Tintin in Tibet
Oct. 2nd, 2011 07:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitA few thoughts on my recent re-reading.
This really couldn't be any shippier unless we actually got to see Haddock and Tintin kiss. (They do hug, for the first [and only?] time in the series, and it's played for comedy a bit of course, but I still went all wibbly.) I love them being on holiday together at the beginning (okay, Tournesol's there too, but he mostly seems to be doing his own thing while Haddock and Tintin spend a lot of time together) and playing chess, which as we all know is totally a metaphor for sexytimes.
I think the way Tintin talks about Chang makes Haddock a little jealous from the very beginning. Tintin's bouncing around going "Chang's coming, wonderful!" and Haddock says "Yes . . . that's nice . . . um . . . " and then a couple of lines later, "So when's your, er, your Son of Heaven arriving?" Haddock's clearly feeling awkward about the prospect. That jealousy may be part of the reason (along with the very real risk) that he tries so hard to discourage Tintin from going in search of Chang. And we get several repeats of their "I'm not going, nope, not this time" routine, with the added spice that Haddock never explicitly gives in, he just packs up and finds a guide in secret, or follows Tintin for three days and then claims it was just to pass along the camera. There's a lovely moment in the lamasery when Haddock, explaining to the chief monk how they got there, says, "Because [Tintin] is as stubborn as a mule, he flew to Nepal! And me, like the old hulk that I am, I let myself be towed along after the boy." I really, deeply adore that image. I also love Haddock trying to order Tintin to come back to Moulinsart with him; Haddock's always giving Tintin advice, which is usually ignored, but he hardly ever tells him what to do; it's interesting that he feels he has the right if the situation is desperate enough.
The story's pretty much entirely about loyalty and love, about finding them in unlikely places (between aFrench Belgian boy and a Chinese boy who only met briefly years earlier, between the "abominable" yeti and the boy he looks after, between an aging sailor and a boy adventurer), and about sticking to them beyond rationality, even in the face of death. The greatest moment is of course the scene where Haddock's dangling from the rope that Tintin's at the other end of, and he tries to insist that Tintin cut the rope and save himself while Tintin says "Either we'll both be saved or we'll die together." So Haddock gets out his knife and prepares to cut the rope himself. There's something harrowing about Haddock's calmness in that scene, his absolute readiness to die to save Tintin--almost as harrowing as the fact that Tintin would rather die than go on without him.
In conclusion: married. Ever so married.
Other things I liked: further evidence that Haddock is secretly an old softy, namely him crying when Tintin finds the teddy bear in the wreckage, and then crying again when Chang tells his story. The Grand Precious renaming Haddock "Rumbling Thunder" and speaking of his "faith that moves mountains," which is clearly faith in and loyalty to Tintin. And my favorite ever Haddock moment that's not about Tintin: "If only I had rhododendrons like this at Moulinsart!" Oh, Haddock, you are so domestic.
What creeped me out a bit: Tintin giving Haddock cognac and then playing mind games on him in order to stop him from turning back. That's awfully ruthless, and I think in most circumstances Tintin would never have done it, but he's being driven by his conviction that Chang is alive and needs rescuing.
What I'm still puzzling over: tu and vous. Chang is the only character (apart from Milou, who doesn't really count because animals are always tu) whom Tintin regularly calls tu. It's not surprising in itself, as they're the same age and are close, but it just makes me wonder even more why Haddock and Tintin don't call each other tu. Haddock does tend to call his friends tu (e.g. Chester, occasionally Tournesol, and for some reason Szut the Estonian pilot), so I think the mutual vous-ing has got to be Tintin's choice on some level. It's not a status/age thing; if it were, Tintin would say vous to Haddock and Haddock would call him tu; that's what's normal between a child--even a teenager--and an unrelated adult. (When I was studying in France, my teachers used to call me tu and I felt rather patronized by it, since I said vous to them--I was never invited to use tu--and I was nineteen.) It's almost like Tintin is deliberately keeping up a level of formality. I've said elsewhere that maybe it has to do with social class, and that's still possible. Maybe Tintin calls Chang tu because he thinks of him as a child (there's other evidence for that) and calls Haddock vous because that's what upper-class adults did, at least until the big social upheavals of the 1960s. Anyone with more sociolinguistic knowledge of French than me is welcome to chime in here, because I keep coming back to this issue in confusion.
And having said all that, I've now had a look at the French-language Wikipedia, which tells me that in Walloon (a native Belgian language, closely related to French) vous is normal even towards young children and animals, and tu is considered crude. It also says that the Walloon usage does linger a bit in standard French as spoken in Belgium. Since Hergé was Belgian and so, probably, are many of his characters, I think that may be what's going on. All the characters do use tu at least sometimes, but it makes more sense now that it would be an exception rather than the norm. Tu in the comics tends to be used in anger, fear, or contempt, or in buddy-ish relationships; I can see how a more emotionally intimate relationship might nevertheless use vous.
This really couldn't be any shippier unless we actually got to see Haddock and Tintin kiss. (They do hug, for the first [and only?] time in the series, and it's played for comedy a bit of course, but I still went all wibbly.) I love them being on holiday together at the beginning (okay, Tournesol's there too, but he mostly seems to be doing his own thing while Haddock and Tintin spend a lot of time together) and playing chess, which as we all know is totally a metaphor for sexytimes.
I think the way Tintin talks about Chang makes Haddock a little jealous from the very beginning. Tintin's bouncing around going "Chang's coming, wonderful!" and Haddock says "Yes . . . that's nice . . . um . . . " and then a couple of lines later, "So when's your, er, your Son of Heaven arriving?" Haddock's clearly feeling awkward about the prospect. That jealousy may be part of the reason (along with the very real risk) that he tries so hard to discourage Tintin from going in search of Chang. And we get several repeats of their "I'm not going, nope, not this time" routine, with the added spice that Haddock never explicitly gives in, he just packs up and finds a guide in secret, or follows Tintin for three days and then claims it was just to pass along the camera. There's a lovely moment in the lamasery when Haddock, explaining to the chief monk how they got there, says, "Because [Tintin] is as stubborn as a mule, he flew to Nepal! And me, like the old hulk that I am, I let myself be towed along after the boy." I really, deeply adore that image. I also love Haddock trying to order Tintin to come back to Moulinsart with him; Haddock's always giving Tintin advice, which is usually ignored, but he hardly ever tells him what to do; it's interesting that he feels he has the right if the situation is desperate enough.
The story's pretty much entirely about loyalty and love, about finding them in unlikely places (between a
In conclusion: married. Ever so married.
Other things I liked: further evidence that Haddock is secretly an old softy, namely him crying when Tintin finds the teddy bear in the wreckage, and then crying again when Chang tells his story. The Grand Precious renaming Haddock "Rumbling Thunder" and speaking of his "faith that moves mountains," which is clearly faith in and loyalty to Tintin. And my favorite ever Haddock moment that's not about Tintin: "If only I had rhododendrons like this at Moulinsart!" Oh, Haddock, you are so domestic.
What creeped me out a bit: Tintin giving Haddock cognac and then playing mind games on him in order to stop him from turning back. That's awfully ruthless, and I think in most circumstances Tintin would never have done it, but he's being driven by his conviction that Chang is alive and needs rescuing.
What I'm still puzzling over: tu and vous. Chang is the only character (apart from Milou, who doesn't really count because animals are always tu) whom Tintin regularly calls tu. It's not surprising in itself, as they're the same age and are close, but it just makes me wonder even more why Haddock and Tintin don't call each other tu. Haddock does tend to call his friends tu (e.g. Chester, occasionally Tournesol, and for some reason Szut the Estonian pilot), so I think the mutual vous-ing has got to be Tintin's choice on some level. It's not a status/age thing; if it were, Tintin would say vous to Haddock and Haddock would call him tu; that's what's normal between a child--even a teenager--and an unrelated adult. (When I was studying in France, my teachers used to call me tu and I felt rather patronized by it, since I said vous to them--I was never invited to use tu--and I was nineteen.) It's almost like Tintin is deliberately keeping up a level of formality. I've said elsewhere that maybe it has to do with social class, and that's still possible. Maybe Tintin calls Chang tu because he thinks of him as a child (there's other evidence for that) and calls Haddock vous because that's what upper-class adults did, at least until the big social upheavals of the 1960s. Anyone with more sociolinguistic knowledge of French than me is welcome to chime in here, because I keep coming back to this issue in confusion.
And having said all that, I've now had a look at the French-language Wikipedia, which tells me that in Walloon (a native Belgian language, closely related to French) vous is normal even towards young children and animals, and tu is considered crude. It also says that the Walloon usage does linger a bit in standard French as spoken in Belgium. Since Hergé was Belgian and so, probably, are many of his characters, I think that may be what's going on. All the characters do use tu at least sometimes, but it makes more sense now that it would be an exception rather than the norm. Tu in the comics tends to be used in anger, fear, or contempt, or in buddy-ish relationships; I can see how a more emotionally intimate relationship might nevertheless use vous.
