And my reading for the evening has been determinedly light so far: one of the TinTin collections I bought in KL. Question - Is TinTin a sort of guy thing? I don't think I can recall seeing any girl ever reading Herge, and he seems to create an entirely male-dominated landscape, loaded with the kind of machines (toys really) that guys love - the beautifully detailed drawings of cars, for example. And the books are full of that kind of cheerful violence, which seems to derive from boys' fighting games. The kind where you get shot and jump up bounding with health, as TinTin seems to do at least once in every adventure.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
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7 comments:
Isn't TinTin itself a very male dominated book/graphic novel. And Asterix too.
You are not wrong, Jordan. In fact, I had the Asterix books in mind when I was writing about Tintin. I bought a couple last year, the first time I've read them in many years, and enjoyed them mightily. I don't think I've ever seen a girl reading them.
Complete sets are another thing... guys are more addicted to completing collections than girls are.
Absolutely spot on - as the big music labels know well. The number of CDs that get bought just so guys can say they've got everything issued by a band or singer is, I believe, substantial. I think I have an element of the completist in my nature, which is why I try to ensure I never get a complete set of anything.
i read both tintin and asterix! (not indignation, just excitement here) but i haven't really been following anything in recent times. just used to poke around my dad's old books. it was really good stuff though. but the live-action asterix movie looks... dubious.
by the way, is herge still alive?
Thanks for this useful reminder of the perils of generalisation, especially where gender is concerned, Deborah.
Yes, Herge left this world in the early eighties. The last TinTin book, I think entitled 'TinTin and Aleph-Art' was unfinished, and published as such.
It's interesting to get hold of the first 2 adventures, which are now featured in the new Volume 1 of the collected edition, changing the numbering of the series. Both are highly political (though I suppose Herge usually is, in a discreet kind of way) and the second, 'TinTin in the Congo', is embarrassingly racist. But it's useful to see how deep such attitudes went in those days, especially when you consider the relatively liberal, enlightened tone of almost all that Herge produced after this. (The stuff set in Tibet, for example.)
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