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BBC News have a fascinating slideshow of workshops producing Tintin souvenirs in DR Congo. Although the captions question the suitability of a western (particularly Belgian) creation being an icon of DR Congo today, the accompanying photos are extraordinary, particularly the last one which resembles not a little Balthazar's workshop at the end of The Broken Ear.

Richard
Typically this goes to show that the people of the DR Congo don't give a hoot about the political issues and hoohah this book represented and rightly so.
They accept the fact that what Hergé has drawn and written about was the truth of the time.
I think Hergé was a little like 60 Minutes: you see it and you report about it.
Hergé has done exactly the same thing, so you could say that Hergé's books are in fact the reporting's of Tintin being a reporter and as he saw it at the time.
It is nice to see that the people of DR Congo have embraced this and actually make a buck out of it, good on yah.
Maybe Marlinspike should look at supporting that industry as some of the art work looks good so why not license it and legalise it?

It doesn't do anything like that - it gives a picture of a sample of people, but can't, and doesn't, say it's typical; indeed the title actually says that they are unlikely.

The recent court cases were brought by Congolese who found the book to be offensive.

At best I think we could say it is interesting to see another side of the argument, but I don't think we can draw from this with any certainty a sense of the feelings of the larger population.


This is even more contentious: there is little or no real truth in any of what Herdé wrote about in Congo.

The main support of the case for Hergé not being actively racist in what he did, is that he naïvely accepted a common myth that Belgian colonial rule in the Congo was benign and paternal, when it was brutal, bloody and highly oppressive.

If he wrote what he wrote because he believed that white people being superior to black people (which was definitely part of the story being sold at the time) was true, then he would have to be seen as at best passively racist, at worst actively so.

Personally I feel he was not actively racist, and accept that he was undoubtedly passively buying into a widely propagated lie of the day; however, the fact still pertains that that was "of its day" - and like so much propaganda, witting or unwitting, it could still be seen to be offensive.


That's highly damning of Sixty Minutes, which I take it is a news programme where you are, as Hergé appears to have repeated lies and misinformation, and adhered to incorrect stereotypes without any balance or sensitivity.
This may have been the status quo amongst white middle– and upper-class Belgians, but it shows that he certainly gave no time over to checking if it was the truth (which it wasn't).


People living in poverty and hardship will often resort to ways of living which in no way reflect their own views or prederences; I don't think we can generalize based on such a small sample as to the feelings of a larger population.

I also can't imagine that this trade is anything other than quite exploitative, given the fact that these figures must take quite a time to make for (based on the price that they sell for in the West) very little money.

But this is all beaten out elsewhere (by us both); let's keep this thread for comments about this article. For broader discussion of the issues raised by Congo, they should be taken over to Tintin in the Congo: The race row.