The political implications of the Adventures of Tintin

In my (recently concluded) last semester of college, I had taken a rather interesting elective course, called Modern Political Concepts. The course was taken by an equally interesting professor, whose name was Hari Nair.

The course not only came as a breath of fresh air amid a lot of other technical courses which one does for engineering, but it also provided us with a unique perspective towards human society and governments. The most interesting part of the course however, was a certain evaluation component, wherein, we had to work on a term paper, write it out (~ 5000 words) and then defend it in an informal classroom discussion. The subject of the paper could be anything under the sky as long as it had a whiff of politics in it.

Given my affection for HergĂ©'s The Adventures of Tintin, I decided to work on the following topic - "The political implications of The Adventures of Tintin" and the turned out to be the single most satisfactory thing I'd done in that semester by a hefty margin.

You can read the PDF of the paper on my Google Drive here.

Comments

ab_aditya said…
The Black Island had some interesting depiction of the British - Scots in particular, and the Prisoners of the Sun had its share of Inca depictions.

As for India, Herge mostly depicted it as the land of fakirs and kings going by Cigars of the Pharaoh and the Blue Lotus. By the time we reach Tintin in Tibet, the Indian sub-continent seems to be a lot different. Of course, India plays a much bigger role in this non-Tintin Herge adventure - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Valley_of_the_Cobras#The_Valley_of_the_Cobras (have you read it?)
wrahool said…
Thanks for the comment! And yes, I've read the Jo, Zette and Jocko books, though I do not remember them all that well. :)