Tintin in America

When I was a child, my father hit on the ultimate bribe for doing well in exams — a Tintin. Each Tintin in my library is the fruit of some maddening quest for long-forgotten knowledge. I've no idea of the cash crops of Angola, but I do know that the main exports of Syldavia are horses and violinists (King Ottokar's Sceptre).

The Tintin albums were physically impressive — vivid colours, large in size, beautifully printed. In the greyness of pre-liberalisation India, they were a window into worlds unglimpsed. At a time when there was hardly any children's literature apart from the venerable Amar Chitra Katha, Tintin stood out. For all its undeniable charm, ACK was too much in the past. One wanted to see something alien to one's experience, something which did not draw on the common cultural pool of images and ideas.

The imagination of all those who have read Tintin is populated by false memories. The shape of clouds above Cointrin Airport, a performance of Bruno the Magician, the terror of Rascar Capac — all these are as much part of childhood memories as any other "true" ones.

Tintin was also the first window, at least a European window, to all kinds of stereotypes, national tics and racial idiosyncrasies. One learnt, for example, that Italians drove fast cars and had very long names (The Calculus Affair ) and Germans were ruthless (the recurring villain was Dr Muller). Though some of the characterisations may be wince-evoking now (for instance, the Africans in The Red Sea Sharks), the child instinctively grasped the strong sympathy for the underdog that pervaded the series.

Now, more than 80 years after he filed his first story, Tintin mania is sweeping the world. The new movie, produced by Peter Jackson, is Steven Spielberg's directorial debut in animation. Despite its galaxy of top-notch talent, one has to ask if the nature of the project is fundamentally flawed.

... contd.

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