Tintin Forums

GAH. So many French articles... XD

I agree - Tintin in Congo is a reflection of history, it was written based on events in the past, not the present. There were things that happened like that. It's fact. It's not what Hergé thinks right now - and if I'm correct Hergé regretted some of the scenes/part of plot. And just a fun fact, here in Indonesia it doesn't seem very controversial as they are still publishing and selling out Indonesian editions of this book. Hahah...

I'm curious, though, Tintin has been around the world and people from other countries has been pictured several times as somehow not as good as Tintin and friends (I'm not sure what the exact word is xD), but why is this one SO controversial? Others don't seem to have a problem...

It's just the somewhat "racist" view of the Africans: portraying them as naive and easily manipulated. Look at the way that Tintin keeps showing off technology as magic, such as when the natives believe that their witch-doctor is inside the gramophone or that the scene between him and gangster Tom is a live event rather than a film projection.

This patronising attitude was rather short-lived. From "The Blue Lotus" onwards, Herge took more trouble into researching the ways and customs of foreign peoples and ethnic minorities and avoided showing them as simple-minded. The Chinese in "Lotus" are shown to be very much in line with the times, rather than a bunch of simple-minded peasants or crafty villains a la Fu Manchu (which was popular at the time).

If Herge had written and drawn an African adventure in the post-Lotus days he would have probably portrayed a world of slums and oppression in which most Africans are poorly-educated rather than actually stupid.

"Tintin in the Congo is a reflection of the time. We must learn to reread it, not ban it."

Yes we must re read it but NOT with our present views of life and read it as it was in the day.
King Leopold II had the same attitude in those days and regarded the Congo as his….

Those days were completely different. I had an uncle who was a missionary in the Congo up until the independence and had a very similar view of the Congo as Herge/Tintin had. He hunted Elephant and travelled in a jeep and was fascinated on how the native women gave birth in the fields and returned to work then later discovered Hospitals manned by the whites and on it goes. We have just recently apologised to the Aboriginals for the bad treatment the Government gave them decades ago. Again that is the way it was then but we can not judge those days with to-days views and attitudes. We know better now but then so did our forefathers at the time.

"Tintin au Congo" isn't racist: Hergé doesn't HATE the Africans, he merely treats them with paternalistic contempt. There's a difference.

I had an interesting experience with my daughter. She took an interest in Tintin when she was 9 and we read the books together. When we read Tintin au Congo, I did my best to keep free of value judgments. I was proud of her when she picked out the racist contempt all by herself. We had a good discussion about this, about understanding a book according to the time it was written.

We never re-read that book, once is enough. We never got through "Tintin en Amérique", because Milou (Snowy) says something unbelievably racist against dogs that belong to the Native Americans.

I think it's possible to enjoy Tintin without reading EITHER of those books; we read them once, that's enough. Other books in the series we read over and over gain. In my opinion, the Tintin series would not be hurt if they just dropped those two books from the canon (much in the same way that Tintin and the Soviets was buried and forgotten). The loss of those two books would probably IMPROVE the franchise.

I mentioned this in a previous post.Has anybody ever come across Tintin in the Congo in there local library.It would be interesting due to the controversial nature of the book as it comes with the unchild friendly red band across the book.I did a local internet search on my local libraries and it doesn't appear in circulation everywhere.
I remember coming across Land of the Soviets in my local library back in 2001 I was astonished as I had never ever seen any of the pictures from it.

I didn't exactly see them in a library, but there are so so many of those at the local popular bookstore here, on the shelves along with the other titles. Does that count?

Rianna Lauren
Well half and half its good that it is in more book shops than I thought it would be.But I'm still interested if it has been doing its trips around local libraries.

My local library never had Tintin in the Congo, nor did any other libraries I visited (either local or interstate). That is until I visited my cousin in the country (Hamilton, Victoria - Australia). The Hamilton town library had the black and white release! Amazing. That was my first encounter with Tintin in the Congo - the mid 90's. I was fascinated by the raw quality of the album but I enjoyed it for it's silliness. I searched high and low, online and off but had no luck finding my own copy until the turn of the millenium. It's just in the last year or so that my local library got some copies of Tintin in the Congo (colour release). The strange thing is that I almost always see it on the shelf there.

If you live in the U.S., then you probably won't find it in any library. All American libraries I've seen stock Tintin books publish by Little, Brown &Co. Since Little Brown never published Tintin in the Congo, libraries won't have it. As for English libraries, I'm not sure.

It is available in the Norfolk Library Service (UK).