Tintin Forums

In Europe, I heard that people are more sentimental, and the same holds true for Americans with deep cultural ties with the Continent. Some years ago, for example, two deeply Italian teachers at my high school kissed each other when one of them went to retire (he died about two years afterwards). That shocked the other (non-Europeanized) teachers!

I doubt that sex has any role in Tintin, so homosexuality and heterosexuality are issues that are usually covered in non-official Tintin stuff...

I´ve understood that in most parts of europe homosexuality was illegal and/or classified as a mental disease until the very last decades. That should be also taken into consideration on top of few very good points mentioned earlier. So if we only think about what Hergé originally meant, then it´s probably fair to say no, no and one very strict no to such innuendos.

But then again: even without a degree in literature it´s quite obvious that there´s no such thing as "one correct reading" for any work of art. Each and every book, painting, piece of music and poem will be constructed again in the minds of the public, and that way there are countless possible (and if we believe what some postmodernists say, equally correct) interpretations of any work of art. So yes, there must be quite a few readers who think Dupon(d)t´s are a couple, and therefore they are a gay couple.

The Thom(p)sons are considered by many identical twins. In some Tintin translations, they only differ by first name. And as far as I know, the British music band the Thompson Twins was named after them. I also read somewhere that Herge modeled them after his uncle and father, which re-enforces the idea that they're actually brothers. Now we don't want to attribute an incestual relationship to them.

Even if we don't consider them twins or brothers, there's no indication whatsoever that they're gay. I don't know how gay couples share the bedroom, but if they act as heterosexual couples, they'd be sleeping in the same bed. On many occasions Herge portrayed them sleeping in different beds, and sometime childishly fighting over pillows. That's what they are, clumsy and somewhat dumb kids in adult bodies.

If someone would stretch it as far as describing them as gay, they may as well consider any pilot/copilot, cop/backup-partner, or any professional pair as gay. Using this logic, they could also consider Tintin, Haddock, and Calculus as a gay trio, since they're all single and live in Marlinspike. And may be we should throw in Nestor for good measure :)

I always assumed the the Thom(p)son twins were identical twins rather than just two detectives who happened to look very similiar to each other and be good friends. I don't think that I ever thought of any sexual connotations with them (or with any of the Tintin book characters for that matter).

There is that photograph that was in Hergés' documents showing two very similiar looking detectives who were apparently a visual basis for the Thom(p)sons (you can see this photo in the 'Cigars of the Pharaoh/ Blue Lotus' omnibus 'making of' edition). So perhaps he just intially meant them to be similiar looking idiotic police-clones. Like a piss-take of the way people in similiar roles/jobs/organisations often end up being indistinguishable from each other.

But the incredible closeness of the Thom(p)sons and their identicle ways of thinking and looking seemed to me (as a child growing up) to be more a sign of them being siamese twins rather than just work colleagues. The fact that their surnames were slightly different could simply be that one of them changed it slightly so that people could tell them apart (apart from their moustaches being slightly different)? Either that or they are a cloning experiment!
lol
;)

Regarding sexuality in the Tintin books I never thought about that when reading them. The characters were never portrayed as even being vaguely sexual in any way. Kind of like the Famous Five books, one didn't think about the fact that as the characters grew up and developed that they would end up shagging other people!
LOL
One has this immortal image of them being forever children and having adventures without such complications and feelings coming into it.
Even reading Tintin (and other similiar youth orientated books/series) as an adult I don't find that the characters have any sense of being sexualised in any way. I am not saying this out of any puritanical or judgemental attitude. I am simply saying that to me Tintin books were a delightful focus on adventure and travelling and exciting escapades that just didn't really contain any really 'adult' themes such as sex.

Having said that, obviously there were often couples and families walking around in the background of these stories, and one must assume that people in the Tintin universe didn't get dropped off by flying 'stalk' carrier services in the night on your doorstep.
:)

Also, there were other adult themes such as murder/suicide and drug/arms running and war and kidnapping and extortion and theft. So one got a good look at the criminal underworld and not an iota of a glimpse at sex.
lol
But that was the genre that Tintin was written for and the era in which it was written. Also it was focussing on things such as travel and adventure and being heroic that children would be able to identify with, whereas sex wasn't a necessary part of that entertainment. These days I think often 'dating' and sexual awakening of young characters is pretty much a part of the course for youth orientated fictional adventure characters (e.g. Harry Potter).

Although perhaps they are aimed at a slightly older audience? Or maybe that isn't fair, after all Tintin can be enjoyed (as has been pointed out many times before) by young and old alike. Maybe a part of the joyful escapism of Tintin and t.v series like Doctor Who for many people is the fact that they aren't overly sexualised into a cliched Hollywood ideal of crow-barring romance and sexiness into every storyline no matter how inappropriate and annoying it is.
How many times does an adventure movie end up with a couple kissing and obviously going off to get laid/married as if that has to be the 'high' that audiences need from their movies no matter how relevent it is to the story? It is so formulaic to have that 'defeat the bad guys and make the surviving two lead characters hook up at the end' thing going on.

At least Tintin was written in an era where young people were not being sexualised by advertising and companies trying to offload their products onto them. These days one sees 10 year olds dressed like they are off to town to make $50 on the street corner. They suffer from poor body image at a very young age based on how they think they 'should' look and dress and appeal to others perhaps more so than in the past.

So, to sound like a conservative old fart, I must say that I am glad that sex was really avoided in Tintin books.

Kamael

If they were twins, they would have the same last name.

If they were twins, they would have the same last name

They do in my opinion, but one spells it with a 'p' to distinguish himself from his brother.

They do in my opinion, but one spells it with a 'p' to distinguish himself from his brother.

Now that I think about it, that actually is possible. Especially if their first names were, like, "Jon" and "John".

Personally I've always felt that all the main characters aside from Calculus are asexual.

And then there's the gay artist duo Gilbert and George.

Although not moustached or bowler hatted, they have rather an air of the Thom(p)sons, in their deadpan manner, their formal dress sense and their inseparableness: they're rarely seen apart and regard themselves as a single artist, apparently.

I wonder if the Thom(p)sons, though probably not intended to be explicitly seen as gay by Hergé, have nonetheless become an influence on gay culture?

On the question of whether Hergé's Catholic upbringing would have made him antagonistic to the idea of homosexuality generally, he actually seems to have had a fairly relaxed attitude towards homosexuality, at least by the latter stage of his life.

I'm basing this view on this passage, from an article by comics expert Paul Gravett (reviewing a Hergé biography by Benoît Peeters):

Peeters goes on to quote from Numa Sadoul's definitive book of interviews from 1975, in which he asked Hergé if the absence of feminine characters in Tintin might mask a repressed homosexuality. Hergé replied, without embarrassment it seems: "I don't think so. You never know. If I had tendencies towards homosexuality, I don't see why I'd conceal it."

Here's the link to the full article, which is interesting generally.

Though not particularly concerned with the topic of this thread - the Thom(p)sons's sexuality - some of the biographies that Paul Gravett reviews deal with the general lack of sexuality or family life of the Tintin characters and the theories for why this is so.

Of course wth the Tintin books being aimed (at least partly) at children, you wouldn't expect the sex lives of Thom(p)sons to be spelt out in explicit detail. But the idea that they can be seen as a long-standing gay couple who are so inseparable that they dress alike and even look virtually identical doesn't seem to me to be a completely invalid reading, nor one that is inappropriate for child readers to be allowed to consider. Many children know openly gay couples in their family or within their parents' circle of friends, so wouldn't be taken aback to encounter a gay or possibly gay couple in a work of children's fiction.

The theory that they are twin brothers who have decided to spell their surname differently is equally valid, of course. It may be a better theory, especially since they never use their Christian names (whatever they are) which might otherwise distinguish them. And it's a more realistic explanantion for them looking so nearly identical.
But one of the great things about the Tintin characters is that we're told so little about their backgrounds that each reader is free to interpret them in their own way.

There's also the theory they share the same mother but have different fathers, i.e half-brothers who kept their father's family name. This would also account for their physical similarities despite their different surnames.

Has anyone considered this theory before?