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Looking for Scene: Chinese eating Snowy? [Solved: B&W "Tintin in America"]

Shivam302001
Member
#1 · Posted: 18 May 2018 17:01
I recently came across a frame where Snowy contemplates the idea of being eaten by two Chinese. I think it is from the earlier albums published in le petit vingtieme. Does anyone know about it and in which context the frame was made?
jock123
Moderator
#2 · Posted: 18 May 2018 17:51
It comes from the black-and-white version of Tintin in America, where the crime-boss suggests that, after they have dumped Tintin in Lake Michigan to drown, he will give Snowy to his Chinese henchmen, because they are "partial" to small dogs.

The single saving grace is that it might be possible to excuse the scene as the prejudices of the mobster, then interpreted by the imagination of Snowy, as opposed to an actual event in the story, or a reflection of the opinion of Hergé, but it is awkward, however you look at it.

The incident is edited out of the colour edition (the oriental thugs having become a single Caucasian gangster called Sam), because by that time Hergé had learned from Tchang - through his aid with the production of The Blue Lotus - to avoid such stereotypical and offensive images of the people of China.

Another questionable thing that is lost in the revision, is the use of a made up name for of the two Chinese, "Yat-Upan-Seh", which is a play on the French "Y as-tu pensé" ("Have you thought about it?")

Removing the "funny foreign name", and "foreigners eat strange food, including pets" clichés, was definitely a change for the better, in my opinion.
Shivam302001
Member
#3 · Posted: 19 May 2018 03:03
Now that you say it I am bent to think that Hergé really did stereotype the Chinese, first in The Land of the Soviets, and then in Tintin in America.
It is interesting that Hergé made fun of the use of the same stereotypes in The Blue Lotus through a conversation between Tintin and Chang.
Anyway, thanks for giving the interesting titbit.

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