Tintin Forums

I am clearly missing something as all I can see on the first page is a collection of sailors in a public house, what is possibly wrong with that?

What? Don't tell me they are now selling a bowdlerised version!

Tell me - do none of the sailors in your edition have anything in their mouths?

Or have you never read stories like this or this?

They all have pipes, bar two who have a cigarette (one of whom is a reporter). I am aware of some people calling for the removal of cigarettes from media but would counter saying "That is implying 21st century standards onto things" which was demonstrated very nicely in 2004 when a number of complaints were recieved about the opening ceremony of the Olympic Ganes from Athens http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Olympics-indecency-probe/2004/12/12/1 102786931195.html?oneclick=true

Yeah, it's coming to the point when you wonder: where do you draw the line?

I admit to always being a tad little uneasy when I see young children watching James Bond - though I don't raise the subject with their parents. Granted it is a fantasy, but you cannot help wondering: is this encouraging promiscuity and killing people without so much as a "have I done the right thing" query?


This was deliberate. Herge was being very critical of Japan's occupation of China and - paradoxically - attacking colonialism as much as he had praised it in "Congo".

It is weird sometimes how the censors draw the line. When "Crab with the Golden Claws" was first published it included scenes of Haddock drinking straight from the bottle, but when it was published in America, they insisted on those scenes being taken out: it was all right to see Haddock drunk, so long as you did not see how he got drunk.

That was different. In Congo, it was done by nice Belgians. Belgians are always nice. In China it was done by the nasty Japanese. The issue was not colonialism per se. It was who was doing it. There is no paradox.

;-)

Seriously, though, I don't think Hergé was entirely wrong. Colonialism varied tremendously, and I would hesitate to say that colonialism is always wrong. Historically speaking, while some colonialism was pretty horrible, some colonialism was comparatively benevolent.

I do, however, think that Hergé was, er, somewhat blinkered in both his rose-coloured view of Belgian colonialism and his jaundiced view of the Japanese.

Naturally Herge is extremely critical of Japanese people in The Blue Lotus. His attention was drawn to the animosity between China and Japan (Japan invading China) by a Chinese student, who quickly became a dear friend. If you have a friend and some individual or group is doing really evil things to their people, you're not going to think nicely of the oppressors, you're going to think of them as monsters. It's not right, but it's human nature and shouldn't be ignored. We can't sit here in our safe houses and just point our fingers at people who were living in hugely tumultuous times in history (approaching World War 2). You would hate the enemy with a deep passion. Again, it doesn't make it right but historical context helps to understand that it's not just a matter of hating people because they're different but because they're doing great evils to people you love.

As for the cigarette and cigar concern, that's negligible in my books and getting pretty petty. I hate smoking, I think it's an unhealthy habit but I also understand it was very commonplace in those times and that it would be madness and petty to remove such references from the books. If you have problems with reading them, don't. If you don't want children reading books with these things, don't ban them, but use them as an opportunity for some quality discussion about what they're reading. Children need to develop critical thinking skills and this is a good starting point - safe discussion about unusual/date/controversial references in books (or any media for that matter).

I'd also like to point out that much of the content of "Congo" was due to Herge's editor and mentor, Father Norbert Wallez, whose politics tended to be on the extreme-right.

It was Wallez who insisted on a Congo setting in order to show what he saw as the benefits of colonialism and Herge probably not only agreed with his opinion but at that stage of his career it is not healthy to argue with the boss.

There is also the fact that in his next story, "America", Herge did depict the Native American Indians as easily manipulated by Bobby Smiles, but also treated shoddily by the white businessmen who force them off their land and build a city in order to exploit the local oil.

Conrad's Heart of Darkness, despite being one of the great works of literature and a condemnation of imperialism, is still criticised by some people because they believe that it treats the natives as little more than savages. Chinua Achebe even calls Conrad a racist.

He's certainly showing a rose-coloured portrayal of Belgian colonialism in the Congo. If the reality of life in the Belgian Congo had been similar to the way Hergé showed it - ie: the black population being gently patronised and mildly bossed around by well-meaning white missionaries and Belgian teenagers - I don't think anyone would have so much of a problem with the book. Surely the really offensive thing about the book - more offensive than the stereotyped but not unkindly meant drawing of "rubbery-lipped natives" - is the way it whitewashes the horrendous reality of the Belgian Congo, which, as others have pointed out way back in this thread, was littke more than a genocidal slave colony, extremely brutal even by the colonial standards of the time.

However, I wouldn't agree that Hergé was too jaundiced in his view of the Japanese occupation of China. If you read into the actual history, then if anything, Hergé holds back on showing the full cruelties and horrors of life under the Japanese Empire in East Asia, presumably conscious of keeping the strip suitable for children.

I agree that Hergé is arguably somewhat racist in his portrayal of individual Japanese faces, especially compared to his more mature work, where he tends to portray the ordinary foot-soldiers of "baddie" regimes more sympathetically and realistically, as just ordinary conscripts obeying orders. But I think it's excusable in the case of The Blue Lotus, given that Hergé was going against the grain of the "standard" European view of Japan as a civilising colonial force for good in the region and needing to make the argumant forcefully. No doubt The Blue Lotus needs to be placed in this historical context for a young reader today to understand why the Japanese are portrayed the way they are, but the English translation has always been published with just such a historical note as a foreword, so that seems fine to me.

Like most of us, I'm sure, I don't have any problem with the portrayal of smoking in the books. It's simply showing the reality of life in the mid-twentieth century, which is interesting for kids today to see. Ditto the portrayal of big game hunting in Tintin and the Congo.

Maybe it's this question of whether what's been shown is truthful which makes the difference between which Tintin books seem offensive or inoffensive today. Even though Hergé's cartoony shorthand for portraying the facial features and temprements of Black Africans, Arabs, U.S. Americans, Japanese, South Americans, etc, can seem a bit simplistic or even racist by today's standards, most of the books where such stereotyping occurs do at least portray some sort of truth about the situation in these parts of the world at the time (including Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, now that most people have finally admitted that the early Soviet regime was indeed a brutal dictatorship).

The thing which stands out about Tintin in the Congo, by contrast, is how far from the grim truth of the actual place Hergé's portrayal is. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for anyone being allowed to read it, both to learn about the way Europeans saw their empires at the time, and, frankly, to take a simplistic guilt-free pleasure in enjoying the slapstick fun of the story, blown-up rhinos and all. But, I think it's completely reasonable to shelve it in the teen or adult sections of bookshops with the contextualising wrap-round belly-band and foreword it's been sold with, just to make sure any poorly educated kids reading it don't get the impression that the patronising racism is acceptable today or that colonialism was really that fun for the black population. In short, I think Egmont and the UK bookshops have got it about right.

I don't suppose we could put this down to some kind of artistic licence?

The Japanese are shown with beaming teeth, while the Chinese are shown as tight-lipped. This is just a way of telling one from the other.

I suppose you'll now argue that all Orientals should be presented as the same: with beaming teeth or tight-lips no matter where they come from - but Herge was trying to make some political points.

Smoking
How about the books including x-rays of a smoker's lungs?