by Rija Faisal
What is the alleged connection between Hergé’s early comics and propaganda?
Tintin, or The Adventures of Tintin, is a comic series by the Belgian cartoonist Herge. Tintin is the titular protagonist of the series. He is a reporter and an adventurer who travels around the world with his dog Snowy.
Known by the pen name Herge, the creator of Tintin, Georges Prosper Remi, was born in 1907 in Belgium. He began his career by contributing illustrations to Scouting magazines. He developed his first comic series, The Adventures of Totor, for Le Boy – Scout Belge in 1926. Working for Le Vingtieme Siecle, a conservative Catholic newspaper, Herge created The Adventures of Tintin in 1929.
The early installments of the Tintin comic series – Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, Tintin in America and Tintin in Congo – were designed as conservative propaganda.
Herge’s work on the wartime newspaper (Le Soir), which was controlled by the Nazi administration, is well documented, as is the fact that some of his earlier Tintin comics spread far-right ideas to children. Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and Tintin in Congo are among the most controversial, with Tintin in the Land of the Soviets being so direct in its anti-communist propaganda that in later years, Herge would try to suppress its publication. In Tintin in Congo, Tintin travels to his country’s former colony and is depicted as “civilizing” the native people ( the natives are portrayed with a combination of racism and inferiority, as stupid and lazy people) and dispensing his “white man’s” knowledge to the natives.
In another Tintin story ( The Shooting Star, about a European expedition to recover a meteorite from the Arctic ) the rival expedition is portrayed as America and it is funded by a greedy Jewish financier named Bluemnstein. He was depicted as a stereotypical Jewish villain. In later editions, Bluemenstein was renamed Bohlwinkel and he came from the fictional country of Sao Rico. The story painted an anti-Semitic caricature that remained even in later years.
References
(20 November, 2017). Why Tintin illustrations by Politically Controversial Herge Break the 1m Mark Artlyst.com. Retrieved from: https://www.artlyst.com/tintin-illustrations-politically-controversial-herge-break-1m-mark/
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