[HN Gopher] Celebrating the Timeless Allure of Tintin's Aesthetics
___________________________________________________________________
Celebrating the Timeless Allure of Tintin's Aesthetics
Author : thunderbong
Score : 188 points
Date : 2025-01-09 23:47 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (collegetowns.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (collegetowns.substack.com)
| rcarmo wrote:
| The detail in panels like the Luxor (mid-article) was always my
| favorite part about Tintin. The world Herge created felt lived
| in, but not worn out, and that was a big draw.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Not an original, but it's in keeping with the aesthetic.
| eadmund wrote:
| > Artists in Europe have already been fighting to protect the
| copyright of Tintin to keep the artwork away from large language
| models (LLMs) training various AI algorithms.
|
| There is no copyright in the character anymore, so there's
| nothing to protect.
|
| I really do not understand this perspective. Do people also wish
| to use legal force to prevent others from working with, for
| example, Gainsborough, or Moliere, or Julius Caesar, or Homer?
| Come _on_ : at some point something has to enter the public
| domain and become part of the shared treasure of all mankind.
| Timwi wrote:
| I think I understand this perspective somewhat. It's coming
| from a mindset where it's easier for the author to imagine the
| end of human civilization than it is to imagine a world without
| capitalism. They don't really want to keep Tintin from the
| common folk, but they want to keep it from the hands of greedy
| capitalists, and they assume that those will always be with us.
| Gormo wrote:
| > it's easier for the author to imagine the end of human
| civilization than it is to imagine a world without capitalism
|
| Well, yeah, it absolutely is easier to imagine civilization
| collapsing than to imagine it a world in which human being do
| not expect to benefit from their efforts. Noting, of course,
| that "capitalism" as you mean it doesn't really even exist in
| the first place, as it's just an analytical model used to
| describe patterns of behavior that emerge from the
| motivations people already have.
| Vecr wrote:
| Duck Duck Go: end of human civilization than it is to
| imagine a world without capitalism
|
| limit to last year
|
| I get: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/human-
| civilizatio...
|
| (The end of the world as we know it? Theorist warns
| humanity is .)
|
| https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/its-still-easier-to-
| imagine...
|
| (It's Still Easier To Imagine The End Of The World Than The
| End Of ...)
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/02/apocal
| y...
|
| (A History of the End of the World - The Atlantic)
|
| https://medium.com/write-a-catalyst/imaging-a-world-after-
| ca...
|
| (Imaging a World After Capitalism - Medium)
|
| https://orwellsociety.com/can-we-truly-rebel/
|
| (Can We Truly Rebel? - The Orwell Society)
|
| Yes I think that's known.
|
| Astral Codex is about AI, so maybe we'll get the end of the
| world, and the end of capitalism, _and_ huge quantities of
| AI slop Tintin!
| Gormo wrote:
| You're looking at aggregate patterns of human behavior,
| which originate in the pre-existing inclinations and
| motivations of those humans, and then trying to attribute
| them to some externalized, reified abstraction.
|
| "Capitalism" construed as some entity unto itself simply
| does not exist. There is no "end of capitalism" that
| isn't itself an element of a general collapse of social
| organization and economic exchange.
| marxisttemp wrote:
| So feudalism was a general collapse of social
| organization and economic exchange? Your analysis of
| capitalism is blinded by your obvious ideological bias
| Gormo wrote:
| No, that's another abstraction. "Feudalism" is a
| descriptive term for a particular pattern of reciprocal
| obligations that was common in Western societies (though
| not dominant in the particular society that our own
| evolved from) in the past. The emergent patterns shifted,
| but the underlying reality -- that it all _is_ just
| patterns of behavior engaged in by human beings with the
| same fundamental motivations and intentions -- remains.
| There was never an separate entity called "feudalism"
| just as there is no entity called "capitalism" acting as
| a causal agent.
|
| And the problem here is that the things you're arguing
| against aren't particular to that emergent pattern --
| they're the lower-order motivations that inform the
| underlying behavior itself.
|
| There is no "analysis of capitalism". Your either
| analyzing real-life human beings or you're analyzing
| imaginary phantoms in your own mind.
| spencerflem wrote:
| When capitalism falls, we can reevaluate those laws.
|
| Both are equally impermanent ideas
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >When capitalism falls, we can reevaluate those laws.
|
| If it falls, "we" won't get to reevaluate them, because
| neither of us will be allowed to express any opinion at
| all, let alone anything resembling political influence.
| spencerflem wrote:
| I think you are confusing capitalism and democracy.
|
| But my point stands: being against a law because it
| wouldn't make sense without capitalism is a silly reason
| to oppose something when we live under capitalism for the
| foreseeable future
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >I think you are confusing capitalism and democracy.
|
| You might think that. But the kind of people who show up
| to tear down a system from the inside aren't very
| democratically oriented, even if that's the rhetoric they
| espouse to rile up the crowds they need to tear it all
| down.
| labster wrote:
| I look out my window and see the fires and the smoke and the
| homes lost forever. I look at Google News and half the
| stories are about cryptocurrency. The end of human
| civilization is much, much easier to imagine than the end of
| capitalism.
| fnordian_slip wrote:
| While I don't have a dog in that fight, describing the
| opponents position as being against Tintin "becom[ing] part of
| the shared treasure of all mankind" seems rather unfairly
| dismissive.
|
| I would expect that most of those artists don't mind the
| journey into public domain. Rather, the are against large
| corporations hoovering up that treasure and regurgitating it
| with a profit motive.
| Gormo wrote:
| So they don't mind work entering the public domain, but they
| do mind people making use of that work in an organized way
| after it has? Seems a bit strange.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| It's not strange if you think how the worth of the images
| have plummeted down to zero, both emotionally and
| monetarily, in the last few years. I'm not an artist, nor
| directly in AI field, but it is weird how I have zero
| emotional response to any image I see, because I think it
| might be AI generated.
| kouru225 wrote:
| the fact that you can't enjoy a good image or not without
| wondering whether or not it's an AI image is the problem
| here; not the AI
| mihaic wrote:
| LLMs are not people, and some organized way are worse than
| others, yes.
|
| In the same way we defined "fair use" for those reviewing a
| movie for instance to be ok, but we don't find it
| acceptable to put 99% of the movie with a single comment.
| Gormo wrote:
| LLMs are tools used by people, like typewriters,
| paintbrushes, and other types of algorithm.
|
| If a work is in the public domain, that means that people
| are free to copy it, redistribute it, modify it, and
| create derivative works from it, using whatever tools
| suit them.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Right and sometimes thats cool and sometimes it sucks.
|
| Fwiw, I think its a tragedy that our great works of
| culture can be appropriated to sell Coca-Cola and
| merchandise
| Gormo wrote:
| Why is it a tragedy that people are using "our great
| works of culture" to engage in other activities within
| our culture?
| rat87 wrote:
| Why? Some of the greatest bits of culture is advertising.
| Some not all not most but some.
|
| While Coke commercials didn't create the image of
| americanized Santa as is often claimed they helped shape
| it. Wily Wonka and the chocolate factory is widely viewed
| as a classic despite it being a giant Candy ad
| marxisttemp wrote:
| What about that seems strange?
| Gormo wrote:
| Well, it's a fundamental contradiction, for starters.
| Public domain is public domain, as in out of copyright.
| You can't have something in the public domain, but still
| have its use be restricted.
| Findecanor wrote:
| The disagreement is not about what is, but what should.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| Because a lot of interested people do not want the images
| and style to be destroyed by A.I. usage.
| kyle-rb wrote:
| The images are not destroyed, they all still exist.
|
| I'm not sure if a style is something that can be
| destroyed, but I don't think AI has done that yet.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Styles can absolutely become wack, if the context they're
| used in becomes wack.
| Findecanor wrote:
| I used to be a fan of Star Wars. Then Disney bought the
| franchise, and transformed it into something that a large
| number of fans, including me, did not like.
|
| That the old movies exist* does not redeem the current
| franchise for me.
|
| *: albeit in reality the original films are being
| preserved by fans and not by the official rights holder.
| jfim wrote:
| Some countries have moral rights which are perpetual, and
| are meant to prevent works from being mutilated, defaced,
| misattributed, or otherwise could cause reputational damage
| to the author.
|
| It's not unreasonable for an author to want their creation
| to be enjoyed as it was designed to be, but not torn apart
| to be reassembled in different ways.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Quick, burn Picasso's Las Meninas! Burn iitttt!!!
| Velazquez would not have approved, I can tell you that!!
| Of course he wouldn't have approved, everyone can tell.
|
| /s
|
| Seriously, you can't and should not want to stop others
| from creating derivative works of works that are in the
| public domain. Sure, some such will be horrible, so you
| ignore them and hope others do too. But some will be
| creative in ways you could not have imagined before
| seeing/hearing/experiencing them.
| mongol wrote:
| I can see a difference between being allowed to publish an
| expired work as-is, and profit from it, vs reusing the
| characters for a completely different story.
| Gormo wrote:
| What you're seeing might be a smudge on your glasses.
| Legally, there is no such difference.
| oharapj wrote:
| And legal differences are the only differences that exist,
| right?
| Gormo wrote:
| In relation to something that is entirely a legal
| construct (i.e. copyright) in the first place? Yes.
| oharapj wrote:
| Just because there's currently no legal basis for
| something does not mean that the perspective that it
| shouldn't happen is invalid
| airstrike wrote:
| But you haven't presented a first-principles argument for
| why that perspective is valid, other than saying that you
| can see a difference.
| oharapj wrote:
| Actually, I didn't even state that I can see a difference
| airstrike wrote:
| OP did, sorry. Didn't realize different folks.
| Gormo wrote:
| Copyright is a legal construct in its entirety. The
| perspective that there _is_ a difference between which
| use cases are "allowed" for public-domain works
| absolutely is invalid.
|
| If you are proposing some creating some new framework
| distinct from copyright for restricting the way people
| may adapt ideas originated by others to their own use
| cases, that calls for a great deal more explanation and
| argumentation than you've yet offered.
| oharapj wrote:
| I fear you're failing to understand the distinction
| between having a perspective that something is wrong with
| the current system, and having all the legal answers
| about how to successfully encode such distinction into
| law. OP's comment was that that people shouldn't _want_
| there to be a legal difference.
|
| You're also failing to understand that I am not even
| making a claim that there should be a difference, I'm
| merely pointing out that your dismissal of the artists
| that wish to prevent Tin-Tin from being gentrified is
| shallow and essentially amounts to 'that's the way things
| are'.
|
| When people ask 'why is x wrong' the answer isn't usually
| 'because it's against the law'. This is a boring
| statement and sheds no real light.
| Gormo wrote:
| > I fear you're failing to understand the distinction
| between having a perspective that something is wrong with
| the current system
|
| The problem with that perspective is that the concept of
| copyright originates from and only exists within that
| system. Copyright itself is a legal contrivance. If you
| want to propose some other way of doing things, you need
| to argue from first principles and articulate the
| normative assumptions that you are starting from.
|
| > I'm merely pointing out that your dismissal of the
| artists that wish to prevent Tin-Tin from being
| gentrified is shallow and essentially amounts to 'that's
| the way things are'.
|
| And I'd like to merely point out that entire concept of a
| cartoon being 'gentrified' is something that you and/or
| the people you're attributing these opinions to have just
| made up out of thin air, and what you're actually
| implicitly arguing for is creating a new type of
| copyright that restricts what other people are allowed to
| do, without offering any justification for that
| additional system of restrictions in any meaningful way.
|
| Copyright, at least in the US, stems from a pragmatic
| desire to "promote the progress of science and useful
| arts", and not out of some normative notion that ideas
| ought to be treated like rivalrous property simply
| because some people have emotional attachments to them.
| If that latter proposition is what you're bringing into
| the discussion, you need to explicitly argue your case
| for it, and not just sneak it in like it's something
| everyone already understands and accepts.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| I am not making this up from thin air, I actually cited a
| post on another server, that has an actual example. I
| would hesitate to post a Rule 34 example, as it would
| appeal to prurient interests, but I will just so I can
| show effective counter examples.
|
| The original intent of the copyright law is now of little
| interest and little use in the onslaught of A.I.. A.I.
| Cannot survive without a relaxing of the copyright laws:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/08/ai-
| tools-...
|
| Copyright law may have been created early on to promote
| progress, through profits, but now, in the wake of both
| the SCO Group lawsuits:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group,_Inc._v._Novell,_
| Inc.
|
| I would disagree with your use of the term
| "Gentrification." As gentrification implies
| "Gentrification is a process that occurs when a
| community's values and profits are raised, often
| displacing long-time residents. The term was coined in
| 1964 by British sociologist Ruth Glass." raising the
| values... where as A.I. may just result in the perversion
| of the values and destroy the profits.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| Gentrified is one thing, while rule 34 is another, while.
| the misuse...
|
| "One of the guys had brought a comic book porn magazine
| of the ******."
|
| The current system protects the rights of the owner for a
| while, and the opportunity for nefarious use by trolls,
| while it prevents the innovation for other beneficial
| uses like the association with benevolent organizations.
|
| This is not a hard problem, its a very hard problem, for
| which the current frameworks used to be merely
| inadequate, are not woefully inadequate, to the point of
| being very damaging to the intent of the artist, and to
| the artistic process.
| cryptonector wrote:
| This is not a very hard problem. It's not even a problem.
| We've got a framework for protecting the rights of
| content creators as to their content, and we have it that
| after some time those works enter the public domain
| because that is actually quite valuable for society.
|
| Pornography might be a problem, specifically as to this
| case or even generally -- many think reasonably think it
| is. Pornography does generally get less protection than
| other contents/speech, so you could limit the sorts of
| pornographic contents that are ok, and you could ban
| pornographic parodies of historical persons and
| characters that have entered the public domain. You could
| even see an outright ban on all pornography, which would
| completely solve that part of the "problem" that you see.
| But distasteful use of works that have entered the public
| domain is absolutely not a problem in and of itself
| because we have long ago decided that all works
| eventually entering the public domain is a very desirable
| outcome.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| Some jurisdiction have the concept of "moral rights".
| toss1 wrote:
| Right, so by that rule, someone could stage a theater
| production or movie of the exact text of one of Doyle's
| Sherlock Holmes books, but could not make anything similar to
| the characters and relationships of Holmes and Watson.
| Forever.
|
| And exactly how similar must the new production be? Can there
| be any deviation from the exact words written by Doyle? It
| seems your rule would certainly ban the excellent BBC
| production of Sherlock [0]
|
| What about Shakespeare? It seems this would ban the entire
| writing and production of West Side Story (of course a 1950's
| riff on Romeo and Juilet) [1,2].
|
| That sounds like a permanent extension of copyright, with a
| limited media exception.
|
| [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b018ttws
|
| [1] https://www.westsidestory.com/
|
| [2] https://www.folger.edu/blogs/shakespeare-and-beyond/west-
| sid...
| cryptonector wrote:
| We have tons and tons of derivative works not remotely
| faithful to the original. The list of examples is very
| long. What about Roxane? What about A Fifth of Beethoven?
| What about all those novels with biblical inspiration? The
| works of H. G. Wells, and Jules Verne, and many others have
| been adapted endlessly.
|
| Derivatives have to be allowed to differ markedly from the
| original, even offensively. As you point out, the
| definitions problems that arise in trying to control
| derivatives are intractable / inherently political rather
| than legalistic.
| toss1 wrote:
| Gawd yes, the list is ENDLESS! All of culture is new
| riffs on old stuff. The GP just wants to shut all that
| down. --Yikes!-- if you don't like the new stuff, don't
| watch it, just re-watch and appreciate the old...
|
| There is plenty of old art that I deeply appreciate, and
| see most new copy and riffing attempts as lame at best,
| but some are just brilliant. I don't think even the idea
| of shutting it down after the copyright period makes
| sense, even beyond the utter impossibility of drawing
| sensible boundaries that would not be endlessly argued...
| cryptonector wrote:
| No, people have to be able to derive works from other works,
| especially when the latter are in the public domain. Up-
| thread I sardonically said to burn Picasso's Las Meninas, and
| I repeat that here because I think it's a good example, and I
| think you can probably think of many more on your own. E.g.,
| A Fith of Beethoven vs. Beethoven's Fith Symphony -- good or
| bad?
| bazoom42 wrote:
| Tintin is notable in that the series was not continued by other
| artists after the desth of Herge. While the estate is critized
| for guarding the IP too zealously, I greatly respect this
| decision, which is part of what makes it such a classic.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| Maybe not in the official series, though I'd love to see Al-
| far one finished by someone. But as far as tintin, there may
| not be official series, but there is a lot of new work based
| on it, from merch to the Spielberg movie, as bad as it was.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| In Europe, Tintin is under copyright until 2053 (death + 70
| years).
|
| And the rightsholders (Tintinimaginatio, previously Moulinsart)
| are very aggressive about it, even more so than Disney. They
| don't have the lobbying power of Disney, but they are going to
| do everything in their power to protect and possibly overstep
| their rights. It includes using trademark laws and publishing
| new Tintin adventures against the will of the original author
| as an attempt to renew their copyright.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| If he sold his rights then it's not really against his wishes
| anymore.
| swores wrote:
| He died. So pedantically you can say he doesn't have any
| wishes any more, but it's clear they meant that it's
| against what he wanted when alive.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Well he chose not to make those wishes known in his will
| apparently, or in any of the contracts which assigned his
| IP to others.
| andrepd wrote:
| Silly me, I thought there was ethics beyond The Profit
| Motive.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| The author owns the copyright unless they transfer it.
| His transference of those rights shows that he was
| motivated by profit.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| "It appears, from a 1942 document... that Herge gave
| publishing rights for the books of the adventures of Tintin
| to publisher Casterman so Moulinsart is not the one to
| decide who can use material from the books,"
|
| ( in Dutch )
|
| https://www.livreshebdo.fr/sites/default/files/assets/docum
| e...
| spencerflem wrote:
| Yes, or at least, we should prevent companies from cheapening
| our cultural legacy with endless tackyness, spin-offs,
| merchandice, advertisements, and other vulgar things.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| In Europe (and Japan), training LLMs and AI "art" generators on
| copyrighted work is explicitly permitted. So this is doubly
| confusing to me, since even if it wasn't public domain, it'd
| still be legal to train on it.
| Findecanor wrote:
| In legal terms, that is not entirely correct. In practice, it
| is however. For now.
|
| EU (which is not the whole of Europe) has regulation that
| allows a copyright owner to opt out of data mining for AI
| training. But the framework is incomplete: there does not
| exist a generally agree-upon method to actually opt out.
| There are a few protocols and file formats from a couple of
| organisation but none which has been given any official
| status. While a publisher may use one, a web scraper might
| support only another.
|
| Japan has traditionally been quite strict on copyright law. I
| would not be surprised if the law would get tightened to
| explicitly disallow AI training on copyrighted works.
| eboynyc32 wrote:
| I agree 100%.
| jaymzcampbell wrote:
| There's been weights on Civit.ai [1] for months, and I just
| assumed this was already done and a lost cause. When I asked
| ChatGPT/Dall-E for an image "... in the style of Herge" it
| didn't do a half bad job enough for me to see the inspiration
| either.
|
| [1] https://civitai.com/models/488165/herge-tintin-sdxl
| zol wrote:
| Ahh Tintin. This takes me right back to the pre-internet era
| perusing the Tintin section at my school's library. It was such a
| delight to occasionally come across one that I hadn't read yet.
| Somehow this happened surprisingly often, I guess a bunch of us
| borrowers kept the series under heavy rotation.
| tetris11 wrote:
| Same, always a surprise to see that "book" was even there along
| with Asterix comics.
| mamcx wrote:
| When both were unavailable, I had no other option to read the
| other books. I think I manage to devour almost all the (for
| kid) library back them.
| aa-jv wrote:
| In my school there was always a mad scramble every month to get
| first access to the latest addition to our school librarys'
| Tintin and Asterix sections; it resulted in many a schoolyard
| scrap, in fact. So much so, that our school librarian would
| often 'scramble' the day of the week that she'd release it into
| the collection .. some of us worked out that the release day of
| the week was simply incremented each month, however.
|
| I vividly remember my disappointment that some of the richer
| kids just got their own 'subscription' to the Tintin/Asterix
| comics at home, and therefore often spoiled the stories for
| those of us dependent on the school library.
|
| Was very non-Tintin like behaviour, I have to say .. which I
| eventually trumped by bringing to school a well-worn Lucky Luke
| collection that had been gifted to me, in order to share with
| the oik kids, exclusively ..
| james-bcn wrote:
| I think it's only the case that the first book has entered the
| public domain, not all the others, so technically you are
| breaking copyright if you use images from later books (as does
| this article).
|
| Also copyright is not the same as a trademark, and I expect
| "Tintin", and perhaps the visual image of Tintin, are
| trademarked.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That would be _Tintin in the Land of the Soviets_ [0], I
| believe.
|
| Herge's depiction of black people was pretty awful, sadly. I
| know that many folks don't like to admit that _Tintin in the
| Congo_ [1] exists.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintin_in_the_Land_of_the_Sovi...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintin_in_the_Congo
| lexicality wrote:
| He drew caricatures that would be easy for 1930s children to
| identify. There are very few depictions of non-white
| characters in the books that aren't in same way questionable.
|
| It's unfortunate, but a lot of literature of the time needs
| to be read with the general ambient racism that was sloshing
| around in mind.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| This is true. I have a couple of DVDs of old _Tom and
| Jerry_ cartoons.
|
| There's no way those cartoons would be released, today.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Come to think of it, Asterix wasn't really any better[0].
| There just weren't so many black people to show.
|
| [0] https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/asterix/images/b/ba/T
| he_ma...
| kergonath wrote:
| It's a caricature. Nobody has those big noses, either.
| Timwi wrote:
| The article is allowed to use moderate amounts of copyrighted
| material for illustration and commentary. In the US this is
| called "fair use".
| james-bcn wrote:
| As a huge Tintin fan I find one of the interesting things
| about it is how few Tintin images you can find on the web. I
| expect that is because they have lawyers contacting sites
| that put up copyrighted images.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| Yes, the copyright owners are known in the fan community
| for being really aggressive and hunting even harmless not-
| for-profit fan works. Which makes me sympathize even less
| with the two last paragraphs in the post (not that I would
| sympathize much anyway).
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I grew up on Tintin. I learned French, reading him (and Asterix).
|
| I have since, almost entirely forgotten the language :(
|
| My favorite Tintin fan art: https://bloody-
| disgusting.com/news/3270528/random-cool-tinti...
| ArnoVW wrote:
| I received 4 years of schoolboy-level French education in high-
| school. Totally sucked at it, and dropped it the moment I
| could.
|
| I moved to France in 2007, married a French girl in 2011. I
| obtained French nationality beginning last year. During my
| first years in France it was tough, but those 4 years did come
| back.
|
| A couple of years ago I also amortized 4 years of German when I
| had to translate our ontology into German.
|
| My conclusion : the ROI on learning a language is better than
| you think. And your investment _will_ come back to you.
|
| If you want to top up your French, try watching Netflix in
| French audio, or with French subtitles (or both!). Or even
| better, watch some of the French shows that they now offer :
| Call My Agent, Lupin, etc)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I tried watching _HPI_ [0], but she talks really quickly.
| Maybe I should try again.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPI_(TV_series)
| ArnoVW wrote:
| Yea, Spanish and French (well, Parisian) often suffer from
| that blight =)
|
| Perhaps try slowing down the video?
|
| Also, there is a French / German public broadcaster called
| Arte. They have amazing content (documentaries, concerts,
| etc). Generally things where the Words Per Minute rate is a
| lot lower.
|
| https://www.arte.tv/fr/
|
| One of my favorite shows is Karambolage. 20 minute items
| about French and German culture, spoken in perfect French
| at a leisurely speed.
|
| https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/RC-014034/karambolage/
| gramie wrote:
| My eldest brother hated learning French in school. _Hated_
| it. He even made a deal with the French teacher that he would
| pass Grade 12 French if he promised not to take it in Grade
| 13.
|
| Then, in his late 20s, he was travelling the world and ended
| up in the French island of La Reunion (kind of like Hawaii
| with French food and social programs).
|
| He married and has two children and is only now, after more
| than 30 years and acquiring French citizenship, is he talking
| about moving back to Canada.
| projektfu wrote:
| Try reading "French for Reading" by Karl C. Sandberg. It
| refreshed my French a lot, very quickly, and I was able to read
| young-adult-level fiction with a little help from a dictionary.
| Also, I can grok technical stuff pretty well. I get no practice
| at spoken French, unfortunately. We don't have a large
| population of speakers here.
| pigcat wrote:
| That fan art is incredible. I would love to read those!
| exhilaration wrote:
| Thanks to a Hacker News comment, my kids, ages 7-13. Have been
| watching an episode of Tintin from the internet archive every
| week, and they love it. Link:
| https://archive.org/details/tintinseries43
| rramadass wrote:
| Get them the comic books; they are well worth the money. The
| stories, the imagination, the artwork, the language, the
| settings across the world, the spirit of exploration all
| together fires one's mind. They are some of the best comics
| ever written.
|
| Here they are:
|
| 1)
| https://archive.org/details/01TintinInTheLandOfTheSoviets/01...
|
| 2) https://readtintin.blogspot.com/
|
| PS: Also Asterix comics - https://readasterix.blogspot.com/
| OskarS wrote:
| I would say: skip the early ones. Tintin in the Land of the
| Soviets and especially Tintin in the Congo are outrageously
| bad (Tintin in the Congo is horrendously racist). Tintin
| didn't really become the Tintin we know and love until Blue
| Lotus, though Cigars of the Pharaoh is still readable.
|
| Like, the parts of Tintin that capture the imagination, the
| world travel, the realistic depiction of different cultures,
| the great adventure stories, all of that starts with Blue
| Lotus.
|
| When people criticize Tintin for being racist, what they're
| really criticizing are those early stories. In the later
| stories, the ones that everyone falls in love with, Herge
| went to enormous trouble to depict cultures accurately,
| gathering huge amounts of references to depict everything
| accurately (you see that in this article, with the image from
| Blue Lotus). In these stories, almost without exception,
| Tintin is the champion of colonized and oppressed peoples,
| and the stories hold up extremely well.
| rramadass wrote:
| Right.
|
| Wikipedia as usual has the details - https://en.wikipedia.o
| rg/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Tintin#Contr...
|
| Note: The archive.org collection has some parodies and
| pastiches which are decidedly not meant for children - http
| s://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Tintin#Parod...
| silvester23 wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand the sequence with the rhino. Is
| he actually killing the rhino by drilling a hole in its
| back and lighting a stick of dynamite inside the hole? Or
| am I reading this wrong? That seems pretty out there.
| Vecr wrote:
| It would work. There are guides for obliterating (large)
| animals with explosives. An RPG would be safer if it's
| still moving.
| causi wrote:
| It's really not that far out, considering the backdrop of
| what actual Belgians were doing to actual Congolese at
| the time.
| trgn wrote:
| Tintein in america is such a fun rollercoaster though, the
| instance he climbs out of that skyscraper window to escape
| the gangsters is so exhilerating
| philistine wrote:
| Don't worry about reading them in order. Start kids with
| _Le sceptre d 'Ottokar_, the tightest early story without
| Capitaine Haddock.
| asimovfan wrote:
| also spirou, also theres a lot more franco belgian comics
|
| also books like the le petit nicolas series, little nicholas,
| by Sempe & Goscinny (who also did asterix) so funny and great
| for children!
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| Yoko Tsuno!
| cryptonector wrote:
| Oh man, is there a way to get them in the original French on
| PDF?
| rramadass wrote:
| https://readtintin.blogspot.com/p/french.html
| tetris11 wrote:
| Very few cartoon openings have left a mark on me, but Tintin's
| lush opening credits paired with Ray Parker's and Tom
| Szczesniak's musical score and theme, still sends shivers down my
| spine.
| Avicebron wrote:
| Thse were absolute gems at my local library when I was a kid
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| Nice post about Tintin, one of my top childhood influences. I
| have a new edition of all the albums (much better than mine)
| unopened and ready for when my kid grows enough. The TV show
| wasn't so good IMHO - of course the narrative was great because
| it came from the comics, but animation quality was just so-so, or
| at least that's how I remember it.
|
| If you liked Tintin and long for more comics of the same kind, I
| recommend you to try Blake and Mortimer. They're different (e.g.
| with a more serious and wordy style, hardly any comical gags, but
| also with more fantastic elements). But they are the closest I
| know, and in some aspects even better (I personally prefer them
| although I'm aware it's due to very subjective factors, most
| people would still rank Tintin higher overall and Blake and
| Mortimer don't have such a universal acclaim).
|
| The only thing I dislike about the post is the gratuitous rant on
| AI at the end. It is great news that Tintin joins the public
| domain. Especially great because it's one of these cases where
| the owners have been especially abusive, chasing fan efforts done
| as a labor of love, lest they harm their sales of overpriced
| merchandising.
|
| Why exactly should be worry about people generating AI images of
| Tintin? What is the harm done? We know what the original albums
| are, they will probably be preserved as long as there is human
| civilization (despite copyright, not thanks to it), and we can
| freely decide if we also want to read/watch/see derivative works
| (and which) or not. I just don't see the problem at all.
| svl7 wrote:
| What also comes to mind is Yoko Tsuno [1]. I'm not sure how
| well known this is in the US. The creator Roger Leloup was
| supporting Hegre on the technical drawings. For people who like
| the 'ligne claire' style, definitely check it out. The science
| fiction aspect of it might appeal to the audience on HN.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoko_Tsuno
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| Had never heard of it (in spite of being European, not from
| the US) and it looks like my cup of tea, so definitely will
| check it out.
| rcarmo wrote:
| I would second this. There is archeology, space travel, time
| travel... Loads of fun. I'm still trying to get a hold of all
| the titles.
|
| Oh, and evil AI! Right in the first album. Had totally
| forgotten about that.
| jaymzcampbell wrote:
| I was massively into Tintin as a kid in Ireland and when I
| met my Belgian wife she introduced me to this and I loved it.
| I was hoping I'd find it mentioned in here already!
| LilBytes wrote:
| Some guys I grew up with dubbed TinTin with Northern English.
| It's exceptionally crude, but never ceases to make me laugh.
|
| https://youtu.be/6iV5YrLYhCA
| pvo50555 wrote:
| You know those guys? My friend and I used to come to tears to
| these during the old DubToons days. It's the only reason I know
| what a Middlesborough accent is. We still quote them!
| glimshe wrote:
| Please correct me if I'm wrong... Tintin is in the public domain,
| so I can create a Tintin story where the character looks exactly
| like Tintin and I can call it Tintin.
|
| But most of Herge's Tintin stories remain _out_ of the public
| domain and still protected by copyright. Correct?
| OskarS wrote:
| I would imagine so. Herge died in 1983, and the last finished
| story (Tintin and the Picaros) was published in 1973. I can't
| imagine its out of copyright.
|
| The first story (Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, a real
| stinker, this is before Tintin became Tintin) was published in
| 1930, in Le Petit Vingtieme which was the children's edition of
| the newspaper Le Vingtieme Siecle. The newspaper presumably had
| copyright to the character, but it was shut down in 1940 by the
| Nazis. After that, Tintin was published in Le Soir (still
| exists), but I have no idea how the rights transferred. From
| 1950 onwards, it was published by Herge's own company.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| In Europe Copyright is the death of the author + 70 years, so
| until 2053. There is an exception to allow for copyright to
| lapse earlier if the copyright would run out in the original
| creator's country of origin first, to handle situations where
| American copyright for American authors will expire before
| European.
|
| But Tintin will run out in 2053 in Europe because Herge is
| European.
|
| In U.S however Tintin is public domain. You can use Tintin for
| things in U.S just don't try to go to Europe with it.
|
| on edit: this applies of course to Tintin in the land of the
| Soviets.
| atombender wrote:
| There is a very good documentary called "Tintin and I" (2003) [1]
| about Herge's life and art. It goes quite deep into Herge's
| personal life, influences, and psychology, including a dark
| period of his life that apparently ended up inspiring the story
| Tintin in Tibet (one of his best). It features some hand-animated
| Tintin panels that are very well done.
|
| Looks like the whole thing is on YouTube [2].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintin_and_I
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUTwf7w7ML4
| rramadass wrote:
| > the story Tintin in Tibet (one of his best)
|
| The Dalai Lama himself bestowed an award on the Herge
| Foundation for this -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Tintin#Award...
| Klaus23 wrote:
| I am no expert, but I like the aesthetics, especially the
| colours, much more than the superhero comics of the time.
| titchard wrote:
| Bizarre coincidence but on way back through town today on lunch
| break saw several volumes of Tintin in a charity shop window and
| took it as fate after reading this article.
| fractallyte wrote:
| I love this, but I feel sad that there's minimal presence of
| women or girls anywhere - it's almost entirely male.
|
| Are women not expected to explore, discover the world, enjoy
| adventures, solve mysteries?
|
| (I don't want to complain; it's just an observation.)
| prewett wrote:
| It started in the 1930s, so I think the answer is no, they
| weren't expected to do those things. I expect it would have
| been very difficult to get hired as a reporter (Tintin's
| profession) as a women in the 1930s. Even the detectives of
| Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers were men, despite the
| authors being women.
|
| But, you're in luck, there's Yoko Tsuno [1], also by a Belgian,
| I believe, but started 40 years later.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoko_Tsuno
| rramadass wrote:
| You might enjoy the Japanese TV series _Miss Sherlock_ which
| uses female leads for a Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock style
| adventure series - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Sherlock
| optimalsolver wrote:
| All episodes of the 90s Tintin animated series are on
| DailyMotion:
|
| https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x749uno
| simonw wrote:
| Destination Moon - the one where Tintin goes to the moon - is an
| absolutely remarkable piece of science fiction, considering it
| was published in 1950-1953, nearly twenty years prior to the
| actual moon landings.
|
| The rocket design in that one is SO iconic.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destination_Moon_(comics)
| nuc1e0n wrote:
| I've been thinking about Tintin as well recently after seeing
| Elon's rockets. The concept of a young investigative journalist
| travelling the globe while solving mysteries and seeing wonders
| both natural and cultural certainly does have an enduring appeal.
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