A while back I discussed some of my reservations about the Tintin books. I found the slapstick precious, the characters caricatured, the art lacking in visceral appeal, and the layouts consistently boring.
Numerous folks stopped by to tell me I didn’t know what I was talking about or (more kindly) to suggest that I should try some of the later Tintin books. In particular, several commenters recommended The Castafiore Emerald.
As it happens, my son has become a little obsessed with Tintin, so I thought I’d use that as an excuse to buy The Castafiore Emerald and see if it changed my opinion of the series. My boy, as expected, loved it…but I still wasn’t convinced.
That isn’t to say that the story is without interest. In fact, it diverges from earlier books in the series in a number of intriguing ways. Herge (according to trusty Wikipedia) was tiring of the series, and wanted to try something new. And what he tried was abandoning the adventure book format. In Castafiore Emeralds, Tintin doesn’t head for any exotic locale (as is the case in almost all the other books in the series), and he doesn’t encounter criminals, danger, or excitement of any sort really. Instead, he participates in a drawing room mystery/farce, in which every crime isn’t, every suspect is innocent, and the only real suspense is how Herge will manage to spin the plot out for a full 62 pages without ever having anything happen.
As a formal exercise, this is undeniably masterful; you only really appreciate Herge’s narrative genius when you see him turn all his tricks back on themselves, so that all the careful foreshadowing ends in blind alleys and the characters spin around and back on themselves, endlessly chasing their own slapstick-bruised backsides.
But as with Herge’s work in general, while I can appreciate the achievement on an abstract level, I can’t love it. Like Herge’s drawing, The Castafiore Emerald is almost too polished — and definitely too pat. You can feel the audible “click” as each false lead is resolved, and you can hear the laugh track rev up as each character is wheeled out (literally in the case of the wheelchair-bound Captain Haddock) to perform their schtick. And throwing in some gypsies so that Tintin can demonstrate his liberal bonafides by not suspecting them of theft…well, let’s just say I wish Herge had resisted the temptation.
Again, my son adores it when Calculus misinterprets what someone told him yet again because he still can’t hear and deaf people are always funny; or when Haddock splutteringly shouts “Billions of blue blistering barnacles” for the umpteenth time, or when the fiftieth person trips over that broken step and falls on their butt. Kids like to see the same joke over and over. And it’s not like I’m totally opposed…but the predictable surprises and even more predictable characters, the preciousness and the bloodlessness, the relentless clockwork perfection of it — it leaves me cold, and kind of irritated. Certainly, if I have to read something to my son, I could do (and have done) a lot worse. His current fascination with the Narnia books is giving me a lot more pleasure than his Tintin kick, though.
You didn’t even mention one of the best sequences in the whole book, the Professor’s demonstration of color television, which might also be called “Tintin’s Bad Trip”.
I’d call this one of my favorite Tintin books. It almost feels like one of PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster stories.
I can see your point about practically hearing the “click” of each plot point, though I’d argue that this sort of thing is fairly typical in a Wodehouse “stately home” comedy of this sort.
I liked the tv sequence well enough. Again, it’s all a little too precious for me to really enjoy it fully.
The Wodehouse analogy is a good one…and I think helps explain why I’m not that into Herge. Wodehouse’s nuttiness is a lot loopier. The plots are ever-escalating towers of insanity, rather than pushing a button and then backing away, pushing a button and then backing away. The characters are a lot nuttier too — even the names. Gussy Fink-Nottle is just a much sillier and less obvious name than Professor Calculus, for example. And Wodehouse would never throw in dusky ethnics just to validate the superior morality of his main character — not because he’s a better liberal or anything, but just because nobody in his books is a moral center (not even Jeeves, really, who is smarter than everybody, not necessarily devoid of personal ambition, greed, etc.)
Again, it’s an excellent analogy though. I was thinking about Agatha Christie as a comparison, but, of course, she actually has real murders in her books, so it doesn’t quite fit with the Castafiore Emerald.
I read Emerald years ago, when I was learning French. I liked the scene where Tintin is walking his dog, the dog takes a piss, and Tintin listens to the music from the gypsy camp. “Quelle nostalgie dans cette musique!” My thought at the time was that English-speaking heroes don’t have dogs that piss and don’t take time out to appreciate the nostalgia in somebody’s guitar music.
Which doesn’t make Emerald a good or bad story. I don’t remember much about it at all. But this year is the tenth anniversary of my reading the book, and damned if I expected to see an item about it when I visited the blog.
I think the repetition of the jokes– tripping over the step, etc— is sometimes used to create patterns in the larger narrative. It sort of ties things together, in a way that “new” jokes wouldn’t. And doesn’t it get at some metaphysical question: the repetition itself suggesting a larger existential ennui beyond Haddock’s immediate rage? And entertaining kids at a slapstick level at the same time.
I suppose it’s too obvious to even mention (but I will!) that both Hergé and Wodehouse were accused of being collaborators during the war, though the circumstances were quite different.
Hergé had a lot of recurring gags (e.g. Tintin inspiring a tired or destitute Haddock with a handy bottle of booze) but usually he didn’t repeat them within a single book. I can’t really defend the repetition in TCE since it doesn’t really bug me.
As for the names, keep in mind that many of them were changed from the original French. For example Cuthbert Calculus was originally Tryphon Tournesol. Since Tournesol means sunflower, maybe his name would have better been translated as “Simon Sunflower” or something. But overall, I’ll admit that Wodehouse had a real knack for funny-but-plausible-sounding names.
And wasn’t there at least one story where one of Bertie’s twit friends does a comedy bit based on a stereotypical Irishman only to encounter a pair of real Irish tough guys while in his leprechaun gear? Or did that only happen in the TV version? Okay, it’s not quite the Hergé’s “dusky ethnics” but…
The Irish joke is quite a bit different than what Herge does, I think; it’s pretty different to have your ethnics defend their own honor (i.e. Inglourious Bastards) vs. having your hero defend your ethnics and so shore up his own honor (Schindler’s List.)
That’s a good point about the name translations, though. I’m a dunderheaded monoglot, so such mistakes are par for the course I guess….
I won’t bother defending Tintin again…but check out this book to increase your own enjoyment.
http://www.amazon.com/Tintin-Secret-Literature-Tom-McCarthy/dp/1582434050/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270506367&sr=1-2
The chapter on “Castafiore’s Clit” is particularly apropos.
Perhaps Yves Chaland would be more your speed? He seems to address many of your concerns using a similar style.
I’m only guessing but I’m pretty sure that Noah would hate Chaland….which is a pretty good reason for reading one of his comics if he can find one. The English language albums are long out of print and very expensive.
I will add, I don’t see how saying that Wodehouse is nuttier than Herge is any kind of argument about their respective aesthetic merits. Of course you may personally prefer something nuttier, but that really has nothing to do with Herge’s success or failure as an artist.
On the gypsies, and Herge’s “ethnics” in general, maybe it could be conceded that political sophistication isn’t his strong point.
Is Inglorious Basterds really better handled than The Castafiore Emerald though? The movie treats the Jewish “heroes” as inhuman brutes, no better than their Nazi persecutors. Fine if your point is that there are no heroes, but then why induce your audience to identify with them as the “good guys”.
You can take a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. Even if it is the purist water on earth. Your son is a genius. I know not what else to say.
Well, aesthetics are always about “what we like.” There isn’t any way to prove that Tintin is aesthetically inferior. It’s not algebra here.
However, the “nuttier” argument is basically saying that Herge is staid, boring, and not especially inventive (at least relatively.) to me, that speaks to aesthetics. You may disagree, I guess.
The issue of ethnicity in Inglorious Basterds is infinitely better handled than in the Castafiore Emerald. The Jewish heroes are not “inhuman brutes;” they’re deadly, competent, and appealing protagonists who act out of the extremely film-validated motive of revenge. That’s a much more appealing take than the gypsies in Tintin, who are simply objects of charity and moral grandstanding.
You aren’t really arguing that Tarantino’s Jews are presented as being equally sympathetic with the Nazis, are you? I mean, the Nazis are granted humanity, but they’re clearly, clearly the bad guys.
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From what I remember, the Jewish protagonists are appealing—as I said, the audience is induced to identify with them. This makes it all the more uncomfortable when the audience is then encouraged to endorse their inhuman torture of the Nazis.
As you say, the Nazis are granted humanity: thus, to have the Jews stoop to their level, to engage in torture, and to authorially approve of this.. well, it makes me want to forget the whole human race, if this is the worldview we’re being invited to share.
The proper response to the Nazi atrocities is not more atrocities.
I believe there were actual living Jewish veterans who objected to the film’s portrayal as well. And I don’t blame them. On a popcorn level, the movie has a lot to recommend it. But its ethics leave me queasy.
———
“However, the “nuttier” argument is basically saying that Herge is staid, boring, and not especially inventive (at least relatively.) to me, that speaks to aesthetics. You may disagree, I guess.”
Well my point was just that Wodehouse and Herge obviously may have very different intentions. I guess equally Herge could be faulted for not having Tintin engage in Tarantinoesque bloodbaths. If the idea is always to amp things up to the extreme.
I don’t think Wodehouse and Herge are all that far apart in interests or in the effects they’re going for.
I’m sure some Holocaust survivors objected to Tarantino’s portrayal. All I can say is that, as a Jew, it was extremely gratifying to see a portrayal of the Nazi/Jewish relationship which wasn’t about pity, victimization, and everybody feeling ennobled by virtuousness at the end.
Tarantino is at some pains to show that his movie is a movie, not reality, I think. It’s presented as a cathartic revenge fantasy, with as much emphasis on the fantasy as on the revenge. Personally, of the Holocaust/Nazi accounts I’ve seen, I find Inglourious Basterds much, much less offensive than virtually anything else I’ve seen, from Schindler’s List to Maus and on down the line. Pulpy, vicious high spirits are just infinitely superior to sanctimonious bullshit. In my opinion, anyway.
“…everybody feeling ennobled by virtuousness at the end.” Whatever you could say about Maus–this line doesn’t really apply. Vladek is not a particularly appealing character (neither noble nor virtuous) and neither is Artie. Vladek’s use of his Holocaust victimization for his own ends, is clearly an attack on the same thing you’re attacking here: “feeling ennobled” etc. Artie is hardly ennobled either (maybe we are meant to pity him or see him as victim–but the book is at least somewhat opposed to this view as well).
I think Inglourious Basterds clearly sets up this ethical “dilemma” on purpose–perhaps as a tongue-in-cheek comment on how we “Allies” like to portray ourselves as heroes who could never stoop to the barbarism of the Nazis. History suggests otherwise. It’s still a bit ethically dodgy…but the gruesome torture of the Nazis isn’t merely a nod to pulp revenge films (although it is that)–There’s a broader social commentary there too. Revenge makes good entertainment, perhaps–but as the commenter comments (as commenters are wont to do)–it’s not the most preferable option ethically. In this way the film implicates the viewer (Noah’s favorite pastime!)–By enjoying this “entertainment” we show ourselves to not be so unlike the Nazis in our attitudes (however disparate we may be in our activities).
Yeah, I really don’t think Tarantino is especially interested in implicating the viewer. I think it’s more about celebrating the power of movies to give us a better ending…or lamenting their inability to do so.
Maus is better than Schindler’s List. I’ll admit that.
That was more for John Fowles-related fun…although I don’t think it’s necessarily untrue.
For the record, I think that Noah’s comparisons of Wodehouse and The Castafiore Emerald are reasonable. I don’t think that Hergé’s work in general or Tintin in particular is much like Wodehouse; rather, part of TCE’s charm (to my mind) is that it has that Wodehouse stately home vibe about it.
Noah’s initial in response to that point seems fair: Hergé’s version lacks the elaborate and improbable “houses of cards” (that usually collapse) that are a feature of many of Wodehouse’s best stories. Hergé does seem a bit tentative by contrast, but again, it doesn’t bother me at in the slightest.
I haven’t seen IB. But somehow we keep getting back to Nazis.
Of potential interest? Benoit Peeters (french comics critic and writer) wrote a whole book (a la S/Z) about The Castiafore Emerald. I wrote about the old edition here:
http://madinkbeard.com/blog/archives/les-bijoux-ravis
There’s a new edition (in French) from Impressions Nouvelles.
Noah, those are fair points. Maybe I object a little though to using historical reality to craft a “cathartic revenge fantasy”, to me it’s an uneasy mixture. Kill Bill or something I can take more easily as fantasy, Inglorious Basterds has enough basis in reality that it muddies the waters.
Erik B.: “By enjoying this “entertainment” we show ourselves to not be so unlike the Nazis in our attitudes (however disparate we may be in our activities).”
Gunfights or other violence is one thing, but watching somebody who’s captured and helpless be tortured moves my sympathies to the victim, even if they’re the “bad guy” in the movie’s eyes. I don’t think you have to be unrealistically noble & virtuous to question that kind of thing.
I just can’t go along with the whole camaraderie and joi de vivre while cutting off people’s ears, etc.
I don’t know that Tarantino is pro-torture. I think his handling of violence is in general uncomfortable — much more disturbing (and intentionally so) than in most action movies.
I think the Nazi in IB who refuses to talk and is killed ends up being quite sympathetic. I don’t know that that makes the torturers unsympathetic necessarily…
You know, I was actually offended by a reference to reality in Kill Bill. At one point, a character looks at the scene of a massacre and says something like, “It’s like the work of an El Salvadoran death squad.” That made me think, “Jesus Christ, if this guy knows about the existence of El Salvadoran death squads, then why doesn’t he make a movie about that instead of jerking off to fantasies of pop-culture violence?” Kill Bill offended me so much that I walked out of it.
Gary Groth wrote an article about Tarantino for the magazine The Baffler, and the same issue contained another Tarantino article by a movie critic named Ray Carney. I really liked Carney’s article, which said something like, “Haven’t we had enough movies about movies? Aren’t we overdue for a movie about life?”
Movies are going to be about movies, though. Life is about life. When you set out to make a movie about life, you end up with sanctimonious bullshit.
I remember those Baffler articles…though I somehow hadn’t realized that one of them was by Gary. They were the somwhat inevitable left-wing false consciousness, pop culture is dreck sort of thing as I remember.
Tim–I think I was agreeing with you–unless I misunderstand your argument.
“Movies are going to be about movies”—This is both true and untrue. Obviously, many movies and books and etc. are, in fact, about “life” and Tarantino makes a conscious choice to set this “spaghetti Western” not in the old West or in some kind of alternate universe, but in a “real” historical place and time. Once he mucks around with it sufficiently, it’s clear that the film is not “set” in our real world–but the “reference” to our world is still there. It is a movie about movies–but it also clearly and intentionally is about life–or at the very least WANTS the expectation that it will be “about life” before subverting it.
Sure. But Tarantino understands that there’s no unmediated discussion of life possible; he’s not providing a window onto how the world really works. Instead, he’s talking about how particular kinds of narratives affect and are affected by reality — specifically how we think about WW II through movies and what that means.
The reason I don’t think that he’s “Implicating the viewer” is because I think he’s got a more complicated understanding of how morality and art and life interact than that suggests. It’s really more a meditation (albeit a very high-spirited one) than it is a story with a neat moral wrapped around it like a bow.
So you’re saying that art can only be about art? You need some kind of connection to reality to create something good, don’t you? I mean, Ariel Schrag’s (sp?) comics are about her life, right?
If you read Gary’s editorials in TCJ from the 80s and 90s, they were all about the left-wing false-consciousness, pop culture is drek thing. He actually took it to the point where he talked about working for Marvel Comics as if it was similar to collaborating with the Nazis. I was a teenager when I was reading that stuff, and it had a big influence on me, I guess because it allowed me to feel superior to everyone. But I think there’s at least some truth to it.
Have you seen the show The Family Guy? From what I’ve seen, the whole thing boils down to, “Hey, here’s some lame joke that makes a reference to some shitty 70s sitcom that all of you have seen, because you live in a world of pop culture! You’ll recognize the reference and laugh knowingly! Now here’s another lame joke that refers to another shitty 70s sitcom…” I think Tarantino’s movies are like that in a way.
Ariel Schrag is pretty obsessed with issues of representation and the relationship between art and life. I think you’d be hard pressed to argue that her comics are about life rather than about art, if that’s the opposition you’re going for.
I haven’t seen Family Guy, though I recognize that kind of stance. I think there are some superficial similarities to Tarantino — and that’s the criticism that’s always made of his work of course. It’s self-referential, not sufficiently serious, etc. etc. I’ve never bought it. I’ve always found his films extremely intelligent, thoughtful, and funny. They’re certainly about pop culture — but culture is who we are in a lot of ways. I think a movie about how war movies work is way, way, way more interesting and valuable than another crappy movie about the greatest generation or the holocaust or whatever it is we’re supposed to be constantly beating our breasts about.
I know where Gary’s coming from. He’s right to the extent that some pop culture is drek. The percentage of left-wing false consciousness arguments that are drek is, I’m convinced, even higher, though.
Well, false consciousness arguments are obviously conescending and can be pretty insane. I’m always annoyed by radical feminists who seem to think that if women would just read some Andrea Dworkin, they’d see how oppressed they are, stop wearing makeup, and leave their husbands, for example. And maybe people were right to get pissed off at Obama’s “They cling to guns because they’re powerless,” comment (which is similar to the argument of What’s the Matter With Kansas, by The Baffler’s former editor). But I think there’s at least a little bit of truth to the view that we all live in a pop-culture matrix designed to make us dumb, passive consumers.
Of course, all of this is extremely relevant to The Castafiore Emerald
Ah, relevance is overrated.
“I don’t know that Tarantino is pro-torture. I think his handling of violence is in general uncomfortable — much more disturbing (and intentionally so) than in most action movies.”
Yeah, I heard him say he thinks the audience likes to squirm, to be made uncomfortable. That’s almost common sense.
But if he’s not pro-torture (even as revenge) then doesn’t that undercut the whole “cathartic revenge fantasy” angle? Where is the catharsis if you have to start questioning the humanity and worth of the Jewish heroes?
Overall I agree it’s preferable to another precious self-important movie that just wants to mouth platitudes.
Erik B.: My comment wasn’t clear, I guess I was elaborating on your point, and also responding to Noah.
Hey Tim. I think it’s somewhat complicated. In general, revenge fantasies allow the revenger to do fairly horrible things without losing the sympathy of the audience (see I Spit on Your Grave.) The horror at what they’re doing is part of the charm, I think.
At the same time…I think Tarantino is raising questions about violence, or at least suggesting that this kind of visceral revenge is possible only in movies; it’s something we want, but which only occurs (and perhaps only should occur) in theaters.
I don’t necessarily know that he’s making an anti-torture argument either. But I think it’s clearly not a 24 kind of thing where there’s an ideological “you must torture to save the world” kind of thing.
Maybe I am being a little too literal about it. I don’t mean to make it into a 24 ideological question. It did sort of take me out of the movie and put me almost in that frame of mind though.
I agree with Noah (about Tarantino, at least).
Tarantino’s movies are about movies as a central part of our lives: his great subject has become the way that our relationship to the movies we love can act as a way of being in the world – a way of coming to a greater sense of self-understanding. He’s Oscar Wilde for people raised in an age where the trash/art disctinction has been thoroughly obliterated.
Don’t know if you caught this (I didn’t), but there was a recent interview with Chris Ware (scroll down to the bottom for the English) where he says the following about Tintin