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Picaros: Is Hergé's message that, in the end, things don't change?

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Andrew
Member
#21 · Posted: 31 May 2011 19:25
I think Hergé is trying to leave a political message, but to be fair to Alcazar, it takes more than a few days to change the lives of poor people.
There - I'm happy to defend Alcazar as long as he doesn't spend all his presidency playing chess with his aide-de-camp and giving him jaundice!
Ladybird
Member
#22 · Posted: 3 Oct 2011 04:56
I think that Hergé is trying to leave us a message.

The contrast between those panels seems deliberate and there are other ways he could have a frame of them leaving San Theodoros. As for Alcazar I do think that he’s better than Tapioca. He shows himself willing to go to run risks to help his friends, but he doesn’t seem like a great leader from what we saw of him in The Broken Ear, and I think that the ending of Picaros is meant to suggest that he won’t be any time soon.

As to Peggy I think (though her being Bazarov’s daughter is non canonical) it makes sense, at least he seems like a trophy husband to me.
snowy_1001
Member
#23 · Posted: 4 Oct 2011 15:06
Andrew:
There - I'm happy to defend Alcazar as long as he doesn't spend all his presidency playing chess with his aide-de-camp and giving him jaundice!

lolz.. point to be noted!!! :D
Pharaoh
Member
#24 · Posted: 24 Oct 2011 18:34
This specific bit is what I show people who see my Tintin collection for the first time and make a comment about them being "kids' books". I just pull out a copy of The Picaros and show them the two plates and they soon know that it's way more sophisticated than they originally thought, and afterwards I might take it a step further and tell them about the political significance of the 1938 version of Black Island and what Hergé was pointing at in Ottokar’s Sceptre, etc.

I can say that usually people leave with great admiration of what they had just called "kids' books" an hour earlier :)
gorfdota
Member
#25 · Posted: 8 Nov 2013 18:36
Is it just my impression or do General Alcazar and the Picaros indeed look rather like Che Guevara and his band of guerillas? As for General Tapioca and his military machine, including his henchmen, they look just like psychotic right wing regimes are suposed to look. And Latin America at the time contained quite a few of these. But Herge neatly reversed the backing, so now Alcazar is backed by what is supposed to be the West (United Fruit Company) and Tapioca by the East (Borduria). To augmnent the joke, Alcazar in the end proves just as vain and bombastic as Tapioca by announcing that Tapiocapolis will now become Alcazaropolis, thereby foreshadowing the final image of the book.

I wonder, could the Woody Allen film Bananas have been an influence on the Picaros?
hadtins
Member
#26 · Posted: 8 Mar 2014 09:46
Alcazar certainly is a politician. What I mean to say is that Alcazar agrees to no bloodshed very resentfully and only when assured of the anti-alcoholic medicine. Moreover, he always fights for becoming a general, another fact proving that he is by no means selfless. But perhaps he is just a bit too hasty about most of his thoughts, thinking simply of his own profit.
Yet, I also agree as Andrew said, it takes few more days to change the lives of people. But, in most cases, we see that only, as stated earlier, the power and a few rules change, but the economic condition of the inhabitants more or less remain the same. It becomes just a question of coming to power. I must say, I don't think of Alcazar any more than I do of Tapioca. If there is going to be any change in the condition of the poor mites displayed in the two pictures, I guess it will be done if and only if Tintin tells him to look into it;)
MaxBird
Member
#27 · Posted: 25 May 2014 20:01
There is no particular reason to stay with Alcazar and help him to seize power. I mean, wouldn't it be easier just to go home and plan out something there? Alcazar clearly is not any kind of philanthropist.
BlackIsland
Member
#28 · Posted: 7 Aug 2014 17:00
Politics aside I always thought this was the book Herge kind of had Tintin mature as he himself was more mature and it was reflected in the narrative and too an extent the artwork. Whenever I read it especially as I too got older I always thought it was kind of sad.

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