Masters of the Ninth Art: Bandes Dessinées and Franco-Belgian Identity (review)

Matthew Screech offers an account of the work of some key figures of bande dessinée, beginning with Hergé and Franquin, representing the classic pre- and postwar period of Franco-Belgian production. There follows a chapter on Astérix, whose spectacular commercial success was partly responsible for the re-emergence of an adult readership in the 1960s. The book goes on to cover the narrative experimentation and interrogation of realist norms to be found in the work of Girard/Moebius and Tardi in the 1970s, the extension of the medium by artists such as Gotlib into often transgressive parodic and satirical material, and the subsequent retreat into conservatism of the early 1980s, as Moebius confines his mystical speculations within more conventional sci-fi narratives, and publishers identify a demand for historical adventure, albeit with sexually active and morally ambivalent heroes. The book concludes with a brief summary of developments since 1980. Screech's treatment of Hergé avoids the well-trodden path of detailing evidence of racist and imperialist assumptions in the early work, pointing out that such a world view was unremarkable in the right-wing Catholic circles in which the artist had grown up, and emphasizing instead Tintin's track record of taking up the cause of the oppressed, often against their colonial masters. Screech prefers to concentrate on analysing Hergé's achievement in bringing an almost documentary realism to the medium, and in transforming a basic Proppian folk-myth structure into a set of highly effective narrative techniques. If Hergé's plucky boy scout is far removed from his invincible American super-hero contemporaries, this is equally true, Screech suggests, of the characters invented by his fellow Belgian artist Franquin. The adventures of Spirou and, from 1957, the indolent Gaston Lagaffe, offer a fascinating chronicle (and occasionally an acerbic critique) of the postwar fascination with modernity and technology, and they do so, as the term 'style Atome', used to designate Franquin's exuberant graphic line would indicate, in a setting that is identifiably Belgian or northern French. Screech argues not only that the work of his chosen artists draws on the reader's familiarity with a common Franco-Belgian cultural reference system, but that their fictional creations subsequently become a part of that system and produce their own mythology. This point is elaborated convincingly over his discussions of Goscinny and Uderzo's reliance in Astérix on the narrative of French history transmitted by school textbooks, Gotlib's wider sources in French popular culture, Bretécher's ear for Parisian intellectual fashion, Tardi's inclusion of elements from romans-feuilletons and Franc's ironical allusions to iconic literary figures including Proust.

The focus on individual artists, supplemented in some cases by valuable interview material, rather than more superficial comprehensive coverage, is a strength of the book, which resists the encyclopaedic listing of names and dates. The book is further strengthened by a strategy of systematic explanation of terms, from Modernism to nouveau roman, which should encourage undergraduate readers to stay with Screech as he moves onto some challenging ground such as psychoanalytic accounts of Tintin or debates around nouveau réalisme.