| The Broken Ear (L'Oreille cassée) | |
|---|---|
 Cover of the English edition | |
| Date |
|
| Series | The Adventures of Tintin |
| Publisher | Casterman |
| Creative team | |
| Creator | Hergé |
| Original publication | |
| Published in | Le Petit Vingtième |
| Date of publication | 5 December 1935 – 25 February 1937 |
| Language | French |
| Translation | |
| Publisher | Methuen |
| Date | 1975 |
| Translator |
|
| Chronology | |
| Preceded by | The Blue Lotus (1936) |
| Followed by | The Black Island (1938) |
The Broken Ear (French:L'Oreille cassée, originally published in English asTintin and the Broken Ear) is the sixth volume ofThe Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by the Belgian cartoonistHergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaperLe Vingtième Siècle for its children's supplementLe Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from December 1935 to February 1937. The story tells of young Belgian reporterTintin and his dogSnowy, as he searches for a stolen South Americanfetish, identifiable by its broken right ear, and deals with other thieves who are after it. In doing so, he ends up in the fictional nation of San Theodoros, where he becomes embroiled in a war and discovers theArumbaya tribe deep in the forest.
The Broken Ear was a commercial success and was published in book form shortly after its conclusion. Hergé continuedThe Adventures of Tintin withThe Black Island, while the series itself became a defining part of theFranco-Belgian comics tradition. In 1943,The Broken Ear was coloured and reformatted for republication byCasterman. Commentators have praised the book for showcasing Hergé's newly found commitment to a clear narrative structure and striving for historical and technical accuracy.The Broken Ear introduces the recurring characterGeneral Alcazar, and was the first to include fictional countries. The story was adapted for both the 1956Belvision animation,Hergé's Adventures of Tintin, and for the 1991Ellipse/Nelvana animated seriesThe Adventures of Tintin.
Afetish created by theArumbaya tribe ofSouth America is stolen from Brussels' Museum ofEthnography, only to be returned the following day. Tintin realizes that the replacement is a fake, and draws a connection with a local sculptor, Jacob Balthazar, who has just been murdered. Balthazar's parrot – the only witness to the murder – is obtained by two Hispanic men, Alonso and Ramón, who try to kill Tintin when he begins to investigate their connection to the crime.[1] From the parrot, Alonso and Ramón discover Balthazar's murderer is Rodrigo Tortilla, and they proceed to follow him aboard a ship bound for South America. There, they murder Tortilla, but find that he did not have the original fetish. Tintin, however, follows them, and arranges their arrest when the ship docks at Los Dopicos, capital of San Theodoros.[2] Nevertheless, the corrupt colonel in charge of the arrest allows the antagonists to slip away, and detains Tintin.
In the city, Tintin is framed as a terrorist, arrested, and sentenced to death by firing squad. Tintin survives when a revolution topples the government, and the new leader, General Alcazar, appoints Tintin to be his aide-de-camp. Alonso and Ramón capture Tintin, and interrogate him in the hope of locating the missing fetish, but they only end up briefly put behind bars by him.[3] As aide-de-camp, Tintin opposes the proposed decision of San Theodoros claiming the supposedly oil rich Gran Chapo, as this would cause a war between San Theodoros and neighboring Nuevo Rico, and he is framed as a traitor by warmongering oil and weapon companies. Nevertheless, Tintin's new friendPablo frees him from imprisonment, allowing for Tintin to flee to Nuevo Rico.[4] However, in the process, he inadvertently causes events that have Nuevo Rico start a war between it and San Theodoros.
Once within Nuevo Rico, Tintin decides to enter the forest and find the Arumbaya tribe, hoping they can explain to him why people wish to steal the fetish. Finding a British explorer, Ridgewell, living among the Arumbaya, Tintin learns that a diamond was hidden inside the statue.[5] At the check-in counter, Tintin and Snowy were due to leave South America for Europe but missed the ferry crossing as they had to wait for another week. As the war between San Theodoros and Nuevo Rico ends when Gran Chapo is discovered to have no oil, Tintin returns to Belgium after a brief encounter with Alonso and Ramón. There, Tintin discovers Balthazar's brother has been producing a range of exact replicas of the fetish, which he had discovered among his deceased brother's belongings. Tintin learns it was purchased from him by Samuel Goldbarr, a wealthy American now returning to theUnited States with it by ship. Catching up to the boat, Tintin finds Alonso and Ramón aboard. His struggle with them for the possession of the fetish results in it smashing on the floor, and the diamond hidden in it rolling overboard into the sea. Alonso and Ramón try to kill Tintin for making them lose it, and the three of them accidentally fall overboard as well. Tintin is rescued, but Alonso and Ramón drown. Goldbarr allows Tintin to return the stolen fetish to the museum, where it is repaired and put back on display, albeit comically damaged.[6]
Georges Remi—best known under the pen nameHergé—was employed as editor and illustrator ofLe Petit Vingtième ("The Little Twentieth"),[7] a children's supplement toLe Vingtième Siècle ("The Twentieth Century"), a staunchly Roman Catholic,conservative Belgian newspaper based in Hergé's native Brussels which was run by theAbbéNorbert Wallez. In 1929, Hergé beganThe Adventures of Tintin comic strip forLe Petit Vingtième, revolving around the exploits of fictional Belgian reporterTintin. Wallez ordered Hergé to set his first adventure in theSoviet Union asanti-socialist propaganda for children (Tintin in the Land of the Soviets),[8] to set his second adventure in theBelgian Congo to encourage colonial sentiment (Tintin in the Congo),[9] and to set his third adventure in the United States to use the story as a denunciation of American capitalism (Tintin in America).[10] Wallez was subsequently removed from the paper's editorship following a scandal, although Hergé was convinced to stay on the condition of a salary increase.[11] In preparingThe Broken Ear, Hergé developed the new habit of keeping plot notes and ideas in a notebook.[12] He also began making cuttings of photographs and other images from magazines and newspapers, filing them away for future use; he used them as a basis for many of the drawings inThe Broken Ear.[13]
Hergé usedThe Broken Ear to allude to real events that had recently taken place in South America. The fictional countries of San Theodoros and Nuevo Rico were based on the real countries Bolivia and Paraguay, while the Gran Chapo War depicted in the strip was an allusion to theChaco War (1932–35) that was waged between Bolivian and Paraguayan forces over lucrative oil fields in the Gran Chaco region.[14] The name "Gran Chapo" was a pun on the Frenchgrand chapeau, meaning "big hat", while the name Nuevo Rico was a pun onnouveau riche and the name of the Nuevo Rican capital city, Sanfación, was a pun onsans façon, meaning "without manners".[15] Hergé's characterBasil Bazarov, of the Vicking Arms Company Ltd (Basil Mazaroff in the 1937 edition), was a thinly veiled allusion to the real-life Greek weapons sellerBasil Zaharoff ofVickers Armstrong, who profited from the conflict by supplying arms to both Paraguay and Bolivia.[16] Hergé had learned about the conflict and the western corporations profiting from it through two issues of anti-conformist French magazineLe Crapouillot (The Mortar Shell), which covered news stories ignored by the mainstream media.[17] It is also likely that he had read Richard Lewinsohn's 1930 bookZaharoff, l'Européen mystérieux (Zaharoff, the Mysterious European), which had been referenced inLe Crapouillot.[15]
Hergé's Arumbaya fetish was based on the design of a genuine Peruvian statue in Brussels'Royal Museums of Art and History; a pre-ColumbianChimu statue, it was made of wood and dated to between 1200 and 1438 CE.[18] Whereas Hergé had access to speakers of Mandarin when creatingThe Blue Lotus, he had no access to speakers of indigenous Amerindian languages, and as such, the Arumbaya language that he developed was entirely fictitious.[19] He based its structure largely on theBrusseleir dialect spoken in theMarolles area of Brussels, mixed with Spanish endings and constructions.[13] In developing the Arumbaya's rivals, the Bibaros, he was influenced by anthropological accounts ofhead shrinking among theJibaros tribes; when Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner translated the book into English, they renamed the Bibaros as the Rumbabas, a pun on therum baba pudding.[13] The explorer Ridgewell, found living among the Arumbayas is based upon the British explorer ColonelPercy Harrison Fawcett, who mysteriously disappeared into the Amazon jungle in 1925.In crafting the story, Hergé was possibly influenced byThe Maltese Falcon, as there are similarities in their plots.[20]
The Broken Ear was first serialised inLe Petit Vingtième from December 1935 under the titleLes Nouvelles Aventures de Tintin et Milou (The New Adventures of Tintin and Snowy).[21] From 7 February 1937, the story was also serialised in the French Catholic newspaper,Cœurs Vaillants under the nameTintin et Milou chez les Arumbayas (Tintin and Snowy among the Arumbayas).[21] In 1937, it was collected in a single hardcover volume and published by Éditions Casterman under the titleL'Oreille cassée (The Broken Ear).[21] For this collected edition, one small change was made; the minor character of Carajo was renamed Caraco, because the wordcarajo is Spanish slang forpenis,[22] due to the fact Hergé had been unaware of its actual definition during the publication.
The Broken Ear introduced the character General Alcazar to the series, who went on to become a recurring character who appeared in three furtherAdventures.[23] As noted by Hergé biographerHarry Thompson,The Broken Ear is the first story in theTintin series to "start and finish in home surroundings"[24] and the first to deal with the pursuit of aMacGuffin.[24] It also marks the last story in which Tintin is seen taking part in journalistic activity[25] and the first time that theAdventures featured Tintin's flat at 26 Labrador Road, in which Chinese mementos fromThe Blue Lotus are visible.[26] Influenced byAlfred Hitchcock andhis frequent cameo appearances in his own films, Hergé inserted an illustration of himself into the second frame.[17] He also made reference to contemporary news stories in the book, having a radio announcer discuss the ongoingSecond Italo-Ethiopian War at the start of the story; this was removed in the colour edition.[25] At the end of the story, Hergé killed off Ramón and Alonso and depicted them being dragged to Hell by devils; this would mark the last depiction of the death(s) of a villain in the series untilColonel Boris Jorgen's death inExplorers on the Moon.[24] This upset the editors ofCœurs Vaillants, who asked Hergé to change the scene; annoyed at their request, he later commented: "On the surface it cost me nothing, but that kind of addition was really difficult for me".[27] For their serialisation of the story, he replaced that particular frame with one in which Tintin vouchsafed the souls of Ramón and Alonso forGod.[28]
In the 1940s and 1950s, when Hergé's popularity had increased, he and his team atStudios Hergé redrew and coloured many of the original black-and-white Tintin adventures using theligne claire ("clear line")[a] drawing style he had developed so that they visually fitted in with the new Tintin stories being created.The Broken Ear was the first of these earlyAdventures to undergo the reformatting and colouration,[30] and this second edition was published as a 62-page volume by Casterman in 1943.[21] Unlike some of the earlier adventures,The Broken Ear was not redrawn, save for a few minor revisions.[30] To reduce the length of the book, various sections were excised, including a dream sequence that appeared in the original.[31] As the colouration process was new to the series, the use of colour inThe Broken Ear is more basic than in later volumes; as the book progresses, it is evident that Hergé lost interest and rushed the task, for instance, resorting to using block colour backgrounds without any detail.[32]
Casterman republished the original black-and-white version in 1979 in a French-language collected volume withCigars of the Pharaoh andThe Blue Lotus, the second part of theArchives Hergé collection.[21] In 1986, Casterman published a facsimile version of the original.[21]
Hergé returned to creating fictional nations as allusions to real countries in subsequentAdventures, such as Syldavia and Borduria (based largely on Yugoslavia and Nazi Germany) inKing Ottokar's Sceptre and Sondonesia (based on Indonesia) inFlight 714 to Sydney.[33] He also re-used other elements pioneered inThe Broken Ear in his laterAdventures: a parrot inThe Castafiore Emerald, a ravine crash inThe Calculus Affair, a fireball and vivid dream inThe Seven Crystal Balls, and a firing squad inTintin and the Picaros.[34] Tintin returned to San Theodores inTintin and the Picaros, in which the characters Pablo and Ridgewell also made a reappearance.[35]
In 1979, thePalace of Fine Arts in Brussels held an exhibition marking fifty years ofThe Adventures of Tintin. As part of this, they included artefacts that featured in the series, with the broken-eared Peruvian statue that inspired Hergé's Arumbaya fetish as the centre piece of the show; however, they feared that it might be stolen, so a replica was exhibited rather than the genuine article. Imitating the events ofThe Broken Ear, a thief broke in and stole the statue. A letter was then sent toLe Soir in which an individual alleging to be the thief stated that the item would be returned if Hergé returned to the scene of the crime at a certain time with a copy of the book under his right arm. Hergé did so, but carried the book under his left arm; the thief never appeared, and the replica fetish was never recovered.[36]
Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier describedThe Broken Ear as "aBlue Lotus-lite", noting that it shared many elements with the previousAdventure, although they also considered it to be "more reminiscent of the earlier, more caricatured books" likeTintin in the Congo andTintin in America with the inclusion of comical natives and absurdist elements like "comical bombs".[31] They nevertheless thought that it exhibited a "marked improvement" in Hergé's use of plotting, noting that the story was clearly structured, praising the "very effective, dramatic story, with plenty of twists".[31] Overall, they awardedThe Broken Ear two stars out of five.[31]Harry Thompson felt thatThe Broken Ear had a "slightly lacklustre quality" to it,[19] and was "disappointing" due to the fact that the "various elements don't gel well together".[37] He believed that the artistic quality and the use of research deteriorated as theAdventure progressed,[19] although it had "the most complex plot yet, by a long way".[37] Philippe Goddin asserted that in the story, Tintin develops from a "classic reporter to an investigative journalist."[38]
Michael Farr describedThe Broken Ear as a "moral condemnation of capitalism, imperialism and war", although felt that it was "not as perfectly constructed" asThe Blue Lotus, being "less detailed and realistic".[39] He thought that the image in which Ramón and Alonso drown in the sea and are dragged to Hell by demons was "truly medieval" and represented the "most fanciful image" in the entire series.[40] He also opined that Hergé's depiction of South American militaries was "full of humour" and that the detail was "generally very accurate".[15]BiographerBenoît Peeters thought thatThe Broken Ear was a return to "pure adventure" from the "quasi-documentary realism" ofThe Blue Lotus,[41] and that in thisAdventure, politics remains "in the second line", and that instead Hergé let "the narrative rip and succeeds marvellously".[42] Elsewhere, he praised the work as having a "formidable dynamism" and an "unequaled vitality", containing a "revolution" in narrative structure.[43] He thought that it served as a "perfect metaphor" for the theories of German philosopherWalter Benjamin published inThe Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936), which Hergé had not read.[44]Literary criticTom McCarthy thought that Balthazar was an example of the interesting minor characters that imbue theAdventures, commenting that his "down-at-heel garret speaks volumes of loneliness and semi-realised artistry".[45] He also opined that the diamond within the fetish was theclitoris of the Arumbaya, describing it as "their pleasure, wrapped up in a fetish".[46] He also thought that there was a homosexual subtext between Ramón and Alonso, believing that the scene in which a bullet was fired into Ramón's buttocks was symbolic ofanal sex.[47]
Writing inLibération, the philosopherMichel Serres opined thatThe Broken Ear was "a treatise on fetishism".[48]Literary criticJean-Marie Apostolidès ofStanford University believed thatThe Broken Ear established a "tintinian" anthropology that would remain throughout the rest of the series. As part of this, Apostolidès argued, Hergé distances himself from western values and looks at his own society as an outsider, accomplishing whatRoger Caillois called "sociological revolution".[48] He felt that the comic was "more contrived" and "more superficial" than the previousAdventures, and that here Tintin loses his position as "the sole point of identification" for the reader, with the other characters becoming more identifiable.[48] Opining that there was a constant theme of twos throughout the story (i.e. the real and the fake fetish, Alonso and Ramón), he thought that the character of Ridgewell was "a kind of Tintin, grown old among the natives, solitary and ill humored", noting that Ridgewell's position among the Arumbayas was akin to Tintin's position among the Ba Baorom inCongo.[49] Apostolidès also argued that in the comic, Alcazar was a religious figure, who attained a "sacred" quality through the spilling of blood in his revolt against General Tapioca's government. As part of this, he argued that the threats of assassination would make him a martyr, or a "holy king".[50]
The Broken Ear is one ofThe Adventures of Tintin that were adapted for the first series of the animatedHergé's Adventures of Tintin by the Belgian studioBelvision in 1957, directed by Ray Goossens and written byMichel Greg.The Broken Ear was divided up into six 5-minute black-and-white episodes that diverted from Hergé's original plot in a variety of ways.[51]
It was also adapted into a 1991 episode ofThe Adventures of Tintin television series by French studioEllipse and Canadian animation companyNelvana.[52] Directed by Stéphane Bernasconi, Thierry Wermuth voiced the character of Tintin.[52] The episode deviates significantly from the original story line. The passage containing Tintin's drunkenness has been ignored entirely, keeping the character consistent with how it is seen in the rest of series - upright, conscientious and of commendable moral standards. Besides, the political narratives, almost ubiquitously present in the latter part of the original album, have also been largely overlooked. Tintin's conflict with the military was also replaced with one with Alonso Pérez and Ramón Bada. Pérez and Bada do not die at the end of the story, as occurs in the album, but are rescued by Tintin as he is retrieved from the sea by the ship's crew, and taken to prison.
Tintin criticTom McCarthy stated in an interview that the plot of his novelMen in Space was "more or less lifted straight" fromThe Broken Ear.[53] LikeThe Broken Ear,Men in Space concerns an artist hired to reproduce a priceless artwork; however he ultimately produces more than one copy, fooling the conspirators.
