Tintin In The Congo

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: GUEST,Black Hawk unlogged
Date: 23 Jul 07 - 11:47 AM

Insults, like beauty, are in the eyes of the beholder.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 23 Jul 07 - 12:22 PM

Allow me to re-phrase that in a more emphatic manner: "Listen, you scum-sucking maggot, insults, like beauty, are in the eyes of the floor-licking beholder. So quit your whinging, you low-life bit of filth, and grow up."

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: pdq
Date: 23 Jul 07 - 01:27 PM

There seems to be less outrage about Rap than there is about a comic book that is over 75 years old.

You have the choice to read the comic book or not to read it.

People in marginal heighborhoods have "DIE HONKY MUTHUH FUKKA" blasted in their faces at 120 dB. They have to endure "boom" and "thump" noise that is so loud it makes you feel like throwing up. Other words include exorting people to murder of cops, homosexuals, and anyone the rapper hates.

Do some of you folks have a problem with perspective?

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Peace
Date: 23 Jul 07 - 01:40 PM

"Do some of you folks have a problem with perspective? "

Lemme ask that back to you, pdq. Do you find either of those things to be good?

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: pdq
Date: 23 Jul 07 - 01:49 PM

Put your effort into stopping the bleeding from the severed artery first. Worry about the sprained thumb later.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Peace
Date: 23 Jul 07 - 04:18 PM

Nice philosophy, but it's not an answer.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 23 Jul 07 - 05:36 PM

"Little Black Sambo" by Helen Bannerman remains one of the children's classics most in demand, bringing $6000-$17000, depending on condition, for the 1899 edition. Reprints c. 1930s bring up to $1800. The original text, as well as a poorly thought out PC edition, are still in print.
A first of "Tintin au Congo," more recent and printed in large quantities, only sells for $500 or so. It remains in print in French and English.

Books reflect their period, and must be read in order to appreciate the society of our antecedents. No one is educated who fails to understand the society of our past and its literature. It is a severe fault of our educational system and our society that this is not taught to our young. Instead, apologists wring their hands, spread pap instead of knowledge and excuse anti-social behavior on the grounds that our forefathers were to blame for their present lowly condition.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 23 Jul 07 - 06:09 PM

How 'bout if we start with trying to teach kids to read and write to a functional level? Once we manage that, we can talk about teaching them to "understand the society of our past and its literature". And we can spend one fifty-minute period showing them samples of racist children's literature, so they get the idea.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Azizi
Date: 23 Jul 07 - 06:10 PM

"Appreciating" and "understanding" are two different things.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 23 Jul 07 - 07:30 PM

Are you equating 'appreciate' with 'like'? Misuse of the word.

Appreciate 1a: "to grasp the nature, worth, quality, or significance of;"... 1c: "to judge with heightened perception or understanding ..."

Understand 1a: "to grasp the meaning of," ...2: "To achieve a grasp of the nature, significance or explanation of something."

Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.
Succinctly stated- Two aspects of comprehension in bed with one other.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: GUEST,ibo
Date: 23 Jul 07 - 08:22 PM

put BORO TINTIN into your computer and watch some excellent teeside humour,not for the prudish

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Azizi
Date: 23 Jul 07 - 09:05 PM

"Two aspects of comprehension in bed with one other."

Well, it seems to me that this subject is emotional enough without bringing sex into the picture.

:o}

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Little Hawk
Date: 08 Aug 07 - 07:39 PM

Oh, good Lord...not again.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Gurney
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 12:51 AM

I clicked the link to the picture up there. Am I the only one who thinks the guy in the chair is pretty much as much a caricature as the ones carrying it? And no, they don't look like any kind of baboon that I've ever seen.

I've just put a Tintin book of my boy's on TradeMe, as it happens.   Destination: Moon.
The spaceship was designed by a German, I could tell.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 07:43 AM

Had a look at the linked pictures. Everyone in them looks like a caricature...

The Blacks. Tintin. The dog. They all look like cartoon caricatures, and they all look typical of such art in thousands and thousands of commonly sold books at that time...in fact right up through the 1950's.

It's not a threat to anyone to put that book on a store shelf, although our ways of depicting Black characters in cartoons and movies have definitely changed greatly in recent times, and for the better.

I have also seen several modern movies in the past 10 or 20 years, movies with no trace of racist sentiment in them, which depicted visiting white people in Asia or Africa being carried in a sedan chair of some kind by the local Asian or African people, while traveling in the hinterlands. Saw one like that about China the other day, the events being set in the 1930s.

So what? That used to really happen. To depict it happening in a past era is culturally and historically accurate. So why would it offend someone to see a depiction of those things that happened in a former time, and were quite ordinary back then?

It is not a recommendation that anything like that be done NOW. It is a view of a reality long past, and as such, it's history. You have to learn about history in order to avoid repeating it, don't you?

What is, however, a real genuine threat right NOW to a great many people, as pdq has pointed out, is the absolutely vicious gangsta rap garbage that is being foisted on a generation of young people via TV and radio. It (much of it) foments violence, race hatred, crime, rape, and hatred of women. It (again, much of it) is blatantly brutal and antisocial. It brutalizes young people of ALL races. It holds up totally corrupt role models in front of them.

Oh, but then you'd have to openly take issue with a "visible minority's" cultural choices, wouldn't you?

Goodness sakes! We can't do that, can we? Someone might accuse us of being "racists", for gosh sakes....and we might be banned forever from the further company of all decent liberals and conservatives in today's zero tolerance for "racism" society. (extreme sarcasm on my part in this last paragraph)

That's what's going on these days. That is the present climate of fear and the muzzling of people in our society. And it IS racism, in my opinion. It's self-inflicted racism as a matter of fact...although quite unintentionally self-inflicted. It's another case of the road to hell being paved with the very best of intentions.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Grab
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 08:50 AM

As LH says, it's a historical artifact.

Sure, it shows blacks as less intelligent/educated, because that was the European-imperial view back then. Post-WWII, I can also find you a whole bunch of war books and films showing Germans as psycho Nazis, because that was the general view of the US/UK folk who would be reading/watching them.

In other works: As an apologist for imperialism, Kipling generally shows the people of India in a good light, but also makes it clear that the whites are in charge and the natives are grateful for the whites running the place. "Porgy and Bess" was hugely daring for 1935, but today (and even by the 50s) it was seen as grossly stereotyped. And Harper Lee calls black Americans "Negroes" in "To kill a mockingbird", which isa deeply un-PC word today.

Graham.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Mrrzy
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 10:57 AM

Used to happen, nothing - still does. Anybody been to the far east lately? And if you actually *read* Tintin au Congo, you'll see that the treatment of the Africans isn't actually racist - sure, they talk like Africans, but they think like humans, and Tintin in particular is always defending "colored" people against the generic white racism of dominance - look at Le Lotus Bleu, or Tintin au Tibet, or the one where he punches out the idiots for being mean to the little orange seller in, I think, Peru.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Peace
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 11:14 AM

That may be so, but the author is on record as saying he was sorry he wrote that book.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: pdq
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 11:21 AM

I fail to see a reason for all this Tintinnabulation.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 02:10 PM

Tintin au Congo, the video cartoon (available on DVD, French and English, from Amazon.ca) is innocuous, as Mrrzy says.

Unfortunately, conditions in the Congo are worse than they were when it was the Belgian Leopold's property. The actions of the Belgian government can't be defended,but there is no effective government today. An estimated 3.8 million people died in the war that took place starting in 1998. It supposedly ended 3-4 ears ago, but genocide, displacement, slavery, starvation and even cannibalism continues.

I wasn't going to comment in this thread anymore but in a thrift shop I ran across the old Epps hit record from 1960, "Bongo, Bongo, Bongo, I Don't Want to Leave the Congo." Again, innocuous, but I am sure misplaced PC condemns it as well.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 02:28 PM

"Misplaced PC", as you put it, Q, is forever walking around with its tongue hanging out and carrying a giant chip on its shoulder, hoping it can find something else utterly trivial to raise holy hell about and call "racism"....while turning a blind eye to far bigger problems that are all around it in society.

That's why I object to it so strenuously. It's out of touch, and it's counterproductive if you want a world where people live in genuine brotherhood (and sisterhood).

Anyone remember the civic official down in the States whose job was threatened over his use of the word "niggardly" in a conversation? It's a word which has NOTHING to do with Black people. It means cheap or stingy, and it comes from Scottish dialect...not connected in any way to the infamous "N" word. That, however, completely escaped the awareness of the enraged protestors who chose to try and destroy this man's career because he used a word they didn't even understand the meaning of. And you couldn't tell them a thing about it, could you? No, they were damn mad, and they wanted to stay that way. It felt so good.

Another case of ignorance and knee-jerk reaction completely nullifying comprehension of the matter at hand...

That's a bit different case from this Tintin squabble, but I think it arises out of the same type of orchestrated, media-driven public overreaction to a PC-stimulated automatic response.

The media loves pointless, divisive stuff like this. It gives them something exciting to report on the news. More sound bites. Yippee.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 14 Aug 07 - 09:55 PM

Belgium is issuing a special sheet of postage stamps this year to celebrate 100 years since the birth of Herge. The sheet has 25 different designs based on the famous Tin Tin.