Tintin Forums

Was there any particular reason Herge chose Capone to be the only "real" villain (Musstler nonwithstanding)? I know I've read it somewhere but I don't remember.

Little Mijarka
Was there any particular reason Herge chose Capone to be the only "real" villain (Musstler nonwithstanding)? I know I've read it somewhere but I don't remember.

I think, Herge only had this opinionated episode imagining "what if Tintin would be given a chance to beat Al Capone's notorious mob, how would he do it?" Besides, between 1929 to 1936, Al Capone had been charged and arrested for several crimes committed.

I think Nelvana did a brilliant adaptation. I liked the way Capone was given far more emphasis and harassed Tintin all the way to the climax instead of being disposed of in a few pages as he is in the book. This gave the plot more of a running thread than in the book, which made it far better than Tintin meandering from gangster to gangster and peril to peril. If we had a movie, I say do the same thing.

As for political correctness, I say delete the Red Indians and the Wild West-style lynch mob (who couldn't even get the lynching right). They were stereotypes which could be construed as silly or offensive. I'm very glad Nelvana deleted those scenes and gave more weight to the Capone angle.

I say let the Siksika (Blackfeet,) who are mentioned in the book, work on that part. I like having Native people in the books, especially as a Native woman.


Let me ask---why do Europeans call us "Red Indians?" We're not red LOL. I still don't get that, and it drives me insane!

Heh, and not indian either.

And asian people aren't yellow, black people aren't black, white people aren't white. These colour codes are just remnants of old racial theories and classifications. Unfortunately still quite potent (give colour pencils to a kid, and he'll use them to split humanity into the number of distinct "kind of people" he's been taught to compartmentalize - whether or not he's been taught to see these groups as "equals") and still used by some administrations ("race" entries in some files). The day we'll manage to see objective skin colours without being influenced by these predefined colour categories, racial theories will have made a huge step towards oblivion. But, well, science permeates "common sense" and "popular wisdom" extremely slowly...

As for Tintin, at least those stereotypes were used to denounce inner colonialism, long before the trend of pro-indian westerns, etc. The intention makes them less shocking. Still, the whole caricature would probably look a bit redundant, now that people have more distance and critical information about the history of the USA. Also, the satire on redneck racism would be a bit extreme, although it still makes me laugh in the albums (the french version of "I raised the alarm and we hanged a few fellers right away but the thief got clear" is "I raised the alarm and we immediately hanged seven niggers, but the culprit escaped", and the "forty-four hoboes" lynched as the radio announces it later are "niggers" in the french version too). According to Herge, the KKK was very powerful at that time, and that's also something he wanted to criticize. I find it strange that the translation censored that.

Anyway, I'm not certain this album has aged very well. A movie would have to take place in the past, but maybe also to be adressed to readers of that time. It would be a bit too didactic for today, and its sarcasms would come a tad too late.