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  • The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."
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« NOW IF ONLY THEY WERE READING MORE THAN *&#@$*& DOG BOOKS | Main | "NOT MORE THAN A YEAR SHOULD ELAPSE BETWEEN THE TWO" »

January 13, 2009

ONLY SNOWY KNOWS FOR SURE ...

Writing for the Times, Matthew Parris discovers what has been in plain sight for years - Tintin is gay.  (To which Mrs. TEV responded, "This is news?".)

Billions of blue blistering barnacles, isn't it staring us in the face? Sometimes a thing's so obvious it's hard to see where the debate could start. What debate can there be when the evidence is so overwhelmingly one-way? A callow, androgynous blonde-quiffed youth in funny trousers and a scarf moving into the country mansion of his best friend, a middle-aged sailor? A sweet-faced lad devoted to a fluffy white toy terrier, whose other closest pals are an inseparable couple of detectives in bowler hats, and whose only serious female friend is an opera diva...

Posted by TEV at 12:20 AM in Obsessions |

Comments

JC

Not a big revelation. I remember in the early 90's, before I was particularly aware of the Tintin books, that a grad student I knew in the UGA French Dept was writing a dissertation that discussed bigotry in Tintin. It hinged largely on racist images, but certainly commented on Tintin as a homosexual character.
Once I saw the books, well, duh.

Posted by: JC | January 13, 2009 at 07:33 AM

Oskar

I'm not sure Tintin is deliberately homosexual (i.e. whether Hergé intended him to be), but he certainly appears so in hindsight.

The thing to understand with Tintin is that it's written for young children, and stays away from risqué topics. I would argue that Tintin isn't so much homosexual as he is asexual.

And besides, Tintin himself has always been a complete blank slate. He has no vices, no backstory, no family, no romantic relationships, no background at all, in fact. The only hints of personality we get of him is his devotion to his friends (and his fatherly affection for Chang) and his love of adventure. He's essentially a mannequin, and mannequins rarely have romantic relationships. I seriously doubt that Hergé intended for him to be gay.

As for Haddock, I always assumed that between the pages, he had super-freaky sex with Bianca Castafiore. Real kinky, like.

(one final note: whenever someone suggests that Tintin is bigoted or racist, I enter into a spitting rage. It's a completely unfair accusation. Sure, the first couple of albums are horrible in that regard, especially Tintin in the Congo, but after Blue Lotus, Tintin is nothing but accepting of peoples differences and he preaches a strong anti-racism message. I can't think of a better role-model for teaching racial tolerance and acceptance to kids other than post-Blue Lotus Tintin. Saying that Tintin is racist just because of Tintin in the Congo is like saying that every single American cartoon is racist because the house-keeper in Tom & Jerry conforms to the Mammy archetype)

Posted by: Oskar | January 13, 2009 at 12:29 PM

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