Saturday, June 02, 2007

By Belenos! & Billions of Blue blistering barnacles

Okay, will everyone please leave my favourite childhood comic books alone.

First we have this article on Tintin in last week's New Yorker (not available online, sorry), where Anthony Lane points to a body of scholarly research (yes, you heard me right, scholarly research) which examines Tintin in the context of Freud, Derrida, Sartre and others, and comes to the conclusion (among others) that "the jewel embedded in the title of 'The Castafiore Emerald' is, in fact, Bianca Castafiore's clitoris." I mean seriously, wtf? [1]

And then you have this stupid controversy about Asterix being too 'monocultural'. It's enough to make you wish that the sky would fall on our heads.

Seriously, people, grow down!


[1] You have to hand it to Lane though. Who else could write a sentence like "Jean-Marie Apostolides, who states that the hero of the early stories 'annihilates himself in the absolute' which may be another way of saying that he keeps falling through trapdoors."

5 comments:

Raj said...

"Seriously, people, grow down!". Lovely words,those.

Anonymous said...

The post reminded me of the time I accompanied someone to the art museum. Oh my God, I think she saw way too much in some very simple works! Certainly not the way I'd like art to be interpreted for me, thank you very much.


"Seriously, people, grow down!"

So do I second that. Only, I think that's not the kind of statement one would hear coming from you very often. :-)

~N.

Anonymous said...

Oops! I meant "I do second that".

~N.

ggop said...

Aaahh! Glad you got weirded out too :D

I had a wtf! moment too while reading the meaning of the emerald in the article. I figured it must be some deep symbolism that I didn't get!
gg

Anonymous said...

"grow down" is right.