Abstract
The theme of resistance has been a popular topic in Asterix scholarship, whether this resistance is applied to the historical Gauls in their defiance of imperial Rome, to later nationalist or regionalist sentiments in France against invading forces, to any small groups of locals in opposition to foreign or global forces, to a cultural war between France/Europe and America, or to the dominant educational canon of Western history and literature. What is missing in current scholarship on Asterix is a discussion of how these acts of resistance are created and implemented. To that end, this paper identifies ‘low-key’ humor as a seminal means of achieving this resistance in Asterix; this effect involves a ‘lowering’ where figures of the grand or sublime are supplanted, nullified, or defeated by the more restrained figures of the commonplace. The aim of this paper is to identify the typical character of this low-key humor in Asterix through analyzing an exemplary version of this humor – in the animated film The Twelve Tasks of Asterix (1976). From the perspective of humor studies, this analysis serves as a corrective to a commonly held impression of the Asterix bandes dessinées as being characterized by more overt or puerile forms of humor. From the perspective of Asterix scholarship, this study is the first to analyze one of the animated films; far from being an outlier in the oeuvre, The Twelve Tasks both consolidates and extends the lowering humor of Asterix by opening up the possibilities of a new medium.
About the author
Hamish Williams holds a PhD in Ancient Greek Literature from the University of Cape Town (2017). Previously, he has taught International Studies at Leiden University. Currently, he is pursuing a Humboldt Fellowship at the Department of English and American Studies at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena. Email: hamishwilliams25@gmail.com.
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