Tintin In The Congo

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.

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 08 Aug 07 - 07:39 PM

Oh, good Lord...not again.

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: 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: 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: Azizi
Date: 23 Jul 07 - 06:10 PM

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

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: 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: Peace
Date: 23 Jul 07 - 04:18 PM

Nice philosophy, but it's not an answer.

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 - 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 - 01:27 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: 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: 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: Mrrzy
Date: 23 Jul 07 - 11:40 AM

Oh, I'm sure it was meant to be insulting - just as the Asterix ones were. In the good old days you were allowed to use satire...

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: GUEST,Black Hawk unlogged
Date: 23 Jul 07 - 09:27 AM

Ever seen the little black boy depicted in the early 'Oor Wullie' cartoons (recently reprinted)?

It was 'of the day' and not meant to be insulting. Hindsight???

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Mrrzy
Date: 22 Jul 07 - 07:17 PM

When I read this as a child growing up white in West Africa I didn't think it any more stereotypical than Titin en Amerique, or Asterix chez absolutely anybody. Getting upset about this one is like Chef getting upset (shocked, shocked) that South Park made fun of whatever that weird sect is.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Azizi
Date: 22 Jul 07 - 01:53 AM

Peace, thanks for your recognition of and strong advocacy for the position that ideas and images in mass media-including in comic books-may not only mirror but often help shape and reinforce negative attitudes & opinions.

It seems to me that it is appropriate for persons interested in folk culture to recall, collect, document, analyze, and discuss examples of songs, rhymes, sayings, advertisements, books-including comic books-and other indices of popular culture which purposely or unknowingly contain text and/or images that are racists {and/or sexists, and homophobic, etc}.

However, in my view, that is far different than being nostalgic about those examples. Imo, discussing these examples from folkloric perspectives is also far different than failing to realize the real and pervasive harm these songs, and that kind of literature, and those images did and still can do to the psyches of individuals-both those depicted and/or described disparagingly and those who are depicted and described as superior to them.

If we want a better world for our children and our children's children free of racism and sexism and other negative isms, than it seems to me that we have to do more than identify and eradicate   the root causes of racism. We also have to be alert to and treat gingerly-while we collect, and document,and analyze and discuss, those examples of racism in our cultures.

In my opinion, "Tintin of the Congo}, like "Little Black Sambo," could-and perhaps should-be used as a educational resource for older youth and adults to demonstrate the destructive nature of children's literature.

Should children and older youth and adults read it for enjoyment's sake? I certainly hope not.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Peace
Date: 22 Jul 07 - 12:45 AM

We live in a world of contradictions. But we DO know that comic is just plain wrong.

As to the meat-eating thing: I've tracked and shot my supper, gutted it, skinned it, cooked it and eaten it. I've prepared steers for market, helped load 'em and send them off. I've been inside the holding pens and inside on the killing floor. My eldest was with me when we took the catch from some rabbit snares. She helped clean 'em and cook 'em. She also helped a neighbour on the reserve cut up a moose for drying. She's aware that if you are going to eat it you best be prepared to do the dirty work, too.

The Tintin thing is different. Damn. I KNOW you know that, LH. rhinos and humans are NOT the same. We should know better than to hurt others in that manner.

*******************************************************

As to a remark above suggesting I don't know what revisionist history is: like hell I don't. It has nothing to do with 1905 or 1917. It has to do with Whites talking for others as if it was the most natural thing--accepted by the secondary 'races'. "If God hadn't meant us to be superior he wouldn't have made us superior" kinda crap. (Nice try, but no banana). And that shit gets printed in the books. Find a redeeming quality in "Tintin au Congo". Let me know what it is. Thank you.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Jul 07 - 12:30 AM

Well, obviously neither you nor I will buy it, and I doubt that anyone else here will either. It doesn't worry me that a few people who are Tintin collectors will buy it, because that's up to them, not me. They're interested in it, I'm not. They'll read it, I won't. I do not regard a few Tintin readers as being dangerous to the world.

Regarding Tintin being "cruel to animals" (he apparently shoots a rhino?) in the original post: We have a vast number of comics and graphic novels about people shooting other people, and we take that for granted as "entertainment"...but we can't bear to see Tintin shoot a rhino? Very odd. Very odd indeed.   

Anyone seen what happens inside the stockyards to hundreds of thousands of animals? I guess if you did, you might think twice about buying those nice, neatly wrapped packages of meat you purchase at the supermarket.

But it doesn't matter, cos you don't see the violence being done, right? You don't see the blood, you don't hear the screams of pain and terror, you don't see the filth and slaughter...

I know about it, I think about it some, but like most people I'm basically pretty lazy, I like convenience, and I'm habituated to eating a certain amount of meat...so like most people I go ahead and buy the stuff anyway, thereby contributing to institutionalized cruelty to animals on a truly massive scale, and passing on the moral responsibility to someone else.

So I'm not under the illusion that I'm a morally superior enough person to berate some other people over publishing a comic book story where a comic book rhino gets shot.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Peace
Date: 22 Jul 07 - 12:14 AM

"July 18, 2007, 11:56 am
Annals of Damage Control: Tintin Edition

By Mike Nizza

Complaints about "Tintin in the Congo," a comic book originally published in 1931, gathered momentum recently when David Enright, a lawyer in London, happened to pick up a copy as he strolled through a Borders store there.

What he saw in the book — suggestions "that Africans are subhumans, they are imbeciles, that they're half-savage" — is not in dispute. Even Hergé, the celebrated author and illustrator of the 23 Tintin books, was said to regret the volume before his death in 1983.
Borders' next move in Britain, which was announced after the Commission for Racial Equality leveled charges of racism, was to transfer the comic to the adult graphic novel shelves. Now, the United States and Australia have followed suit."



The author knew he was wrong. But we all know better, don't we.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Peace
Date: 22 Jul 07 - 12:06 AM

This what you're trying to bring back? The Blacks are SMILING. We so happy, Massa. We gets to carry yo white ass aROUNd

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Peace
Date: 21 Jul 07 - 11:59 PM

I don't need everything to be a goddamned litany. We be talkin' about a shit cartoon that portrays Black people in Africa as if they were monkeys. So we keep the warm shit steaming and bring that stuff back to life, right? Sorry. NOT ME because I think it's racist bullshit, and much worse if our generation brings it back. Have a nice day.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Jul 07 - 08:48 PM

Yeah, that's true, Peace. We all get hurt. Life is like that. No one prepared me for some of the stuff I ran into either. I don't think there's any way that one can regulate it or control it from the top down to make it so no one gets hurt any more, but one can certainly try one's best not to hurt others.

The whites thought of the Indians as savages. The Indians thought of the whites as savages. There was a lost of circumstantial evidence to support (or deny) either viewpoint, depending on who you were and what part of it you were focusing on. They both committed very savage acts upon the other at times, yet both were equally human, and equally gifted with the finer human attributes.

Everyone feels their own pain. That's universal. When they make the stretch to fully comprehend someone else's pain, someone who is different from themselves, someone who belongs to a group deemed as "the enemy", then they have completed the circle of life and of understanding.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Peace
Date: 21 Jul 07 - 08:10 PM

I felt much like that until I encountered a student who was reading one of the "Little House on the Praire" books (I think there were about eight of them) and she had some 'mist' in her eyes. Her people (Indian) had been referred to as savages in the book. No one prepared her for that. Real people get real hurt by thoughtless shit.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 21 Jul 07 - 07:44 PM

A reasonable view, Little Hawk.

The word revision began to acquire baggage about c. 1900 with regard to a movement in Marxian socialism favoring an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary spirit (Webster's).
Nowadays it seems to mean replacing one flawed viewpoint with another, equally flawed.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Jul 07 - 07:44 PM

For instance, moronic expressions like "kick ass" are very prevalent in this culture.

I personally find that offensive, so you won't find me using the expression "kick ass" when there are any number of better ways to express the concept...

But what if a time comes when saying "kick ass" becomes officially deemed offensive, and is not politically acceptable in the media any longer? If so, there are going to be a lot of books and movies from the present to object to on that basis, aren't there? What will we do to protect society from such movies and books in the future? Dear, dear...!

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Jul 07 - 07:34 PM

Here's the funniest part of all.

Some of the stuff we take for granted now, and which is interwoven all through our culture, will someday be deeply offensive to someone in the future...because ideas will have changed.

And we don't yet know what that stuff is. We'll never know.

So go ahead in a time machine, if you can fine one, and witness some people in the future bitching about something you don't find the least bit offensive right now. You think your behaviour right now is absolutely as it should be, don't you? ;-) God, it's a treat always holding the moral high ground, isn't it? Met anyone yet who doesn't think they are?

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Jul 07 - 07:28 PM

Some people like Tintin (although I don't), simply because the Tintin stories were a part of their youth. I don't think they like Tintin because a particular episode of it involves depicting Africans as monkeys...

If you look at old Mickey Mouse comics from the 30's, you would find the stereotypical depictions of black people in them similarly offensive in today's terms. If you look at old Donald Duck comics from the 50's and early 60's, you will find stereotypical depictions of Native Americans ("Indians") and other Natives of various types that would be considered highly improper now.

The same was true of Popeye comics.

So what? It was a very different time.

People remember those various comics fondly now because of the good points they had, which were many, not because they want to see Africans depicted as monkeys or because they want to hear Native Americans saying things like...

"Ugh! That good. Heap good." (standard phony "Indian" dialect in the comics of my youth)

They remember these comics as reminders of their youth, and they remember them for the overall content, not the long passe cultural glitches and unconscious prejudices of a time that is no longer with us.

To get upset about those same books now, and expect them to dovetail in every sense with the cultural demands of our contemporary society is ridiculous. It's not worth working up a sweat over. It's a tempest in a teapot. People have objected to Mark Twain's marvelous writings for similar reasons, despite the fact that Twain simply wrote in the vernacular of the time. Even more ridiculous.

That's why this kind of controversy pisses me off. As if people didn't have more serious stuff to get worked up over.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Peace
Date: 21 Jul 07 - 07:17 PM

The stories were revisionist history at the time. To release them without explaining the historical context and what really was happening in Africa would be to support that revisionist history.

I do not now nor ever read Tintin. I detest the cartooning. In this case I would detest the story, too.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Jul 07 - 07:09 PM

I see no reason to oppose any of those arguments, Jack. I've been anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anti-fascist all my life. I also positively detest the right wing, Maggie Thatcher, British grand imperialism, and various other nations' efforts at grand imperialism...

You and I have nothing here to argue about here, in fact. We are simply looking at this matter from different angles that happen to concern us for whatever reason.

I would suggest, as you do, that people be given the information they need to make historical sense of such books. That is exactly what I suggest.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Jack Campin
Date: 21 Jul 07 - 06:20 PM

Most of us have not advocating censoring these things. What we have been suggesting is that people (kids in particular) be given the information they need to make historical sense of them. *Why* would a cartoonist want to represent Congolese as animals? Couldn't it *just* *possibly* have something to do with him coming out of a culture that had massacred up to 20 million of them, ending only at about the time he was born, and got away with it, with his political allegiance being to a party that wanted more of the same?

Usually when rednecks start this "PC"/"nanny state"/"Nazi bookburning" crap, what they really mean is they don't want anti-racist or anti-imperialist material getting into the public domain.

Brian Siano's page on the origins of the "PC" scare is illuminating:

http://www.briansiano.com/The%20Great%20Political%20Correctness%20Panic.htm

We had similar crap this side of the pond under Thatcher. What really ticked off the far right ideologues was that (1) better-written non-racist kids' books had been produced since their childhood, which any late 20th century kid in their right mind would prefer to read any day, (2) there was also educational material that made it very clear to any literate kid what the imperial assumptions behind stuff like Enid Blyton and Disney were.   And they *really* didn't want British kids coming in contact with ideas like that.

Another good book on the African genocides and 20th century imperialist amnesia about them: Sven Lindqvist, "Exterminate All the Brutes" (1992 in Swedish, translation 1996).

Another interesting tack on fascist literature is Klaus Theweleit's "Male Fantasies". He is so far from wanting to censor that stuff that he spent years unearthing wildly obscure proto-Nazi literature to make sense of it. Very few people could ever encounter it except through the quotations and images he uses - mountains of them, it's a huge book and he largely lets the material speak for itself. On a much smaller scale, Andrea Dworkin's "Right Wing Women" does something like that for American conservative ideologies - I certainly haven't come across those doolally ideas directly.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 21 Jul 07 - 06:02 PM

"Tintin in the Congo" is available from www.amazon.ca in English, 2005 printing. Also available in "Adventures of Tintin" vol. 1 (2007 edition) and in French as "Tintin au Congo."
It was written in 1930 when the Congo was Belgian (the author was Belgian) and is the second in the series.

The DVD set vol. 1-2, "Les Aventures de Tintin," 2005, is composed of selected stories; Tintin au Congo not included. Tracks in English and French, subtitles in English and French.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Jul 07 - 05:45 PM

I agree with Q above.

I see no reason to censor reading material from a previous social age because it does not suit present sensibilities. Censoring such things, in fact, prevents present day people from getting any chance to see historical things they don't agree with now, and on that basis, prevents them from really knowing what the hell it is that they are supposed to be against, since they are effectively ignorant regarding it.

The same goes for children. You do not protect children by making them ignorant of the past, and of how people in the past were expressing themselves. You give children a chance to learn something by giving them a chance to use their own intelligence, and compare the past to the present.

I don't even like Tintin books. I find them frankly annoying for various reasons. But I see no sense in banning them, nor do I see any sense in banning or censoring anything else like that which was first printed a long time ago. Knowing the way people thought at one time is better than not knowing, I figure, and how can you know how they thought if you don't LOOK at the stuff they had to say at the time?

Those who continually censor the past will in the process become so ignorant of it that they have little or no idea of how to detect destructive social trends in the present.

Hitler burned books. You know why? He wanted people to think only along one narrow party line. He wanted to erase their ability to think outside the mental box he was building for them. Present day efforts to censor the literature of the past because it offends some present day sensibilities are equally misguided and totalitarian, in my opinion.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Peace
Date: 21 Jul 07 - 05:31 PM

I agree with redhorse. Completely!

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: redhorse
Date: 21 Jul 07 - 04:58 PM

I remember reading Tintin in the Congo as a schoolkid around 1960 (I would have been about 12) the racial stereotypes seemed bloody crude then. This isn't about modern PC. This is recognising that racism is racism. You wouldn't reprint copies of der Stuermer nowadays, so why this?

nick

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Sausages Not Guns
Date: 21 Jul 07 - 01:34 PM

Here is a bloo klikee for jack campin's link. I wqas shocked. Why do we never hear about this African holocaust perpertrated by the Belgians?

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 14 Jul 07 - 02:26 PM

The heroes of my childhood - I dreamed of standing with Chinese Gordon at Khartoum as he fought off the dervish hordes. In my imagination I performed an unbelievable act of heroism that saved the day.
With Custer, I brought up the troop that killed the savages. I fought fuzzie-wuzzies, wily orientals, Zulus; all the heathen hordes of childhood literature. Sometimes I was on the other side, eating long pig with the South Sea cannibals.

Now Tintin is under attack. The icons of the past have fallen to the cult of "Correctness." Our children we consider brainless; we must spoon-feed them only applesauce.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: GUEST,Uncle Boko
Date: 14 Jul 07 - 12:56 PM

Perhaps if you were on the receiving end of 1000s of 'em charging at you waving spears you would have a different view!

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: GUEST,Sauages Not Guns
Date: 14 Jul 07 - 12:54 PM

I haven't seen this volume, but did enjoy Tintin as a child. I know some people have said that they found the depiction of cruelty to animals more offensive than the racial strereotypes. It's interesting that this book has been widely available worldwide since 1931 but not in England where it was only re-printed after a scene where tintin blows a rhino to bits was changed to show the rhino running nway. What we must remember is that in the 1930s european middle/upper class idiots DID blow animals to bits. They also treated black people as sub-human. I would not allow my children to read such rubbish.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: wysiwyg
Date: 14 Jul 07 - 12:31 PM

Thanks, dianavan-- that's very helpful as a concise integration/reduction of a number of other works and worldviews I've dipped into from time to time. (HUH?-- I know what I mean by that and it's a statement of positive regard.)

~Susan

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Jul 07 - 10:57 AM

I missed a point in my last post--before his own travles he was reading "travel books" produced by others so he layered their bigotry into his characters, but once he saw how things actually were he changed his tune, so to speak.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: GUEST,dianavan
Date: 14 Jul 07 - 02:02 AM

Susan - Thanks but I don't deserve the credit. You might find this site interesting. I'm sorry but I can't copy power point.

http://www.bemidjistate.edu/dsiems/powerpoint/freire/sld001.htm

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Jul 07 - 12:40 AM

I heard this discussed today on National Public Radio, in a fair amount of depth. I can't remember which program. Maybe Diane Rehm on her news roundup? Anyway, there seemed to have been a problem in that the author had done no traveling when his early books were produced, but once he did begin traveling on his own and saw how things were in the places he visited, his work became more balanced. That was the opinion I heard expressed this morning, at any rate.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Jack Campin
Date: 13 Jul 07 - 08:20 PM

Perhaps they would have learned something if they had been given the book, but if the editor had also included the pictures of native Congolese here...

http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Classroom/9912/colonization.html

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 13 Jul 07 - 05:56 PM

I think there is a difference between a book primarily written for adults that presents racist stereotypes, and a children's book that does. The comment that I read was from a man whose wife was from Africa. He picked the book up out of curiosity, thinking he'd give it to their two small children and decided against it when the native Africans were depicted to look like monkeys. I don't blame him.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: wysiwyg
Date: 13 Jul 07 - 05:18 PM

... early literacy skills which include the development of a critical consciousness ...

Pungent, clear, and memorable. GREAT line, great concept.

~S~

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 13 Jul 07 - 04:12 PM

And in Noddy they changed the Golliwogs to Goblins. If I were a Goblin I'd object!

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: katlaughing
Date: 13 Jul 07 - 04:06 PM

The first posting looked like trolling to me, too.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: wysiwyg
Date: 13 Jul 07 - 03:57 PM

I enjoy audiobooks of old, old books. They seem different now, with my older viewpoint, than they did earlier in my life. This is true of any "isms' I run into in them, as well as of every other aspect of them. Every time I encounter one of the "surprises," it's a chance to rethink huge, complicated issues.

I think our generations' challenge is not to sanitize and censor, but to keep thinking. That may mean there are some old favorites that are no longer favorites-- that have become retroactively and currently painful. But I don't hold myself responsible for pre-knowing which items are going to cause such a reaction, because I will know what I know when I know it. That's one complication we human beans have to deal with-- we experience time as a linear, living force.

~Susan

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: GUEST,dianavan
Date: 13 Jul 07 - 03:28 PM

I am deeply indebted to Tintin. He taught my son how to read at a time when most print did not interest him. Unlike many books for eight year old boys, Tintin was the perfect reading material for father and son.

I soon realized, however, that it was packed with racial stereotypes (due to the time it was written) which required further discussion, These discussion were not a bad thing. In fact, Tintin opened up the topic. Take a look at Tintin in America -

http://www.tintinologist.org/guides/books/03america.html

Most libraries carry Tintin so this might lead to widescale
censorship of Tintin. This would be a loss to the aquisition of early literacy skills which include the development of a critical consciousness.

Tintin needs to be a shared reading experience within the family but I have no idea how or if you would regulate it.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Jack Campin
Date: 13 Jul 07 - 03:25 PM

The guy WAS a fascist for a time - a supporter of the pro-Nazi Belgian Rexists - and for him to write a racist book about the Congo in the 1930s was like someone writing Holocaust denial literature in the 60s. Far more Congolese died under the Leopoldian System than Jews under the Nazis.

It seems he later changed his mind, and perhaps even willingly. But his Congo book is racist propaganda up there with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and to reprint it *without any comment on its historical context* is something only a white supremacist publisher would try.

E.D. Morel's "The Black Man's Burden" and Neal Ascherson's "The King Incorporated" will tell you what the Belgian regime in the Congo was like.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 Jul 07 - 02:06 PM

The first two posts, without any particulars, did look like troll stuff.
Like PoppaGator, I was interested in the particulars since I had bought the filmed stories.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: PoppaGator
Date: 13 Jul 07 - 01:59 PM

I made my 12:27 post when the first two postings had been deleted. That's why I felt the need for clarification; the single preceding post, displayed without context, was quite puzzling.

I can understand why some folks might find it appropriate to censor the book in question, but I really don't think think that our discussion should have been censored. This is a legitimate and intersting controversy.

I'm a bit surprised that Joe deleted the opening of this discussion, and very glad that he reconsidered.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 Jul 07 - 01:57 PM

Doesn't sound like one of the better editions of Tintin. Considering that the original story for this issue came from around the early 1930s, it strikes me that it falls into the same category as stories like "Little Black Sambo" and "Little Brown Coco."

I can see where my friend who collects certain comic books (she has a marvelous collection—complete—of reprints of the early "Prince Valiant" comic strips--covet covet!), even though she would probably find it offensive, might want to have it to fill out her collection of Tintin (I'll have to ask her what she thinks).

On the one hand, it sounds as if it could indeed be genuinely offensive to some folks, but on the other hand, just because something is offensive, should it be banned? No, not on that account alone. Very dangerous precident!

Perhaps putting it into a special section with other material that people might find offensive, with adequate signage to alert readers, would be a good solution. It doesn't ban it from the shelves, but, like the health warnings on cigarette packages (they're your lungs) or transfat statistics on food labels (they're your arteries), let the buyer beware.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Sausages Not Guns
Date: 13 Jul 07 - 01:47 PM

Censorship? I brought subject up because I had just read it in the London Evening Standard and ion BBC news!

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Joe Offer
Date: 13 Jul 07 - 01:41 PM

The first two messages came from another thread that had been deleted. I don't know whether it was proper to delete them or not, so I undeleted them.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 Jul 07 - 01:39 PM

Last year I bought the Tintin cartoon stories set for a grandkid. A set with english subtitles was available from amazon.ca (but not amazon.com).
Those I watched were excellent fun; I don't know if this one was one of them.

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Sausages Not Guns
Date: 13 Jul 07 - 01:15 PM

Here's some more info
BBC
and here Wikipedia

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: PoppaGator
Date: 13 Jul 07 - 12:36 PM

More details please!

..and maybe move down to BS...

Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 Jul 07 - 12:27 PM

Although I'm nowhere near a regular reader of Tintin (I've read through a few of them, but that was some years back--a friend of mine collects comic books and she loans them to me from time to time), I've always found the Tintin comic books fairly innocuous. I'd have to either see this issue or know a lot more about it to make any comments.

Don Firth

Subject: Tintin In The Congo
From: Sausages Not Guns
Date: 13 Jul 07 - 12:18 PM

The police are treating as a "racist incident" The fact that Borders stock a book! Borders say it's up to their customers to choose. What do the mudcats think?

Subject: RE: Tintin In THe Congo
From: GUEST,Out of office
Date: 13 Jul 07 - 06:29 AM

That you have just joined to open a non-music topic with a - hmmm let me think, possibly a racist theme,perhaps? - suggests a troll of the finest type.

Subject: Tintin In THe Congo
From: Sausages Not Guns
Date: 13 Jul 07 - 05:56 AM

What about this palaver about a kid's book written in 1930. Borders have been asked not to sell it. They have said that it is up to their customers to decide if what they want to read. Apparantly the book depicts native congolese as baboon type beings and also show Tintin being cruel to animals. Any mudcomments?