Tintin and The Blue Lotus/ How and why are comics becoming more accepted as an art form? Can/should they be regarded as a literary genre? - Rowan Moss

Tintin and The Blue Lotus - Rowan Moss

How and why are comics becoming more accepted as an art form? Can/should they be regarded as a literary genre?

Tintin and his adventures in The Blue Lotus are an iconic part of comic/graphic novel history. Herge really does show us why comics are a serious and valuable genre. In The Language of comics (Varnum & Gibbons, 2001) we see how comics have, until relatively recently not been seen as a 'serious' medium. We can also see what value this genre brings to the literary world, and the fact that it does have a place there.

For many years written and visual mediums have been held reverence in their respective spheres, with perhaps more emphasis on the written word according to Varnum & Gibbons (2001). It has been often considered that these two forms of language, if you will, should occupy their own spaces and any melding might make a "freakish kind of writing", for example (Varnum & Gibbons, 2001). Indeed, at the onset of the graphic novel revolution, the days of superheros, comics came under fire as being immoral and bad for young minds as it caused them to "become lazy" as a result of gleaning information from images rather than words (Varnum & Gibbons, 2001). This is, of course, poppycock. 

One of the most cheesy and annoying sayings known to man fits rather nicely here; "A picture paints a thousand words". Although an image may appear transparent in meaning, it can in fact contain many underlying meanings. For example if we look at Tintin on page 6 of The Blue Lotus we are presented with a beautiful street scene with many facets to it. In this case what its like to walk down a Chinese streets is what is being shown to us; we see banners with Chinese characters on them, we see men, women and children roaming around on foot shopping, going to work, etc, we see rickshaws, one of which contains our hero Tintin, transporting folk around not unlike a London taxi. Most certainly this picture tells us more of what the street is like than a thousand words ever could. Does that mean that image trumps text? Not at all. Here is where the genius and importance of graphic novels as literature lies, the blending of words and images. 

Words can provide "a soundtrack to a sequence composed visually" according to Vernum & Gibbons (2001). While a significant amount of expression can be obtained from the visual representation of a character, text is invaluable at conveying those more complex features of a story or plot, such as long dialogues. Once again we turn to The Blue Lotus. On pages thirteen to fourteen Tintin has a fight with a scimitar wielding hooligan who, without text, seems to go for Tintin's head for no reason. However, once text is applied to the situation, we find that this man is clearly not of sound mind. This combination of text and image provides for an exciting action scene while still conveying something about the world which Tintin inhabits.

I think that graphic novels are a wonderful genre in the world of literature. They offer something unique and extremely effective in terms of story telling and evoking emotion with their mix of text and image.     

References:

Varnum, R. & Gibbons, C. (Eds.). (2001). In The Language of Comics: word and image (pp.ix-xix). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. 

Hergé. (2005; 1935). The Adventures of Tintin: The Blue Lotus. London: Methuen.