (much along the line of the protests in early 2008 against Tintin In Congo, which was supposed to promote racism)?
3. Pardon me for asking since it appears there is no more important news to cover, but has the cure for cancer been found already? Has global warming been reduced? Is there peace in the middle east? I think not.
(Snowy and Tintin – big fans of Brokeback Mountain? Tintin (c) Moulinsart)
In De Standaard, Flemish comics specialist Geert De Weyer gives strong historic argumentation against the fact that Tintin must be gay, since his world is a world of men. He reminds us that many comics before the 1970′s were pretty much devoid of any female character save caretakers, mothers and kenaus. Women in comics would introduce sexuality, and that was a no-go for the largely religiously motivated censor bodies in Belgium and France. And since France was actively looking for reasons to keep out the consistently more popular Belgian strips in the 1950′s and 60′s, all opportunities for censorship had to be avoided.
Fri, Jan 9, 2009
Comics and cartoons, From our Continental Correspondent