Line #59 Recap/TintinTheBrokenEar


1	[[quoteright:254:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rsz_11tintinbrokenear_9013.jpg]]
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3	''The Broken Ear'' begins with a bizarre robbery. A fetish created by the South American Arumbaya tribe is stolen from the Museum of Ethnography, only to be returned the following day - apparently stolen only as a prank. Tintin realises the 'returned' fetish is a fake and quickly discovers that a local {{sculptor\|s}} who specialised in making primitive art has died under odd circumstances. Rightly believing the theft and the sculptor's death to be linked, Tintin begins his investigation.
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5	Having had a run-in with the crooks Ramon and Alonso (also on the elusive trail of the real fetish) Tintin takes ship for the troubled South American republic of San Theodoros, where he ends up caught up in a revolution and the intrigues that follow. Ending up close to the Arumbayas' territory, he decides to visit them in the hope of finding out ''why'' the fetish was worth stealing. Unfortunately Ramon and Alonso are still after the fetish and are fully willing to kill to lay their hands on it.
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7	''The Broken Ear'' introduced General Alcazar, later an important recurring character and ally of Tintin. With San Theodoros (and its neighbour Nuevo-Rico) Hergé also created the first of his fictional countries and languages - in the original French edition the Arumbayas speak a language based on Marollien (a Flemish dialect spoken in the regio of Brussels) and in the English translation they are speaking phonetic Cockney English!
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9	----
10	!!Tropes
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12	* AbsentMindedProfessor: A prototype of Professor Calculus appears, so absent-minded that he carries his walking stick against the rain instead of an umbrella. When the parrot talks to him he apologizes and says: ''I'm sorry, I thought you were a parrot''. He is also unable to see the parrot clearly because he doesn't have his glasses, they're in his coat pocket, but when his housekeeper reminded him to wear his coat, he mistakenly took her coat instead.
13	* AdaptationalDistillation: The 1990s animated series simplifies the circumstances as to how Tortilla came to know about the fetish and the gem from Lopez, something that was never explained in the book, by combining both characters into a single person. The show also simplifies Lopez's connection to Ramon and Alonzo by having them be former cellmates who Lopez let slip of the fetish's existence, as opposed to the duo stumbling upon Lopez's letter that Tortilla had dropped by coincidence.
14	* AdaptedOut: Pablo and Trickler do not appear in the AnimatedAdaptation. Neither is Rodrigo Tortilla, who is instead combined with Lopez.
15	* AlcoholHic: The Colonel after some heavy drinking with Tintin.
16	* ApologeticAttacker: The Colonel is terribly sorry to have to shoot Tintin.
17	* ArchEnemy: The Arumbayas are friendly and civilized folks, but they have a long-running feud with the Rumbabas, another native tribe who are savage killers.
18	* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Hergé drew the bananas on a banana tree upside-down.
19	* AsLongAsItSoundsForeign: In the english version of the book, the dialog amongst the Indian tribesmen initially appears to be nonsensical foreign words. But if you read it all out loud, they are actually speaking what sounds a lot like cockney english! Not only that, but their dialog is pretty much true to the subsequent translations that Tintin receives from Ridgewell.
20	->'''Ridgewell:''' Naluk. Djarem membah dabrah nai dul? Tintin zluk infu rit'h. Kanyah elpim?
21	----> ''(Now look, Do you remember the brown idol? Tintin's lookin' for it. Can you help him?)''
22	->'''Tribal Chief:''' Dabrah nai dul? Oi, oi! Slaika toljah. Datrai b'giv dabrah nai dul ta'Walker. Ewuz anaisgi. Buttiz'h felaz tukahr presh usdjuel. Enefda Arumbayas ket chimdai lavis gutsfa gahtah'z. Nomess in'h!
23	----> ''(The brown idol? Aye, aye! [It's] like I told you. The tribe give the brown idol to Walker. He was a nice guy. But his fellas took our precious jewel. And if the Arumbayas catch him, I'll have his guts for garters. No messing!)''
24	* AssassinOutclassin: One RunningGag is the recurrent assassination attempts of General Alcazar by Colonel-demoted-to-Corporal Diaz. The attempts all fail miserably, Diaz usually being HoistByHisOwnPetard.
25	* BananaRepublic: San Theodoros and Nuevo-Rico. (When Alcazar makes the drunk Tintin a colonel, Diaz points out that they have far more colonels than they have corporals! [[DisproportionateRetribution This gets him demoted to corporal.]])
26	* BeatStillMyHeart: One of the Arumbayas attempts to cut out Snowy's heart to give it, still beating, to his brother.
27	* {{Blackface}}: Tintin disguises himself as a black cabin boy in ''Broken Ear''.
28	* BlowGun: The Arumbayas use blow guns with poison arrows.
29	* CatchAndReturn: Tintin throws the bomb right back at the assassin.
30	%%* ChewToy: Corporal Diaz.
31	* CompositeCharacter: In the animated adaptation, Tortilla and Lopez are combined into a single person, which addresses an unresolved plot point in the comic.
32	* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Trickler, of the American Oil Company, is perfectly willing to cause a war between the San Theodoros and the Nuevo-Rico over the Gran Chapo desert, just to get to exploit the oil that is hypothetically here, even trying to bribe Tintin to convince Alcazar to start the war and to try to have him assassinated and later have him imprisonned because Tintin refused. Also Basil Bazarov, the arms dealer, who sells the same cannons to both countries and helps Trickler frame Tintin by giving him a false document accusing Tintin of having sold his cannon's blueprints to Nuevo-Rico, so the war can happen.
33	* CreatorProvincialism: The Amazonian Indians speak a heavily distorted, but still recognizable version of the Marol dialect, spoken by Flemish people in Brussels. Hergé's mother was Flemish and he remembered her speaking it when he was little.
34	* DarkerAndEdgier: Even ignoring the revolution and the war, ''The Broken Ear'' has the highest onscreen bodycount in the series: the sculptor Balthazar (killed by Tortilla), Tortilla (drowned by Alonzo and Ramon), Corporal Diaz (killed by his own bomb) and Alonzo and Ramon (drowned - and '''shown in Hell''' afterward). Additionally, while the story probably has more gags than [[Recap/TintinTheBlueLotus the previous adventure]] the comedy tends towards the [[BlackComedy dark]].
35	%%* DefeatMeansFriendship:
36	* DeusExMachina: Perhaps ''literally'' this time: Just when Alonzo is about to shoot a tied up Tintin, the house they're in is struck by lightning, and it sends Tintin flying out of the house!
37	* DraggedOffToHell: Alonzo and Ramon after being drowned are seen being dragged off by demons, presumably to hell. One of the few surreal events in the series. It may count as an EarlyInstallmentWeirdness.
38	* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: This is the last book in the series where Tintin spends the whole storyline working by himself, with no assistance from any of the other recurring characters (unless you count Ridgewell). While Thomson and Thompson put in a brief appearance early on, it only lasts for two pages and could have been filled by any generic police officer(s).
39	* EurekaMoment: Tintin when dropping the journal in the street and reading the contents upside down.
40	* EveryCarIsAPinto: Tintin's (empty) car when falling off the cliff.
41	* ExtraExtraReadAllAboutIt: A paper boy promotes the news about war being declared.
42	* FascistButInefficient: The two dictators, General Alcazar and General Tapioca, are both so ineffective they constantly overthrow each other in the blink of an eye.
43	%%* FictionalCountry: San Theodoros and Nuevo Rico.
44	* FullBodyDisguise: Tintin successfully disguises himself as a black waiter.
45	%%* TheGeneralissimo: General Alcazar and Tapioca.
46	* GeorgeLucasAlteredVersion: As with most Tintin albums from the 1930s this one too was redrawn and colored in. Most of the story remained intact, save for a scene where Tintin has a NightmareSequence in which an Amazonian Indian blows a poison dart at him while sleeping. The scene was perhaps too reminscent to a similar nightmare sequence in ''The Seven Crystal Balls''.
47	%%* TheGhost: General Tapioca, Tortilla, and Lopez.
48	%%* GoingNative: Why Ridgewell stayed in the jungle.
49	* GoodHairEvilHair: Both Colonel/Corporal Diaz and Alonso have BaldOfEvil and Alonso has a BeardOfEvil too. On the good side the English explorer Ridgewell has a long white, bushy beard.
50	* GoodSmokingEvilSmoking: The crook Ramon is a chain smoker of cigarettes.
51	%% * HeelFaceTurn: Pablo
52	* HaveAGayOldTime: The Macguffin is referred to as a "fetish". A work written in contemporary time would now have it as "idol" or something along those lines rather than referring to it as a "fetish". Especially in a comic book typically given to children. While "gay" is often understood to have also meant "happy" at some point, "fetish" is mostly understood as a sexual reference.
53	%%* HoistByHisOwnPetard: see AssassinOutclassin above.
54	%%* IneffectualSympatheticVillain: Corporal Diaz.
55	* InevitableWaterfall: Tintin encounters one when he has to jump into the river.
56	* IronicEchoCut: Once war is declared, the American oil man exults that they've beaten their British rival. The next panel has the British oil company representative happy that they can now get their hands on the San Theodoros oilfields, thus beating the Americans.
57	* KarmaHoudini: The odious oil man Trickler and arms manufacturer Bazarov who between them cook up a war.
58	* KarmicDeath: Ramon and Alonzo murder Tortilla by throwing him off the ship they were on. At the end of the book, they end up drowning after falling of another ship, by each other's own unwitting hands no less.
59	* KudzuPlot: The trail of the fetish and who did what is rather tricky to follow. One critical point isn't explained ''at all'', something Tintin directly lampshades.
60	* LastMinuteReprieve: Hilariously played with - Tintin is framed as a revolutionary and sentenced to death by firing squad, only to be saved when an officer [[JustInTime rushes in with news that General Tapioca has been overthrown and Tintin can thus go free]]. As he is being untied ''another officer'' rushes in with news that Tapioca has defeated the revolution so Tintin will have to face the firing squad after all. Fortunately their rifles have been sabotaged, leading Tintin and the commander of the firing squad to share a friendly drink while they wait for the rifles to be fixed. By the time the rifles have finally been fixed the two men have had quite a few more drinks and are bombed out of their skulls, and the revolutionaries really ''have'' won.
61	%%* LivingMacGuffin: Balthazar's parrot.
62	* LookBehindYou: Tintin tricks Alonzo and Ramon this way when they apprehend him up in the jungle.
63	* MeaninglessVillainVictory: [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Trickler]] successfully manages to manipulate Alcazar into starting a war in order to seize control of the Gran Chapo fields and gain a monopoly over his rival company. However, not only does he fail to gain a monopoly on the fields (a treaty was signed dividing the fields equally between San Theodoros and the other side, who his rivals are backing) but it's later established that [[AllForNothing there was never any oil in the fields to begin with]], making his portion utterly useless to him.
64	* MistakenForBadass: Tintin is about to be shot by firing squad when it turns out the weapons have been sabotaged. While they are being fixed the officer offers to have a drink with him. They both get drunk as a result and when Tintin is brought back to the firing squad, the officer didn't even bother to tie him up. While Tintin is trying to remain on his feet, he starts to sing ''Viva Alcazar'', just when a counter revolution by Alcazar troops invades. He is immediately declared a courageous hero for singing his loyalty to Alcazar while standing in front of a firing squad. At this point, he doesn't even know who Alcazar is!
65	* MistakenForFakeHair: Ramon and Alonso try pulling the beard of an old man they assume to be Tintin just to find out quickly that the beard is real.
66	* NationalStereotypes: San Theodoros, though not a real South American country, is shown as a place where revolutions and counter revolutions occur in rapid fashion. The Amazonian Indians are naïve childish people who use blow guns and shrunken head techniques. Mr. Goldbarr is a cigar smoking American billionaire.
67	* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Tintin creates the PretextForWar when he flees San Theodoros in a military vehicle, which is fired on by border guards of the country the conspirators want to invade.
68	* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Basil Bazarov, the arms dealer, is an allusion on real-life arms dealer Basil Zaharoff.
69	* NotSoDire: Tintin and General Alcazar appear to be planning strategy, but they're actually playing chess.
70	* PiranhaProblem: When Tintin and Snowy fall into the river.
71	* PosthumousCharacter: Lopez and Captain Walker die long before the story takes place.
72	* PragmaticAdaptation: The animated version removes the character of Rodrigo Tortilla from the story and has Lopez be not only the one to steal the fetish from the Arumbayas, but also to tell Ramon and Alonzo about it. This makes the story a little easier to follow. The subplots involving Colonel Diaz, the war between San Theodoros and Nuevo Rico and the Rumbabas are also dropped.
73	* PunnyName: 'Korrupt Arms'. The ''Gran Chapo War'' is a pun on [[UsefulNotes/TheChacoWar the Gran Chaco War]] (1932-1935) between UsefulNotes/{{Bolivia}} and UsefulNotes/{{Paraguay}} over the oil fields in the Gran Chaco region and the French word ''grand chapeau'' (''big hat''). The name Nuevo Rico is a pun on ''nouveau riche'' and its capital ''Sanfacion'' on ''sans façon'' (''without manners'').
74	* ReplacedWithReplica: Tintin waits for an officier near a dock when he sees someone walking away with his suitcase, he starts for it but then sees that his suitcase is still right there. It turns out that the man he saw did swap Tintin's real suitcase for a fake full of bombs, and then tipped off the police.
75	* RippedFromTheHeadlines: The war between San Theodoros and Nuevo-Rico was based on the then very recent [[UsefulNotes/TheChacoWar Gran Chaco War]], which was indeed engineered by oil and arms companies on the promise of oil that turned out to be nonexistent.
76	* RunningGag: Ramon always throws his knifes too far to the right.
77	%%** Also see AssassinOutclassin above.
78	* ShownTheirWork: All the statues and art work seen in the museum are based on genuine art work found in the Brussels' Royal Museum of Art and History.
79	* ShrunkenHead: A native Amazonian Indian tribe wants to practice this technique on Tintin and Ridgewell.
80	* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: Tintin spares Pablo's life and thus he comes to rescue him from prison. Also, arms dealer Basil Zaharoff is seen selling arms to both General Alcazar and immediately afterwards to his rival in the opposing country.
81	* SoreLoser: The enraged General is FiringInTheAirALot after losing a chess match to Tintin.
82	* SparedByTheAdaptation: As mentioned under DarkerAndEdgier, the book ends with Alonzo and Ramon falling into the sea, drowning, and being dragged to hell by black devils with pitchforks. In the famous 1990s animated series, Tintin manages to grab them and save them from drowning, sending them to prison instead.
83	* TrainEscape: Tintin's car just barely makes it past a train, which delays his pursuers. Unfortunately, their car catches up with his in the mountains.
84	* UnknownRival: Corporal Diaz begins a vendetta against Tintin and Alcazar, and not only does he do more harm to himself than to them, but half the time they don't even notice his attempts on their lives. In a moment of DramaticIrony, he dies just as Alcazar decides to restore him to colonel.
85	* {{Ventriloquism}}: Ridgewell gets himself and Tintin out of a sticky situation by using this technique.
86	%%* WarForFunAndProfit / YouCantMakeAnOmelette
87	* WallOfText: A couple of exposition speech bubbles by Ridgewell towards the end are pretty wally.
88	* WeAreStrugglingTogether: Alonzo and Ramon drown at the end because they don't realise Tintin has escaped and each is trying to drown the other, thinking he's Tintin.
89	* WhatDidIDoLastNight: Tintin is rather confused as to how he became a colonel, having been too drunk to remember the events of the previous day.
90	* WhatHappenedToTheMouse:
91	** It's unclear how Tortilla learned about Lopez and the fetish in the first place, something Tintin lampshades.
92	** It's not shown what happened to the parrot after Alonzo and Ramon get the information they want out of it. Considering they are on the verge of killing it due to its annoyance this doesn't bode well for it.
93	* WronglyAccused:
94	** The Arumbayas are considered by outsiders to be savage killers, but this is likely due to people confusing them with their rivals the Rumbabas, who more than live up to the stereotype.
95	** Tintin is framed as a revolutionary by the people he's chasing. When he becomes Alcazar's aide instead and refuses to go along with the WarForFunAndProfit scheme, he's framed again and has to flee the country. Though in subsequent stories Alcazar has either forgiven him or learned the truth somehow.

Context Recap / TintinTheBrokenEar