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Tintin: Is he super-human?

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Richard
UK Correspondent
#21 · Posted: 11 Sep 2007 16:05
Balthazar
See my post of 19th March to this thread

I'm sorry for unintentionally plagiarising your idea (I didn't mean to snaffle the research grant either) but it did lead me to your Calculus Affair tour itineray which I somehow missed the first time round. Genius, haven't laughed so much in ages!
Tintin Is My Hero
Member
#22 · Posted: 11 Sep 2007 18:32
In The Broken Ear, after he falls into the river and escapes the piranhas, he manages to make his way back to civilisation with nothing more than a stick. This journey takes a few days yet he made it back with no supplies what so ever.

That's pretty super human to me! :P
The Sceptre
Member
#23 · Posted: 19 Jan 2009 19:58
[Moved from duplicate thread]

I was reading King Ottokar's Sceptre and Hergé always managed to stretch reality for Tintin's physical abilities but this seemed too much.

Page 23, he lands into a haybail without injury after falling from the sky.

Page 32, Tintin jumps down a steep hill and rolls and hits a tree at full force. No discernible or threatening injury. Snowy lands on top of him at full force. No injury still. A few hours later on page 36, he manages to fight off four thugs. Seconds later on Page 38, he crashes into a glass case that breaks yet Tintin gets no bruises anywhere.

Page 39, next day he is in a car accident and escapes completely unhurt. The others with him in the car are presumably hurt. Minutes later after the accident, the king's car runs over him at quite a speed. No injury. He gets up and knocks a much bigger man to the ground with one blow.

Page 45, a camera which hurtled the sceptre over 100 yards is activated by him and a spring hits his face at close proximity. He is knocked out. Easily recovers in seconds. No injury or discernible trauma to head.

Page 48 moments later, badly beaten by 2 men into unconsciousness. No injury at all. Able to drive a car with no problem in a few seconds. Proceeds to hike for hours straight despite not having eaten anything for 24 hours or getting any real rest.

Page 52, jumps down a hill twenty feet in height and lands directly on top of a man.

Not a blemish or ache.

Didn't Hergé kind of overdo it sometimes?
NikkiRoux
Member
#24 · Posted: 20 Jan 2009 09:17
The Sceptre:
Didn't Hergé kind of overdo it sometimes?

Well, if Tintin became really badly hurt like normal person, wouldn't that hinder the story a bit? And if he gets injuries like he should have gotten, it might look a little too scary for some.
The Sceptre
Member
#25 · Posted: 20 Jan 2009 17:18
NikkiRoux:
Well, if Tintin became really badly hurt like normal person, wouldn't that hinder the story a bit? And if he gets injuries like he should have gotten, it might look a little too scary for some.

That's an interesting thought. The only real way to avoid both problems would have been to lessen the severity of the action that happens to Tintin. It's amazing that Hergé manages to portray the unrealistic as plausible enough so that the reader doesn't really concentrate on suspension of disbelief.
Voluma
Member
#26 · Posted: 20 Jan 2009 18:49
I think 'super-human' is the wrong word, as Tintin is blatantly not magic, and has never (so far as I can tell) been bitten by a radioactive spider. Although that might explain his apparent fear of spiders.

I think the word I'm looking for is 'fictional'. Hergé was hardly going to create a character with such a dangerous tendency to make enemies who couldn't easily overpower adversaries/survive huge falls etc. But supposing there needs to be an explanation for Tintin's abilities, just consider that he must spend hours training in between all that adventuring. Sure, that doesn't account for climbing 209 feet in 17 seconds, but being a fictional character must count for something.

Another thought has occured to me: pain and injury is lessened in the Tintin universe for everyone. For example, if the normal rules applied, Archie would have been severely concussed and probably killed several times over, simply through his own clumsiness and bad luck. In Sharks, Skut ejects himself from a burning aeroplane and falls god knows how far into the sea, suffering no apparent injuries, even minor ones, which are to be expected. When Cuthbert's room is blown up in Destination, he doesn't even wake up, let alone get hurt. Nobody died of asphyxiation in Explorers. One of the Tompsons stepped out of a moving car in The Land of Black Gold and suffured no long-term effects. Muller was still conscious and ready to fight almost immediately after one of Tintin's famous punches in the same. The list goes on and on.
The Sceptre
Member
#27 · Posted: 21 Jan 2009 18:12
Yes injuries are lessened for everyone but for Tintin it's much more times so that's why we notice it.
Voluma
Member
#28 · Posted: 27 Jan 2009 10:12
Well, it would have to be more times for Tintin because more dangerous things happen to him than anyone else. I think his calamity to improbable escape ratio is pretty much the same as anyone else's.
Amilah
Member
#29 · Posted: 27 Jan 2009 17:33
I totally agree with Voluma.

Whatever happens to Tintin isn't much worse than what happens to Starsky & Hutch, James Bond or Indiana Jones, is it? We are used to see semi-realistic human heroes stand up after a fall, or not look too damaged after some exchanged punches.

Tintin isn't super human, despite of living in a comic book universe with its "Last Action Hero" rules. The same kind of violence and physics apply to, say, Terence Hill or Belmondo movies, without their characters to be supernatural. It's a bit of a cartoonish realism, but the important point is that there's no claim of superhuman abilities.

I see it as a major difference between european and american comics. I don't like (or just don't get) superheroes of the superman kind. I can't get involved in the adventures of a supermutant or god-like alien, I just don't care for what happens to him. I do, on the other hand, gladly follow the adventures of simple humans facing super bad odds (whether it is a worldwide conspiracy or a terminator). Somehow, I see it as democratic (the adventures of could-be-you) rather than feodal (the adventure of the-chosen-one), as superheroes are gifted with one explicitely unique ability, more or less since birth (at least since the "birth" of their superheroism). It's like a monarchic system where Kings are Kings by the right of blood, and legimitized by divine right.

Going even further in that direction, you could even say there's something religious in superheroes. They are above mankind "by nature", and their feats exclude "human beings" who, being mere people, just couldn't live the same adventures. Their exemplarity is a tad christic (admire but bow down humbly) while non-super heroes' exemplarity is more secular (admire and just be like them). The recent "Superman Return" movie plays on that religiosity quite a bit. It claims that humanity needs to "have" a Superman. I'd say Tintin is more about humanity needing to "be" Tintins.

So there. I'd say Tintin belongs to a tradition quite opposed to the american's tradition of superheroes. He's more of an hitchcockian hero, to my eyes. That said, he's not far from being a borderline case, given the almost mystical turn that his "pure heart" gives to some later stories. But even if Tintin becomes something of a saint, he's still closer to Simon Templar than to Superman.

On a related note, the "prophecy" plot device used in so many RPGs to put your character at the center of the universe annoys me for the exact same reasons. A written destiny doesn't need any average joe to stand up and do the right thing. Just like bestowing him a non-human superpower that spares him the trouble of being a "good human", prophecies replace responsibility and choice with predestination. In my opinion, it precisely misses the point of heroism (one person dealing differently, more "rightly", with boundaries that are the same for all of us).

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