Forever Young! Tintin’s Adventures as an Example of Physical Activity and Sport

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, first of all thank you very much for the work conducted and the presented reviewed version of the manuscript. It has been significantly improved but I have two main concerns:

• The discussion paragraph that analyses the relation between sports/physical activity presented in Tintín literature with health must be improved. In the introduction or in this paragraph there is no information about what is health and health-related behaviors and its relationship with physical activity or sports. Some actual information regarding health-related behaviors would be helpful to fully understand the presence of hygiene or mental health in the literature.
• More information about the methods would be also helpful to understand how the analyses were made. Did you double check the results? Or there was only one researcher who analyzed all the literature? Was anyone else involved? Did you use any observational instrument to determine the results? More information is needed in order to be replicable.

I want to thank again the authors for their effort improving this manuscript.

Author Response

1. The discussion paragraph that analyses the relation between sports/physical activity presented in Tintín literature with health must be improved. In the introduction or in this paragraph there is no information about what is health and health-related behaviors and its relationship with physical activity or sports. Some actual information regarding health-related behaviors would be helpful to fully understand the presence of hygiene or mental health in the literature.

Regarding the concern about the concepts of physical activity, physical exercise and sport from the reviewer, we believe that the current text may comply with what the reviewer expresses, given that the controversy around the concepts of Physical Activity vs. Physical Exercise vs. Sport is so broad, and has a long tradition in our field (see Bal et al., 2014; Carpersen et al., 1985; Folsom et al., 1985; Montoye, 1975). Perhaps it is in the same vein that was indicated by Ball et al. (2014, p. 131) “Physical Activity has evolved and expanded to include sports participation and recreational activities; sports leagues (competitive and non-competitive) and recreational activities provide a pleasant social environment for the participation of adults and youth, involving a significant amount of physical activity”.

Although the reviewer's suggestion makes absolute sense, we believe that we are unable to carry out such a profound conceptual analysis in this study, nor was it one of our objectives.

The authors jointly believe that the argumentation in the Introduction may fulfill what we understand by physical activity, exercise and sport and its relationship to healthy living (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2008) and the role it played (and plays) at the time the character was created by Hergé.

In any case, as is obvious, we remain at his/her disposal, thanking again for his/her work with this manuscript.

References:

Ball, J. W., Bice, M. R., & Parry, T. (2014). Adults' motivation for physical activity: Differentiating motives for exercise, sport, and recreation. Recreational Sports Journal, 38(2), 130-142.

Caspersen, C., Powell, K., & Christenson, G. (1985). Physical activity, exercise, and physical fitness: Definitions and distinctions for health-related research. Public Health Reports,100, 126–131.

Folsom, A., Caspersen, C., Taylor, H., Jacobs, D., Luepker, R., Gomez-Marin, O., . . . Blackburn, H. (1985). Leisure time physical activity and its relationship to coronary risk factors in a population-based sample. American Journal of Epidemiology,121, 570–579.

Montoye, H. (1975). Physical activity and health: An epidemiologic study of an entire com-munity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2008). Physical activity guidelines for Americans. Retrieved from http://www.health.gov/PAGuidelines.

 

2. More information about the methods would be also helpful to understand how the analyses were made. Did you double check the results? Or there was only one researcher who analyzed all the literature? Was anyone else involved? Did you use any observational instrument to determine the results? More information is needed in order to be replicable.

Thanks again. We have revised our work following this suggestion.

Here is the paragraphs we have added (highlighted in green) in the Methodology section:

To make the decision about the data collection methodology and its analysis (taking into account that it is an unusual type of observation), a Focus Group was formed (Edmunds, 1999) with the two groups of co-authors, with a an expert person from the Research Group on Physical Activity and Sport (GICAFE) of the UIB, another expert person from the Faculty of Sports Sciences of the University of Murcia and the presence of our beloved and respected Jaume Cruz, who was a world figure in the field of Sports Psychology, who developed, together with Ronald Smith (U. of Washington, USA) a systematic behavioral observation of athletes and coaches (Coach Behavioral Assessment System, CBAS).

The conclusions reached, and that were applied to this study’ methodology, were the following: 1) avoid inferences about motivations, reasons, etc., and stick to what is drawn and expressed in each vignette (regarding the conceptual definitions of activity made up in the Introduction); 2) to select the vignettes, pay only attention to the difference between the activity carried out and the other Tintin’ activities in the rest of the album (covering all the Tintin albums); 3) carry out a solely descriptive methodology of the findings (avoiding complex statistical elaborations which are not conceptually sustainable); and 4) if possible, contrast the results with other coming from the scarce scientific publications on Tintin with some of the topics analyzed in our study.

Consequently, we’ve added this reference:

Edmunds, H. (1999). The Focus Group Research Handbook. In The Bottom Line, Vol. 12 No. 3, pp.46-46. https://doi.org/10.1108/bl.1999.12.3.46.1

 

3. I want to thank again the authors for their effort improving this manuscript

We would like to thank the reviewer too for his/her great kindness and the effort put in this review.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors in the resubmission did not substantially enhance the empirical approach of the research. However, they clarified the points requested carefully, thus inserting a more coherent description of the aims and results of the research into the manuscript. For this reason, the manuscript thus revised, in my opinion, has sufficient interest in the publication.

Author Response

1. The authors in the resubmission did not substantially enhance the empirical approach of the research. However, they clarified the points requested carefully, thus inserting a more coherent description of the aims and results of the research into the manuscript. For this reason, the manuscript thus revised, in my opinion, has sufficient interest in the publication.

Dear reviewer, thank you very much for your effort to improve the manuscript, and for your understanding.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Suggestion for last line of abstract: To summarize, eternally youthful and a perfectly fit, Tintin leads both his core band and occasional characters, and may serve as a role model influencing young 20th century readers toward the benefits of an active lifestyle.

Lines 54-61--put these sentences into one paragraph and develop this further--academic papers generally have three sentences per paragraph, and this part is very relevant to your study.

I still think there is too much background on the creator; a bit too discursive.

Author Response

1. Suggestion for last line of abstract: To summarize, eternally youthful and a perfectly fit, Tintin leads both his core band and occasional characters, and may serve as a role model influencing young 20th century readers toward the benefits of an active lifestyle.

Dear reviewer, thank you very much. The text has been changed accordingly.

 

2. Lines 54-61--put these sentences into one paragraph and develop this further--academic papers generally have three sentences per paragraph, and this part is very relevant to your study.

Thanks again. We have reformulated the paragraph following this suggestion.

Here are the change (reformulated in one paragraph) and addition (highlighted in green) to Lines 45-61:

In France, another historical country of comic book, scientific research on the links between sport and the graphic narrative has been increasing since 2000, as is the case with the Olympic Games in The Adventures of Asterix, or the Smurfs. Other articles havestudied political mythologies in Pellos’s comics, analysing an athlete’s fate when he goes off to war. Another study of the albums of the comics series Michel Vaillant published in the 1960s uses different tools, drawn from fields such as historical study, management, and philosophy, to highlight the myth of the progress of man. This type of scientific approach has been extended also to films and television series, with studies such as, for example, one on the dermatological features of the "villains" of classical cinematography [7], or on the rates, types and frequencies of mortality and survival in the series "Game of Thrones" [8]. With regard to Tintin, several scientific papers have been published on a range of aspects, notably studies on the health of Tintin and his friends [9], the health of the famous reporter in relation to his travels and activity [10,11], or the concept of stigma towards the mental illnesses that crop up in the albums [12]. One stone that has been left unturned and which we believe has significant relevance within the socio-cultural context in which The Adventures of Tintin were created, is the role of the physical and sporting activities carried out by the tireless reporter, should be put in relation with his eternal youth and health condition.

Thus, this is one of the key starting points of this study since through this compilation it is intended: a) to demonstrate that there is a tradition -although it is not universally recognized- on the use of popular culture, expressed in this case for the creation, reading and dissemination of popular comics to carry out and publish scientific studies about their significance; 2) that as a consequence of this analysis, it may be of interest to recover the “hygienic” tradition of physical "amateur" outdoor activities, even taking into account some of the most recent recommendations regarding the airborne transmission of the SARS-2 COVID coronavirus in the practice of physical activity (Dominiski and Brandt, 2021), as has already been carried out with the vindication de facto of S XX school architecture carried out under basic hygienist ideas, with natural or forced ventilation, wide spaces and few students in each classroom, and 3) some of the studies carried out previously in this vein, highlight mostly the negative characteristics (eg, stigma) while it is relevant to highlight the positive ones too, as Tintin’s should be a possible model of physical activity and healthy life for the time being.

Added Reference:

Dominski, F.H., Brandt, R. (2020). Do the benefits of exercise in indoor and outdoor environments during the COVID-19 pandemic outweigh the risks of infection? Sport Sci Health 16, 583–588. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11332-020-00673-z

 

3. I still think there is too much background on the creator; a bit too discursive.

Thanks for your suggestion. Following your relevant comment, we have refocused Hergé's biographical elements a little and edited out some of them (see the parts highlighted in green). It seems to us that the discourse on Hergé's life sheds more light on our argument now.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, thank you very much for the work conducted in this paper. It presents some novelties and the comprehensive study conducted in the literature. However, some general comments must be highlighted in relation to the improvement of the manuscript:

1. The introduction explains the importance of the analyses of Tintin literature, and gives some examples of previous research on comics. However, it should be important to conceptualize why physical activity and sports is studied and its importance and relation to literature.
2. The manuscripts aims to explain sports and physical activity conducted in the comics, but the information in the manuscript have to be presented separately for sports and physical activity to understand what is happening in the literature, and because their practical implications are very different.
3. The study only analyzed the counts of actions conducted in the literature but it would be interesting, in order to know the Tintin’s leadership, the motivations or the meaning of each physical activity conducted. In addition, there are no analyses conducted about the leadership out of the number of physical activity and sports activities reported. The methodology must be considerable improved with more information and categorization of the different variables used.
4. There is a whole section in discussion about physical activity and health which is not conceptualized anywhere in the document. Indeed, it is important to make a differentiation between health-related behaviors and accidents during physical activity practice. Even more, in the discussion section appears some information about health (e.g. mental health) that is not presented in introduction section or results.
5. One of the main flaws in the manuscript is the practical implication of the study, why it is important? Do you advice to use some fragments of the comics to use in interventions or in regular practice?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript was very curious to read. It deals with an extremely relevant topic on the sociological, psychosocial and educational level. However, it should be reviewed in many of the statements that can lend themselves to scientific interpretations, however, without methodological background and demonstration of the hypotheses used.

The following conclusions are true, "literally" and sociologically demonstrated with the analysis of Tintin's behaviors; but it is still a fantasy product, inspired by a hygienic vision, still a character produced by fantasy.

To say that this Tintin's "lifestyle model" has "produced" or can produce changes in lifestyles in populations and therefore being Tintin a "leader" is not demonstrated by the research described.

The following statement is therefore valid only for Tintin himself:
"In fact, Hergè was a person of action of his youth and describes the physical activities of his hero as a complement to an asset lifestyle, as indicated in this article, which brings significant benefits - physiological, psychological, Moral and social, which may be the source of Tintin's eternal youth."

Tintin's "psicosocial influence" and "life style learning" on populations is not proven. It would require a retrospective study with a survey on "real psicosocial influence" on subjects, currently living "who inspired their personal" lifestyle "to the excellent health behavior of the cartoon.

In conclusion statement "Tintin's leadership in the promotion
of health, physical activity and sport " is not scientifically correct because it is not demonstrated by the descriptive statistics of the submitted manuscript, although interesting and analytically correct.

It is therefore suggested to reformulate the concepts relating to these "demonstrative" statements and to limit the analysis and conclusions to the important descriptions of the results of the analysis of Tintin's behaviors as "proposed" models. Do not take the results on "populations" for granted, these are still to be demonstrated. Future research could deepen the effectiveness "over time" of this model on polations and demonstrate its impact.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

I have attached comments to the manuscript. This is an interesting topic with a sound data-set. My main feedback is around 1) organization, including a) framing and b) sequencing and 2) style/grammar.  The style/grammar issues are straightforward, so I will focus on organization.

There are many details about the culture of this study, but not enough explicitly situating its larger contexts. The study needs to be more clearly situated. There's no right or wrong, it's more that you need to clearly lay out your assumptions and where you are coming from.Assume we may not know about media content analysis or its intersection with sports and exercise or neotony or graphic reading. Maybe we only know about one of those--tell us enough about each that a broader audience can glean value.

I made some specific comments on the manuscript

Throughout, consider the main point, state it fully and simply and organize around it, sequencing such that similar content is together, making explicit connections, and telling us what you are going to tell 

Section 1.1 -not a paragraph--combine with the following paragraph

So many details on the background--are they all needed? Can you just refer us? Can some the discussion items go here instead of there? Looking for focus

lines 80-102 - break up this paragraph

I would say your "sample" is actually a CENSUS because it includes the whole "population"

Go into a little more detail on procedures. 

Thematic media content analysis does not generally make extrapolations. You don't say explicitly what kind (meaning, "tradition" or "brand") of "analysis" you are doing, and I don't think what you are doing is inherently wrong (in sheer technique, certainly it seems fine given what you have described) and may indeed have significant value, but , but you don't set out clear rules of engagement for procedure, let alone interpretation, presentation, etc. If your interest is in the ultimate overall impact of how readers may be influenced toward fitness, etc. that needs to be "baked-in" better throughout.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, thank you very much for addressing the comments.

However, it is still not clear the definition of sports and physical activity. Even when a broad concept of sport is used in the analyses, there are different health outcomes according to many of the behaviors studied in this manuscript. They have to be grouped in any kind of active lifestyle classifications or domains to better understand the benefits of showing each of the sports. Anyway, I am still concerned about the use of the concept sport in some of the behaviors showed (i.e. fighting when your life is in risk is difficult to be understand as sport). Maybe with the classification and conceptualization it would be more understandable. In addition, active lifestyle has to be described with more details in the introduction section. Consequently the results showed should be grouped according to the categories established.

In addition, the injuries are presented in some of the sports (only in 7 and mainly fighting) out of the 25 total sports may not be representative to the discussion section physical activity and health. This section is focused in the broad health concepts (physical, social, mental…) so the results section must show this concept of health. Otherwise there is not a direct relation between health concept presented in results and in discussion. In the introduction section some information about physical activity benefits is addressed but these benefits may be achieved according to the type and duration of the physical activity conducted.

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for the improvements you have made to this article. The added details enhanced the presentation. 

My overall recommendation was for greater focus. That recommendation stands and still applies. I have no objection to interdisciplinary studies; on the contrary, I am a committed interdisciplinarian! But as I said in my initial review, the burden of "situating" a study rests on its authors.

For example, this addition:

Our study analyses the
158 messages conveyed by Hergé through the adventures of Tintin. Indeed, the important role that the
159 stories of Tintin had in promulgating the passion for physical activities among the youth can be seen
160 though the examples of French personalities. Doctor and explorer Jean-Louis Etienne declared to be
161 intimately linked to Tintin through his relationship with the sea and the expeditions that took him to
162 the world’s end [29]. Similarly, Michel Serres, the famous French philosopher, stated that the
163 rereading of Tintin in Tibet led him to undertake a pedestrian expedition to Nepal [30]. These two
164 examples confirm the influence Tintin had on their lives. However, the question of the influence of
165 the Tintin series is not addressed here, as it would be the subject of another study.

This was one of the most extensive revisions, an addition that was somewhat helpful but ideally would have come much sooner, and, again, be woven in throughout as well as explicitly listed with other assumptions that your readers may not be aware of or share. Qualitative studies generally allow their audience to determine much about the applicability and "generalizeability" of the findings, making only weak claims, of such, if any. We researchers-authors mainly assume that there is potential value in our study for research and practice, researchers and practitioners, as we trust in them and also actively speculate on the all the ways others might benefit by using our research as a thought experiment to apply to similar issues and problems they may face. Claims for significance might be more easily accepted and that is the claim you seem to be making here, which would have more impact earlier in the article, and without apologizing for not having more proof. Assumptions are fine, so long as you articulate them.

You might also induce greater focus by deleting some unnecessary information and, as I mentioned before, connecting each part of your narrative more firmly to the whole. ("If it doesn't fit, you might omit!")

With this addition:

It seems essential to analyze the representations of sport and
52 physical activities in Tintin since the crisis of the 1930s. Indeed, this cultural object has marked
53 several generations. Thus, to a certain extent, the wide diffusion of these fictions could contribute, to
54 the awareness of another way of life, a sporting culture, or even to the incorporation of a moral of the
55 effort. In a way, Tintin's adventures would be an example of active lifestyle for the youth.

are you saying that youth are out of shape ever since the Depression? I could not tell. Just say it plainly as possible. This also seems to speak to significance, as you use the word "essential." The qualifiers "seems" "to a certain extent" "even" "in a way" sound weak as they pile up. It's not necessary to overstate, but what about:

"To the degree Tintin is or could be influential, his adventures could serve to promote the many considerable advantages of active health, wellness and fitness and its attendant physical and mental disciplines that result from such efforts. "

[Or whatever are the strongest points you are trying to make.]

I am not trying to tell you WHAT to say, but requesting that you tell us what is important enough for you to have gone to all this effort in such a way that we can't miss it.