Week 2 Tintin

WEEK 2 POPULAR GENRE  

1.  How decisively did Hergé address this issue from The Blue Lotus on, and in what ways did it remain problematic? 

If you don’t know about something you intend to write about its usually a good to find out more about it somehow.  

When Herge announced that Tintin was going to the Far East, China he received a letter from Father Gossett, a Catholic priest and Chaplin of Chinese students at the University of Leuven. He wrote that if he made the mistake of drawing a Chinese with a pigtail or eating birds nests while shrieking “Hee, hee” he would cause much damage. Father Gossett encouraged Herge to do some research about China and their culture and introduced him to an art student named Chang Chongren. Chang taught Herge many things about Chinese drawing, poetry, religion and calligraphy which was a revelation for him. 

Chang assisted Herge in producing The Blue Lotus in 1934, considered his first masterpiece. Chang’s influence is seen on Shanghai streets scenes with Chinese banners and posters sayings about well-being and slogans on the walls of buildings with political messages of “Down with Imperialism” during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, China from 1931 onwards. 

Tintin was no longer just a children’s comic adventure book, it had become current affairs, contemporary journalism and strong political satire. The Blue Lotus was highly significant at that time and influenced every adventure after that. 

 During Tintin’s adventure in The Blue Lotus he saves an orphan boy from drowning who has the same name as Herge’s real friend Chang Chongren. Together they find the professor who develops a vaccine for the poison that makes people mad ‘Raijahjah’. Chang is adopted by the professor and here inlays the problem. 

Tintin being a ‘Hero’ and ‘Saviour’ of non-White, non-European people is the ongoing problem. This ‘Mighty Whitey’ trope was common at that time. It was expected that Tintin would succeed making him superior both to the local natives, even though he was sympathetic towards the Chinese (only, not all Asians). Additionally it is also reinforcing European superiority back home when people are saved by kindhearted white Europeans who know best. 

REFERENCES 

Mountford, P. (2020). Tintin: the franchise and Herge’s The Blue Lotus. Retrieved from https://blackboard.aut.ac.nz.