Tintin is a ... homo...?

Yesterday I discovered that one of my favourite comic book heroes is probably gay. But then, I had my suspicions - a young man with no women of interest in his life, a small white lap-dog as his best friend, an old sailor as his constant companion, numerous young boys as acquaintances around the world, and tufted-up hair. Complete recipe for homosexuality.

I suppose what is so annoying about this statement is how it reflects the tendency to turn children's lit around to mean something "adult." That there is an accusation of homosexuality on Tintin is not really an issue; I don't mind having a gay comic hero for children, but that it is an accusation based on an ill-formed speculation, erasing not only the fact that this is a fictional character but ignoring the social norms around which the creator Herge wrote the stories, is problematic and ignorant. Tintin has no reason to be homosexual or even sexual at all - he is a journalist in a children's series. The series gives little indication of any sexuality - there is one instance where Captain Haddock, Tintin's sailor companion, finds himself engaged to an opera singer (a female one), but other than that all of the characters are apparently content in their asexual and single lifestyles.

Let's face it, children's literature is an un-ending resource for social accusations. I remember once coming across an article regarding Lucy Maud Montgomery's homosexual undertones in Anne of Green Gables on account of the close relationship between the Anne and Diana. Rather than discussing the changing nature of friendship in society as homosexuality becomes less of a taboo subject (or at least, some of us hope it is) critics instead focus on the possibility that all of the literary friendships we have enjoyed over the centuries were in fact gay unions. For some reason readers and critics take a perverse sense of joy to make well-known pieces of literature more ominous through this course of interpretation. It's like that grade in elementary school when everyone discovered how innocent words could also be euphemisms for not so innocent terms - a sense of power over those who had not yet made the discovery was often so enthusiastically implicated that double entendres were found in every statement, even when they didn't make any sense.

It's not that sexual/political/racial undertones aren't present or even prominent in children's lit. What I'm saying is that children's lit is not merely a vehicle for social euphemisms. Not everyone is Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Not every book is Animal Farm. Lewis Carroll maybe was not a pedophile and the Alice books might actually have been written to provide for Victorian children a bizarre and escapist world far from the suffocating rules and imposed morality which surrounded them. I know we all shiver at the thought, but Alice in Wonderland might have had nothing to do about drugs. It is of course interesting and rewarding to find the author's hidden message, but it is pretentious to create one, particularly when it is out of the author's social context.

The Tintin comics are products of their time - Herge created books over the span of nearly half a century. The progression of the adventures saw significant shifts in the politics surrounding of each era, from colonialism (as seen in the popularly banned Tintin in the Congo), scientific exploration (Voyage to the Moon), and international relations (The Blue Lotus). The books also witnessed a progression of Herge's Euro-centric and relatively racist view of non-Europeans to a self-mockery - as was evident in the Blue Lotus (which, although among the earlier Tintin comics chronologically, was actually written much later). The Tintin stories are a complex mixture of reality and fiction: real-life society and politics, accurate forms of technology (Herge was extremely careful to portray all weapons, vehicles, machines of any type as life-like as possible and true to their era - few mistakes can be found in any of his technological representations, from guns to airplanes, making his cartoons delightful for the realist and sometimes dull for the more recreational reader) are fused with slap-stick comedy, spiritual mysticism, and action packed fight-scenes and escapes worthy of James Bond, Indiana Jones, or Houdini.

Tintin is a comic that caters to all ages. It was, after all, originally marketed as reading material for readers from age 7 to 77. But these books are more or less for children and, as adults, we forget that children often have little or no interest in romantic unions or sex. So Tintin might be a gay spy, subversive in all manners of his work, but that's probably not what Herge was intending when he created the ageless, nation-less, androgynous, reporter of indistinct employment. He was creating instead a "universal" character who sought adventure, to help people, and to fight evil around the world. My eloquent sister stated, upon reading about Tintin's apparent homosexuality, "Tintin is not gay. He's sexless.... He is Tintin."