2. What is the alleged connection between Hergé’s early comics and propaganda?
The early works of Hergé have come under fire for many different reasons all of which regarding the controversial content in Tintin like Hergé’s depiction of race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and the alleged connection between those comics and propaganda. For years critics have discussed and debated the connection between Hergé’s early comics and propaganda and whether it is emblematic of his politics. The newspaper where Hergé worked was the Le Petit Vingtième, a French publication that continued to publish under the Nazi occupation at the time when many other publications did not. As a result, Hergé’s early works are littered with Nazi propaganda, in Paul Mountfort’s Tintin as Spectacle: The Backstory of a Popular Franchise and Late Capital (Mountfort, 2016) he explicitly states that “The first two Tintin albums are pure right-wing propaganda. Soviets was doctrinaire anti-Bolshevism, Tintin au Congo/Tintin in the Congo (1930–31) a sustained valorization of the appalling Belgian colonial enterprise.” (Mountfort, 2016).
Hergé’s comic art propaganda would continue to infect later Tintin albums up until L’Étoile mystérieuse/The Shooting Star (1941–42). Tintin’s very inception was designed as a way to sell comics and the rapid gain in popularity that Tintin had, shows that it was successful in this regard, Mountfort points out that the comics were “from the outset part of a commercial enterprise designed to sell copy as well as ideology” (Mountfort, 2016). One reason as to how Tintin was able to gain such massive popularity fast was that it was published as a full novel-length album which, as Mountfort states, pushed Tintin “into a sphere quasi-independent from its parent magazine where it could be read in more novelistic terms than a “mere” strip cartoon” (Mountfort, 2016). The connection between Hergé’s early comics and propaganda is blatantly clear and since then an apologetic but quite defensive Hergé would tone down certain aspects of the comics but shrugged off the alleged connection to anti-Semitism. Hergé’s main excuse being that was the style back then. The bigger issue with the connection to propaganda in these earlier comics was the fact that Hergé was publishing at all during this time when many other publications shut down during the war rather than collaborate with Nazi propagandists. It puts Hergé in a position where it is very difficult to not see him as a Nazi collaborator. Thus, the connection between these early comics from Hergé and the alleged propaganda that is featured within them is all but apparent when their origin is understood.
References
Mountfort, P. (2016). Tintin as Spectacle: The Backstory of a Popular Franchise and Late Capital.
Remi, G. (1942). The Shooting Star. Casterman.
Pop Genres 2020 