“Hercules the grocer?”: low-key humor in The Twelve Tasks of Asterix

Abstract

AbstractThe theme of resistance has been a popular topic inAsterixscholarship, 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 onAsterixis a discussion ofhowthese acts of resistance are created and implemented. To that end, this paper identifies ‘low-key’ humor as a seminal means of achieving this resistance inAsterix; 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 inAsterixthrough analyzing an exemplary version of this humor – in the animated filmThe Twelve Tasks of Asterix(1976). From the perspective of humor studies, this analysis serves as a corrective to a commonly held impression of theAsterix bandes dessinéesas being characterized by more overt or puerile forms of humor. From the perspective ofAsterixscholarship, this study is the first to analyze one of the animated films; far from being an outlier in the oeuvre,The Twelve Tasksboth consolidates and extends the lowering humor ofAsterixby opening up the possibilities of a new medium.