To Read or Not to Read?

In recent weeks a brouhaha has been boiling up over the publication, for the first time in English (Little, Brown Young Readers; Reprint edition in the United States), of one of Hergé’s famous comic strip Tintin books, Tintin in the Congo (Tintin au Congo). 

Written and drawn in 1930-31, originally in black and white, serialized form, it appeared in a Brussels newspaper’s weekly youth supplement, Le Petit Vingtiém. The story tells the tale of Tintin, an imagined boy reporter for the supplement, who travels with Snowy, his opinionated canine sidekick, to the Belgian Congo, still a colony of Belgium.

Due to controversy over its sub-human depictions of the Congolese people, and some of the extremely violent acts that Tintin perpetrates against African wildlife he encounters (he stuffs a live rhinoceros with dynamite and blows him to smithereens), the 1930-31 version was replaced by a redrawn, colorized, and somewhat sanitized, though still highly racist, version in 1946. Still, it never appeared in English until now.

This year is the 100th birthday of Georges Remi, the cartoonist who gained world-renown using the pen name Hergé, the Tintin author. In honor of the occasion, the first English-language translation of the original black and white version of Tintin au Congo is being published. 

In response, the British Commission for Racial Equality issued a strong protest, demanding that the Borders chain remove the book from their stores in Australia, Britain, New Zealand and the United States.  Borders’ reaction to the protest was to announce that the book would not be stocked with other children’s books, but would still be available in the “adult graphic novel section,” along with other—often semi-pornographic— illustrated fiction.

The choice was a telling, if unconscious, one; an implicit admission that racism, like pornography, is a guilty pleasure suitable for adults but not for children.  Whether adults are more in control of their race hatred than children is highly questionable, but the question remains.  What to do with the book?

The original comic version of Tintin in the Congo, appeared in the children’s supplement of a conservative Catholic Belgian newspaper, Le Vingtiéme Siecle. The editor of the was Father Norbert Wallez, a right-wing reactionary who proudly displayed a personally inscribed photograph of Benito Mussolini, Italy’s fascist dictator, on the wall of his office.

According to Nilanjana S. Roy, writing from New Delhi for the Business Standard, July 20, 2007, Hergé was taking marching orders from Wallez, his mentor and boss.  “He suggested to Hergé that his next adventure [the previous one, his first, was an intrigue-filled visit to the Soviet Union—editor] should educate Belgians about the values of colonialism.”  Roy continues, “The Congo was a Belgian colony at the time, and Wallez told Hergé to depict the many ways in which civilization had been brought to the unenlightened natives.  As one may imagine,” Roy adds, “this is not a popular or even acceptable perspective in our times; in 1930, however, Wallez’s sentiments were almost unexceptionable.”

Hergé would eventually distance himself from Tintin au Congo and its condescending and violent colonialist perspective, explaining that his own ignorance, and an influential editor, had motivated the unfortunate storyline. “All I knew about the country was what people said at the time: ‘Negroes are big children. Happily for them we are there.’”

Given this, and the book’s monkey-like depiction of Africans, a call to ban the book is not surprising—though book banning is mostly the activity of tyrants and fanatics.  (Then again, an English translation of Mein Kampf remains in print and continues to place fairly well in the Amazon ranking system.)  The issue is, should children—or adults for that matter—be shielded from the toxic and murderous legacy of colonialism, or should they be educated as to the ways that systems of culture and knowledge have too often provided amusing and lubricated corridors for the proliferation of racist and other repugnant ideas. The Belgian occupation of the Congo was murderous and marked by the massacres of entire villages, reducing the indigenous population by half.

In writing our recent book, Typecasting: The Arts & Sciences of Human Inequality, we encountered and documented, the history of ideas of human inequality, and Tintin in the Congo is part of a for-the-most-part unknown or hidden tradition that needs to be known and dissected, not hidden from view in the “adult section.”  It is tough stuff to look at, and demands surgical examination, but banning and/or hiding it in the "adult section" only contributes to the lurid fascination that racially or sexually hateful materials  often provoke when examined furtively, or among a coterie of devotees who accept these values as their own.  The light of day is a friend, particularly when it is directed thoughtfully.

Since its publication in Britain (it will appear in the United States in September), Tintin in the Congo has jumped onto the bestseller list at Amazon and is being prolifically back-ordered in the U.S.  It won’t go away. 

We hope that S&S readers will share their thoughts on how to create a forum about the book, and other artifacts of European conquest, that will help to build a greater sense of human community, that will encourage all of us to be able to see through the eyes of others.  Without that, book or no book, we will remain in deep shit.

NOTE: The online publication, The Red Pencil, has some interesting back and forth about how teachers should think about presenting the book to students. You might want to have a look at a piece by Vivek. A follow up piece is of interest as well.

With Tintin, it wasn't just Africa that received a racist treatment. The series is a panoply, worthy of scrutiny because it gives one a vivid and sense of the influence of entertainment on children's ways of seeing.

Comments

[Drum]

my comment would be that we are on the verge of a global depression if we are not in one already. Race (Obama) and sex (McGreevy, Paterson, and Spitzer) serve as nice distractions as the world economy goes down the toilet.

[Emma Bell]

OBAMA'S SPEECH WAS ABOUT MOVING BEYOND RACE TO ADDRESS IMPORTANT ISSUES--ECONOMIC, ETC.--RATHER THAN BE DISTRACTED. READ THE SPEECH BEFORE COMMENTING THIS WAY. THIS IS A MOMENT FOR THOUGHT, NOT KNEE-JERK REACTION, DRUM

[Drum]

Sounds like someone's been Obamatized. Was there any fainting?lol.
I saw and read "the speech". Unfortunately, everyone is still talking about race and whether "the speech" stopped any slide in the polls. To me that constitutes a distraction. My main point is that it would have served him better to give a "National Discussion about the impending depression" and saved the "national discussion about race" for a less dire time. It was also a "knee jerk" reaction on his campaigns part to give "the Speech." The attempt to distance himself from pastor Wright, who by the way is pretty much "Wright on" should have been done at some other point, if at all. The Democrats and the media have now spent an entire week focusing on recondite issues of race, and the tabloids have been full of gubernatorial sexual escapades (my other distraction point), and whether or not "the speech" actually moved us beyond the issue of race. This all during the same week that has seen the bill come due on the housing bubble and its resultant contagion currently working its way through wall street. Obviously we should move beyond race, but did the movement have to start this week? This is not just Obamatimes fault, clearly the media has fostered a horesrace mentality, as they always do (more distractions). But he took the bait. And I would contend that he did so in an effort to regain momentum, and to stop any slide rather than to "move away from race." I applaud any effort to "move away from race" but there must be priorities.
Both candidates should have been hammering the Bush administrations policies and the deregulation that created the subprime problem, and discussing ways to help those on main street not just wall street, all week. This would have gotten us beyond the issue of race without discussing race. Problems with race relations will still be there after the depression, they will not be solved or put behind us based upon a single "national discussion."

[Nike Shox For Sale]

And for better or worse, the outcome of the global recession will be closer regulation of the world's economic and financial systems, for years to come.

[Nike Frees]

applied once the child is born or perhaps a lavish gift for either the parents or the

[freelance writing]

Tintin was one of my most favorite heroes! Except for Marso Pilami (actually, I don't remember the right spelling)...

[pot litghts toronto]

What a nice childrens literature! I used to read such books when I was a kid. Thanks for sharing!

[term papers]

strategies for combating divisive ways of seeing.