Hey, Sailor: Tintin cruises for a friend on the Unicorn
True fans of film have their moment when they once and for all gave up on Steven Spielberg, certainly by the time of his shatteringly awful idea to Americanize Harry Potter and make it a cartoon -- if Harry Potter is American he's not Harry Potter anymore. So devotees of Tintin have had good reason to worry about today's release of Spielberg's first ever animated film -- namely, if Tintin is straight, he's not Tintin
anymore. Depending on your view for the past eighty-two years, the beloved Belgian manboy is either wonderfully gay or sweetly asexual. The original stories unfold in an all-male world devoid of girls and women (except the opera diva Bianca Castafiore, which really only proves...). Stretching the point, the Herge cartoons are like an innocent version of Tom of Finland -- the naive but curious young hero wanders into adventures with bigger, brawny strangers, they tussle and struggle to a climax, and everybody goes home a little happier, wiser, and with new friends in the brotherhood of man.
In any case, I was prepared for Hollywood to crush one more tiny altar in my little gay soul, only to discover that, no! Miraculously, they resisted the urge to force a female love interest on Tintin! The cast is absent of women except Bianca and the grownup Billy Elliot is surrounded only by men: Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg, Andy Serkis, Cary Elwes, Nick Frost, Toby Jones, on and on.
TIME magazine's book man Lev Grossman innumerates 11 points for the uniniated:
6. Does Tintin — how can I put this — love the ladies? That is not known. He does not appear to be a sexual being at all. (This question is explored in Frederic Tuten’s excellent novel Tintin in the New World [[Kindle
]] as well as Charles Burns’ hallucinatory graphic novel X'ed Out
which stars a feckless manchild named Nitnit.)
7. Does he even know any ladies? Not really. There are hardly any female characters at all in Tintin. I don’t know why this is, but it’s a major weakness of the series. The only recurring female character is Bianca Castafiore, this awful opera-singer who’s weirdly obsessed with Captain Haddock. She makes a cameo in the movie. But all of Tintin’s other friends are guys, all of whom seem to be unmarried. Basically everybody’s probably gay.
The movie has earned generally strong reviews for being just what you need right now: a lot of fun.
The Adventures of Tintin, Vol. 1: Tintin in America / Cigars of the Pharaoh / The Blue Lotus
The Adventures of Tintin, Vol. 2: The Broken Ear / The Black Island / King Ottokar's Sceptre
The Adventures of Tintin, Vol. 5: Land of Black Gold / Destination Moon / Explorers on the Moon
The Adventures of Tintin, Vol. 6: The Calculus Affair / The Red Sea Sharks / Tintin in Tibet
**yes, I came back to Spielberg for Catch Me If You Can.
Erm, that's "enumerates" - not "innumerates."
But it is great news that Spielberg refrained from heterosexualizing TinTin. I've never read any of the books, but maybe I'll go see the movie. It'll be my first Spielberg film since I decided not to see Schindler's List -- I just couldn't stand the prospect of him Spielbergizing the Holocaust.
Posted by: Duncan | December 21, 2011 at 10:00 PM