• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

racist Tintin

Besides...it so obviously pro-Man/boy love. What's the whole living relationship between the boy detective and the old Sea Captain? Tintin and Haddock sure seem like a couple to me. So, while it may be racist, it is very liberated in other ways. ;)
 
geni said:
Um yes this is Tintin in the Congo. It is racist. It's a bit like complaining that Kolberg is pro nazi.
Click to expand...

I'd be more inclined to say "Tintin in the Congo" is racist like "Huckleberry Finn" is racist. Perhaps even less so since Twain was repeating attitudes he grew up with first hand and Herge relied on second and third hand information, IIRC. Kolberg was made with deliberate pro-Nazi intent. I didn't get a deliberate intent to push a racist agenda in "Congo" when I read it. Maybe a nationalistic agenda of justifying Belgium's "colonisation" activites, but no more racist than any other contemporary Western source.
 
Hergé is the product of his time, and so is the Tintin in the Congo album. Not that I condone what's being portrayed in the comics, but it helps knowing the context in which it was produced (here it is the unfortunate colonialistic Belgium mentality).

In Red Sea Sharks (Coke en Stock), written almost 30 years later, Hergé seems to have watered down his prejudice and even openly criticizes slavery, but like any old bad habit, he still portrays black people in rather simplistic racial stereotypes.
 
Poor Belgium. It's obvious that these PC fanatics are used in an anglosaxon conspiracy against central europe and the country harbouring its main institutions. Cretins in Florida already went after the Manneken Pis. ;)
 
On the brighter side, long ago in the 70's a cartoon parody (R rated in US - actually French though) of Tarzan (Tarzoom) was done with some SNL vets as voices. (Stay with me - this goes somewhere OP) and it involved Nazis created from penises. (Still going to the point) While Tarzan/zoom was going after the kidnapped (by penisNazis after having one off with Cheetah or some other chimp) June/Jane, at one point (the main one here) he swung over a jungle clearing where Tintin was beating natives with a cross!!
 
fuelair said:
On the brighter side, long ago in the 70's a cartoon parody (R rated in US - actually French though) of Tarzan (Tarzoom) was done with some SNL vets as voices. (Stay with me - this goes somewhere OP) and it involved Nazis created from penises. (Still going to the point) While Tarzan/zoom was going after the kidnapped (by penisNazis after having one off with Cheetah or some other chimp) June/Jane, at one point (the main one here) he swung over a jungle clearing where Tintin was beating natives with a cross!!
Click to expand...

Weren't all Nazi's created from penises? All people I know have been.
 
Yes, Tintin is racist, at least to our current standards.

My favorite piece of literature, that I read frequently from 6- 10, would certainly be considered racist nowadays. Did that make me a racist? NOOOOO. I was too young to get the message. Did that instill in me the idea that blacks are inferiors? No, because I was not raised to believe that. Actually, it was never a issue in my home. So the racist overtones never really sunk in. Were my parents irresponsible to allow me to read it? NO, it was great piece of literature that I love to this day. Yeah, now I realize it's racist. But I'd allow my children to read it, for sure. Racism is a disgrace, but those authors were victims of the mentality of their ages, probably they did not know better, and, anyway, I don't expect perfection from any writer.

I love TinTin, btw.
 
"Tintin in the Congo" is actually appreciated by africans. They think that it perfectly sums up colonialism. Tintin arrives by boat. Points with his whole hand but is not really getting anything. Then leaves by boat.

Banning TitC is whitewashing our history. But adding a preface that explains the historical context is pefectly fine.

Anyway, it's interesting with the discrepancy between what people want something to be and what it really is. Better to hate something for what it is, than love it for what it's not.
 
Last edited:
headscratcher4 said:
Besides...it so obviously pro-Man/boy love. What's the whole living relationship between the boy detective and the old Sea Captain? Tintin and Haddock sure seem like a couple to me. So, while it may be racist, it is very liberated in other ways. ;)
Click to expand...

This has never occurred to me, obvious as it is! Now I'll have to go and read all my Tin Tin books again with this in mind ;)
 
headscratcher4, the captain wasn't in the comic by the time he went to Congo, but even then it's curious that in all the albums, only one woman plays a major part (two, if you count her handmaiden).

Both Congo and Red Sea Sharks have been cleaned up in newer Danish editions, and I read that that's the case with the originals in French, as well. Mainly, the black people's grammar is not as broken anymore. In Congo, when Tintin is substituting teacher in the missionary classroom, he went from saying "This is a class about your homeland Belgium" to teaching simple sums. To make that change, they even had to edit the panel so the blackboard reflects this. The nerve!

Fran, is it true that in Sweden, Haddock isn't drinking whiskey but apple juice or some such? That would be pretty weird. In Denmark there's been talk about editing out the captains pipe, but thankfully nothing's come of it. No such luck with Lucky Luke, who's already chewing straws in new editions.
 
Last edited:
Ok, the story about this is realy that Hergé did have to complay with the Editor of Le Petit Ving-Tieme, a vary staunch conservative and nationalistic newspaper. It was the Editor, a Catholic Priest, btw, who convinced Hergé to make Congo they way he did. Many years later Hergé redrafted Congo himself, cleaned up the Africans' (congolesian's?) speek about and substituted the national geography lesson for a math lesson. (tintin also went to soviet, and this album was also used in the Le Petit Viengtieme's propaganda against communism; later Hergé redrew (some of) this album, too.

There's another album Hergé revised. It is the one with the firestation, where the fireman have forgotten his key to the station, but I can't remember the name of the album? Sorry about that.

However, if you look at others of Hergé's works, you will see that they are very political indeed. In the Blue Lotus, Hergé speaks up for the Chinese, while the rest of the world at that time (1934 or so?) did root for the Japanese. (of course, the japanese are drawn as charicatures). In the Crab with Golden Claws, Hergé explores the smuggling of Cocaine, this related to the dangers of opium in the Blue Lotus and in Pharoh's Cigars. In the Land of Black Gold, he actually has a very interesting scene (politically speaking) in which an arm's dealer sells arms (weapons) to both parties in the war for oil. (very educational, I might add). He also has scene in which the big Oil Companies agree on dividing the oil concessions between them. Again, very educational. And in the Red Sea Sharks, he openly attacks (modern) slavery.

In Flight 714, the businessman, Rastapopolous, admits to being a scoundrel and a thief, from very early in his live. And Tintin actually supports a revolution in small Latin American Country - in Tintin and the Picaros.

And in King's Ottokar's Sceptre, Titin prevents a coup d'etat as does he in
The Calculus Affair. (and prevents the invention of a weapon that will lay wastes to building using sonic? radar? waves?).

As a more general comment, art can never be complety ripped out from or out of the (societal) context in which it was (and is) made, not now, not 80 years ago. And people critisizing Tintin might as wll be critisizing The Phantom (mort walker) or Tarzan (Edgar R. Burrows) for being colonial in their attitude towards the native's of Bengali or Africa, since it takes a white man to solve their problems. And Tintin in Congo is a sort of testament over the colonial period in Africa. And it is important to recognize this.
 
ThatSoundAgain said:
Fran, is it true that in Sweden, Haddock isn't drinking whiskey but apple juice or some such? That would be pretty weird. In Denmark there's been talk about editing out the captains pipe, but thankfully nothing's come of it. No such luck with Lucky Luke, who's already chewing straws in new editions.
Click to expand...
Ill jump in on that, being from Sweden. If theyve edited whisky to applejuice it must have happened in recent years. In all my albums from 70s and 80s its whisky, Loch Lomond Scotch actually. I wonder how any editing would deal with the captain when he is piss drunk - on applejuice?
 
Thanks, scratchy, I was hoping that it'd turn out to be an urban legend, probably stemming from some less informed Danes' view of Sweden.

And it would be quite weird - Haddock's fondness of liqueor isn't only a source of gags, but also some key plot points.
 
Piscivore said:
I'd be more inclined to say "Tintin in the Congo" is racist like "Huckleberry Finn" is racist. Perhaps even less so since Twain was repeating attitudes he grew up with first hand and Herge relied on second and third hand information, IIRC. Kolberg was made with deliberate pro-Nazi intent. I didn't get a deliberate intent to push a racist agenda in "Congo" when I read it. Maybe a nationalistic agenda of justifying Belgium's "colonisation" activites, but no more racist than any other contemporary Western source.
Click to expand...

Ok, maybe it's going off a tangent here, but "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is a condemnation of racism and slavery, not merely a depiction of them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom