Tintin Forums

Everybody is welcome to help improve this last post's legibility!
Thanks in advance!

yamilah
Everybody is welcome to help improve this last post's legibility!

As it stands, I’m not sure that that is possible, as I am not sure anyone understands what you are suggesting to be able to clarify it. Phrases such as:

an 'unseen' writing made of shifted images of rebus...

are difficult to interpret.

I think that you are going to have to a) start a new thread about whatever your proposition about Hergé’s art is; and b) actually offer an example of it, so that people can understand, if this discussion is to get anywhere. That way, everyone will be able to participate.

Thanks for answering.
If a proverb owning 8 syllables is expressed by 8 consecutive images (abbreviated A to H) thus making a rebus, the changed order ABHCDEFG will make them more undetectable or 'invisible' than if they were plain letters. Just try by yourself! That's why this is an 'unseen' writing made of shifted images of rebus; is my English so bad? Sorry...

Reading 'The Code Book' by Simon Singh is recommended, or any other comprehensive treatise about the rules of art of 'rebuses', aso, and shifts of letters following 'Caesar's code', but none of these books will tell you anything about syllabic 'invisible' image writing, so that even scholars are fooled by a childish rebus technique, perfected by Herge who made it unseen!

Thus such a code is totally strange to Tintin's universe and to those learned in human and occult sciences, to readers certainly literate but unaware of sequential illustrated syllables (rebus) made invisible by tricks such as a change in the correct sequence of their syllables, which are then able to deliver a delayed message after a patient restauration only...

Please let me quote here and 'translate' Amanda's last words: "As to whether the treatise on the humanesque deductible from this art has anything to say about the human, in the way that Serres seems so passionately to want Herge's corpus to do, well this is quite another ...matter", meaning (imho) "Amanda's pages about 'image writing' -'steganography' in code books- might have not much in common with the type of human studied by human sciences".
Hence so much self-censorship and censorship!?! I'm afraid the Net is not the right place for discussing the subject, all the more as all that could be discussed openly has been written elsewhere in French, Tintin's mother language!

Sorry, but this sounds absurd. You are basically positing that taking elements, adding your own interpretation to them, and then changing the order of the elements to suit yourself to give a result of your own chosing, proves something. It only proves that if you do enough chopping and changing anything can be made to mean something else.

If you are suggesting that Hergé has encoded messages into the images in the form of a rebus, then put your money where your mouth is and give an example.

Why raise a subject in an internet-based forum, if it isn’t the right place to discuss it?

You claim that it is already discussed elsewhere openly, but offer not a shred of evidence, nor do you provide any links to where it might be found.

As I suggested above, if you really have a point to make, start a thread about it, as it doesn’t really belong in this one, and put it forward to the group.

I have to agree with what jock said earlier yamilah, could you please start a new thread for further discussion on ‘steganography in Hergé's work’ (for want of a better title) and maybe give us some clear examples of it. Or perhaps a thread on ‘absurd theories about Tintin’ would be better. I have a few myself...;)

Then we can put all this ‘preposterous scholarship’ to rest...

As Amanda's paper manages the performance to evoke more than 50 times a 'word-image' relationship in Tintin, and quotes more than 80 times the word 'characters' -taken in its double meaning of 'heroes' and 'letters'- without ever telling she actually speaks of a 'rebus', I think her article deserves to be qualified 'sympathetic' rather than 'preposterous'...

How come that I get 'access denied' to edit i.e. try and correct my English mistakes on that site?!?

[message from Moderator (tintinuk):] yamilah, You should get in touch with admin regarding problems with the forum, thanks. :)]

Hi yamiliah, further to what tintinuk says, I think it is most likely that you have let too much time elapse before returning to an old post: there is a time limit of 48 hours to make changes from first posting, after which time the message is locked.

This is to prevent threads becoming incomprehensible if people were to go back and change a previous message in such a way as to render replies by other users incorrect, for example.

Should you feel that there is a pressing reason to correct a post which is outside the 48hrs, then leave a message for admin.
--
[Note from Admin: g'day, yamilah. Simply copy and paste the content of the post that needs fixing up in a new post, then fix up the typos. If no new information is added to the new post, a moderator or I can transfer your corrections to your original post for you later.]

Thanks for your answers.

Let me just add here that Amanda might actually have 'missed' Herge's 'unseen' rebus-like writing just because of her prejudice -a common problem with Tintin's exegetes, imho- when she decides (p.2) that 'the image line preceeds the word line', thus precluding any kind of rebus-like writing, whereas Herge said "text and drawing are born simultaneously, each supplementing and explaining the other"(p.1) , thus evoking a parallel writing system, i.e. the rebus-like writing she alludes to throughout her 12 pages without ever naming it...
In that regard, I agree with you: her paper could be somehow called nonsensical...

How come that Amanda's article link is suddenly no more valid?
The Dupondt could maybe investigate about that strange phenomenon, possibly related to some mysterious self-censorship or censorship... ??

After imitating a lost writing for a while, Amanda's article's link given by jock123 (see this thread's 1st page, 2nd line) is back again...
Thanks to whom it may concern...

After struggling to decipher the bombastic vocabulary of this article, I set to rewriting it in exasperation. The following is the first paragraph, interpreted.

Herge used graphics as much as plot and dialogue to dramatically convey character. He said as much, using shorter and clearer terms than I have: he took care that his characters’ dialogue reflected the action, instead of the reverse. Herge’s visual technique was called ‘la ligne claire’, a French term, which translates approximately to ‘clear line’. In fact it became one of the established styles of the bande dessinee, a collective term for French/Belgium comics. Several others followed his example, including Edgar-Pierre Jacobs and Theodore Benoit. Matching line to script had deeper roots for Herge’ than mere aesthetics. In "Comment naît une aventure de Tintin" ("How a Tintin adventure is born"), Herge’ emphasizes the connection between the two: (insert French phrase here. How quaint, that we English speakers should not understand it.) This can be better understood given some of the prominent criticism made against the bande dessinee; namely, that the graphic novel necessitates that word and picture be in constant conflict. However, Herge’s practice supports the idea that language need not be the primary mode of communication, and especially not in a comic. Although Herge’ called word and line equal, the source of this statement goes on to discuss primarily his art. We are left to assume that image ultimately supercedes dialogue in any comic, and that the first depends on the second.

Feel free to correct any errors that I have made in meaning or translation. I do not speak French, and I did not major in English, so I am certainly not an authority on either subject.
Finally, this poor article can't be helped by any amount of rewording. The author is telling us, in many many words, that drawing was very important to the Tintin comics. Thank you, Captain Obvious. Welcome to the Planet Duh.