Subversive Appetites and Non-Work Tastes: Reading the Subversive Non-action of the Fat Stock Characters in Tinkle Comics

 

Subversive Appetites and Non-Work Tastes: Reading the Subversive Non-action of the Fat Stock Characters in Tinkle Comics

Bourdieu (1979) considers “taste” as a marker of class and representation of dominant ideology of the ruling class. On the other hand, appetite is a feature of Bakhtinian carnivalesque, that subverts social order and even propriety. The stock characters of the one-shot comics in the popular children’s comics collection, Tinkle, belong to this latter category. As comic archetypes, a gluttonous appetite is their dominant humour, and the action of each comic is dictated by their motivation or temptation to eat and rest. The Bakhtinian characters of Tinkle evoke both laughter and sympathy by a challenge to the aesthetic of the neoliberal elite culture focused on fitness and self control. Appetite for food per se relieves these stock characters from the burden of action, thus allowing for non action to take its place. In their non-action lies their “impotentiality” (Agamben: 1999) to enact Bartleby’s inaction, a subversive act in a capitalistic superstructure of individual responsibility for economic sustenance. Agamben (1999) and Zizek (2006) both identify the potential within this inactive subject to recuse from oiling the machinery of capital’s cycle of self correction through the participation of active resistance. 

In this paper I will be looking at two such characters, Shikari Shambu, a hunter in British uniform in the eponymous one-shot comics, and Raja Hooja, the king in the one-shot comics titled, “Tantri the Mantri”. Their appetite and fat bodies, are not just poised against the aesthetic taste of neoliberal injunction of fitness as self reliance (Gill: 2021), but also advocate celebration of non-work ideology by aligning moral innocence to these fat characters. The paper will animate the subversive non-action ideology in a comics collection that claims to impart “Learning with Fun” as part of their byline.