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Tintin in the Congo: The race row

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mct16
Member
#111 · Posted: 23 Feb 2012 14:50
jock123:
if Congo has added one cintilla of pain or discomfort or awkwardness to the life of just one man woman or child, then it really isn’t worth it.

Sounds like a case for ruling out just about anything: from "Merchant of Venice" (anti-Semitism) to "Harry Potter" (black magic).
jock123
Moderator
#112 · Posted: 23 Feb 2012 15:03
You've missed the point of The Merchant of Venice if you think it's simply anti-semitic... It's an exploration of prejudice on all sides.

There's also a difference in a subject which is offensive to some (say, black magic) and portraying something offensively.

Harry Potter is a book about magic; it can't make it real, and isn't dealing with a real topic unless someone can provide concrete evidence to the contrary.

Racism is undoubtedly a real and insidious presence; Congo is written from the premise of white colonial rulers being superior to the Congolese through no other reason than their skin being different.

Hergé may have been guilty only of ignorance, casual thoughtlessness and lack of understanding; however to know and believe that puts us in a less ignorant, less thoughtless and more informed position – one requires the other to make any sense.

If we just go, "Product of its times, prevailing views, understandable of a Belgian bourgeoise of the period..." etc., and then accept the book, we are no better ourselves, and have learned nothing in the intervening years.
mct16
Member
#113 · Posted: 24 Feb 2012 00:01
If we ban it on the grounds that it is offensive to some people then where are the limits between consideration for others and freedom of speech and expression (no matter how misguided)? "The Satanic Verses" springs to mind.
jock123
Moderator
#114 · Posted: 24 Feb 2012 00:42
mct16:
If we ban it on the grounds that it is offensive to some people then where are the limits between consideration for others and freedom of speech and expression

We recognize that there are limits to free speech - propagation of racism is not covered by it, because it is seen as having lesser priority than the freedoms of speech and action of those who are victims of it.
It's a simple extension of the principle that – unless appropriate to the moment - you can't shout "Fire...!" in a crowded theatre: the effect on the recipients of the cry (fear, disturbance, possible endangerment of life and limb) does not warrant the making of it.

Seems pretty clear cut to me, if we are to call ourselves civilized in the 21st century.

The appeal to emotion through the use of the word "ban" is also not proportionate.
We don't speak of "banning" crime or anti-social behaviour; we don't decry the implementation of legislation which stops people spitting on the bus, or kicking in windows as a "ban".

Anyway, there is a difference between letting a book go out of print, because it's outdated and no longer appropriate, and "banning" it – or did Hergé "ban" Soviets?

The vast majority of books published are no longer in print - it would matter little if Congo were to be retired to this venerable company.

Throwing in The Satanic Verses is another diversionary tactic, as that case was bound up in the fatwa and other issues about which I can't begin to comment: let's keep focused, and argue this case on its merits.

Rather than adding these extraneous examples, perhaps the thing for you to do would be to mount a defence of the book, and explain why its depiction of race doesn't appear to trouble you, or at least resolve the "if we forgive Hergé for its troublesome elements through being naïve and a product of his background, what excuse do we have if we have acknowledged the problem?" conundrum...
Frozen_Dream
Member
#115 · Posted: 31 Mar 2012 00:33
Why do people get so worked up over these things? Its a product of its time, nobody wants to ban King Lear because the blinding of Gloucester was a gross breach of his Human Rights.

A society can't judge or censor literature published in a different time by modern standards, even if it is racist. people must instead be educated as to why such ideas are now unacceptable. banning or refusing to sell books sets a dangerous precedent. Also, banning a book/movie/art merely attracts attention, thereby bringing in publicity which defeats the purpose.

This is what Herge said in the later years: "For the Congo as with Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, the fact was that I was fed on the prejudices of the bourgeois society in which I moved. It was 1930. I only knew about these countries that people said at the time." By that reckoning, the Congo and Soviet albums illustrates the prejudice in which Europeans then viewed the Africans and the Russians.
jock123
Moderator
#116 · Posted: 31 Mar 2012 08:16
Frozen_Dream:
Why do people get so worked up over these things?

Because they matter?
Frozen_Dream:
nobody wants to ban King Lear because the blinding of Gloucester was a gross breach of his Human Rights.

As I've said before, we can only judge cases on their own merit - throwing in random references to other cases is irrelevant (especially when they are just made up) and a distraction.
Frozen_Dream:
A society can't judge or censor literature published in a different time by modern standards, even if it is racist.

Why not? We're already twelve pages of judgement (both pro and con) into this thread, for one thing...
Frozen_Dream:
banning or refusing to sell books sets a dangerous precedent.

You're not going to allow retailers to choose what they can and can't sell? That's a bit dicatatorial, and certainly has never been on the cards anywhere that I know of. Someone should be entirely within their rights not to sell anything they don't want to and aren't required to by law (I'm not sure if there is anything that shops are required to sell by law...).
Also, again, the use of "banning" is such an emotive term.
We don't "ban" crime, it is outlawed; racism is a crime, and the test to be met here is, is the book racially offensive?
Frozen_Dream:
banning a book/movie/art merely attracts attention

Exactly - the call is for the publisher not to publish it, not for the state to ban it, which is an important difference.
Frozen_Dream:
By that reckoning, the Congo and Soviet albums illustrates the prejudice in which Europeans then viewed the Africans and the Russians.

I don't really get your point.
People used to pee out of upper storey windows into the street, bait bears, keep slaves, and all sorts of other things which society now deems as unacceptable; using the logic of "it was okay then, it should be okay now" would mean that we could start to do all of them again too...?
As I also said before, Hergé was moved to "ban" Soviets more or less out of vanity, because it was a book he didn't care for, and only brought it back into print because pirates started to re-issue it (and even then that must have been on a truly tiny scale: I've only ever seen one copy of a pirate from those days for sale, so I doubt that they were ever common).
Congo could be let go out of print for far better reasons than vanity...
Bordurian Thug
Member
#117 · Posted: 5 Apr 2012 02:13
Some people think that Heart of Darkness is racist when it's actually one of the finest novellas ever written, particularly in its treatment of European colonialism. My main issue with Tintin in the Congo is that it's crap.
Tintinrulz
Member
#118 · Posted: 5 Apr 2012 09:52
Haha! So true! Tintin in the Congo is racist but it's because of ignorance rather than a product of hate-mongering. But really, it's just an awful album.
glendale
Member
#119 · Posted: 10 Apr 2012 06:32
You really need to understand the time when all this happened.
I have an uncle now deceased that was a missionary in the Belgian Congo. Actually I had two and they where brothers. The stories that one of them told me are very similar to this book and actually the missionary in the book tends to remind me of him as he to was a teacher on a mission and hunted elephants. The way the natives of the time acted and thought is very close to what Hergé has written. Women gave birth in the fields then bundled the child up and returned to work. Life was very basic and simple. Quite frankly all white people acted the same.
jock123
Moderator
#120 · Posted: 10 Apr 2012 09:39
glendale:
You really need to understand the time when all this happened.

Yes, and there are plenty of histories which tell just how bad the times really were.

While I don't want to disrespect your uncle/ uncles and their memories, it's impossible for anyone to say that a people as oppressed and abused as the Congolese were under Belgian colonial rule, behaved as the natives depicted in the book do: it was an inaccurate depiction however you cut it, as the benign paternalism shown in the story was not the experience of the people of the Belgian Congo, but was the story fed back to the Belgian people to cover the gross misconduct and genocide instigated by the colonial powers.

As for your example of women giving birth and then returning to work, would they have had any option?
Their lives were tanatamount to slave labour, given that Congolese were seen legally as serfs, and their time was not their own. Belgium levied a labour tax which required all males to work for the Crown, and to turn over all the rubber and other natural resources they gathered for no pay.

Women therefore had to do all the work which allowed men and women to survive. If you didn't get back to the field as soon as possible, you starved, your husband starved, your baby starved, and nobody was going to help you.

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