Week 1

This week I am going to answer the questions 'Do you think comics are a children's or adults media?' and 'How and why are comics becoming more accepted as an art form? Can/should they be accepted as a literary genre?'

Comics are both an adults and a children's media as they appeal to both in different ways. The beauty of comics is that they cater to a wide range of audiences due to the linking of words and images that helps to create a simplistic on one level and and complex story on another. The reason a comic can be both simple and complex is because it relies heavily on the interpretation of the reader. In the case of Tintin the story is essentially a timeless one - Hero conquering Villain. A child will look at the images in a comic and in the case of Tintin will see a man and his dog on a quest fighting the bad guy. The words spoken by the characters in the comic will further help to illustrate this story.

In regards to an adult, experience and knowledge of places and events will help the reader to understand the deeper meaning behind the text and images. As Farr (1999) points out 'As in the best of fiction the stories were anchored firmly in fact.' As in the case of Herge's 'The Blue Lotus' which is the story of how Tintin goes to Shanghai to find a drug lord dealing in Opium, the title itself show's Herge's basis in fact as the name given to the comic is a well known opium den in Shanghai. The use of Chinese images and especially the use of meaningful Chinese phrases depicted in 'The Blue Lotus' allows the adult reader to understand Herge's desire to create an awareness and tolerance of the Chinese culture.

As an art form comics are becoming more accepted as they primarily use images in order to convey meaning and ideas within a story. For this reason also comics are clearly a literary genre as text is used in order to complement these images. The ideas within the story are given greater importance by the nature and complexity of the images being depicted and therefore the value of this form of art is now gaining more recognition.

As the saying goes 'a picture conveys a thousand words', so true for comics as the images are expressed in minute detail in order to have impact and to underline the basis in reality . 'Like film, television and the Internet, comics systematically combine words and pictures' (Varnum (2001). The images help to create a deeper level of understanding for the reader by depicting the views and sentiments of the author and the artist.

How might Herge's 'The Blue Lotus' address or relate to what Said(1977) terms 'Orientalism'?

With ‘The Blue Lotus’ Herge is trying to counter and remedy the idea of The Orient as Other, inserting some reality where ‘Occidental’ notions of the orient have become exaggerated, depicting a fantastically harsh and alien terrain hostile to the sophistication of civilised western society.


The sequence in which the Thom(p)son’s are ‘disguised’ as Orientals (p. 45) and are yet transparently, recognisably European (as an amused harem of locals delightedly observes) perhaps signifies for Herge decidedly inaccurate European preconceptions of the orient, an outmoded Orientalism that begs the revision Herge thinks he’s offering with ‘The Blue Lotus’. Herge is here even suggesting that Orientalism as a European canon of literature is mostly construction, founded on a scant and insubstantial record of cross-cultural observations swimming with the “desires, repressions, investments and projections” (Said, 1978) of the west. Furthermore, it is reasonably assumed that dated European versions of the orient were not a mutual discourse between two cultures; rather, Orientalism had up until then been a one-sided speculation far removed from the realities of its subject culture.

‘The Blue Lotus’ then is an Oriental Revisionist work. This can be seen in the painstaking detail of Herge’s depictions; inspired by the cultural recollections of a Chinese art-student with whom he met (Farr, 1991), Herge underwent laborious cultural and geographical research to paint his Orient as true to form as possible, frame for frame. His most orient-apologetic air though can be seen on page43 in a conversation between Tintin and a Chinese boy, Chang (namesake of the above mentioned art-student) whom Tintin saves from drowning in an overflowing river. Once rescued, Chang expresses gratitude mixed with disbelief that one of the ‘wicked white devils’, guilty of murdering his own grandparents, could have acted so selflessly. It is Chang’s father that has so distorted Chang's perception of European’s. Tintin then tells of some of the established prejudices his people hold over the Chinese, and before long they are both laughing at the naive bigotry of their elders.

Stirring stuff.

Do you think comics are a children's or adult genre/media?

(I also seem to have answered in part 'How does Farr(1991) justify Tintin's appeal to adults?', though in responding I only had the title-question in mind).

Herge accommodated audiences both young and old by refining a boldly distinctive visual style and adopting a classic adventure narrative for his younger readership, while at the same time providing provocative political commentary and mature-satire of more ‘difficult’ current affairs for his older readership. To the extent that a comic book or ‘graphic novel’ can carry a message above and beyond visually fettishistic storytelling for its own sake (which comics admittedly have a habit of doing), then comics as a genre or media-style do indeed hold an ‘adult’ interest.


Tintin definitely holds such adult-interest in that it politically contextualizes it’s ‘Indiana Jones’ type fantasy, in ‘The Blue Lotus’s comment on and eerily accurate foreshadowing of Japan’s quitting the League of Nations in 1933 especially (Farr, 1991); thus did Herge elevate his beloved Tintin from pop-cultural to cultural participant.

Herge however received some criticism as to the overt political nature of ‘The Blue Lotus’, one Belgian general expressing his concern that Lotus was “not a children’s story . . . it’s just a problem for Asia!”(Farr, 1991). The strength of Herge’s agenda in Tintin does invite debate over whether or not children should be exposed to material that, no matter how cleverly disguised, essentially remains a vehicle for Herge’s stance on (then) current affairs. Should Herge’s political views be at variance with those of parents, then by default the answer is no. As for censorship, Tintin is free of explicit content, what little violence there is being either suggested or slapstick, therefore Tintin for the most part is child-friendly. And Herge’s ‘agenda’?; his fictionalized representation of key-players in current events was only ever exaggerated to reflect actual participation so that a mature reader might more easily recognise the allegory (again for example, the Japanese), these being surrounded by representations otherwise positively themed to promote a message of cultural diversity and equality. Hardly a damaging motif for children.

GROUP 4 POP GENRES 2010

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