El asunto Tornasol
Literary critic Tom McCarthy believed that "The Calculus Affair" aptly illustrated how Tintin was no longer political in the manner that he was in earlier works like "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets" (1930) and "Tintin in the Congo" (1931); instead, Tintin travels to Borduria to rescue Calculus, "not to fight or expose totalitarianism". Calculus became "a genius compromised", with his role being a "counter-position to, or flip-side of, the one he represented in the moon books". When Tintin and Haddock arrive in Borduria, they are ""treated" as honoured guests but are in fact prisoners of the police state", a reversal of the situation in "The Blue Lotus" in which Tintin believes himself a prisoner but is in fact a guest. As with "The Crab with the Golden Claws" (1941), "The Calculus Affair" was "one long tobacco-trail" with cigarettes representing clues throughout the story. As for the opera house scene in which Tintin and Haddock spy upon Sponsz and Castafiore, he compared it to the scene in David Lynch's 1986 film "Blue Velvet" in which Jeffrey Beaumont spies on the sexual activities of Dorothy Vallens and Frank Booth.