What issues do his albums raise in terms of representation of ‘race’, and particularly ethnic and cultural stereotyping?

One of the main issues with Herge’s Tintin albums, particularly early ones such as Tintin in the Congo, in relation to ethnic stereotyping, is the perpetuation of harmful tropes in both the visual art of the works and it’s narrative, including written speech. As graphic novels and comic books, by definition, combine both textual and visual narrative, they have the ability to make use of negative and harmful stereotypes of both forms. Furthermore, given the structure of comics as multiple, sequential images, providing readers with not only repeated imagery but also ‘space’ between panels in which the brain creates rapidly interprets the work, comics arguably have an even greater ability to perpetuate dangerous representations, stereotypes, and ‘othering’. (Mountfort, 2012) (Dunnett, 2009)

Using Tintin in the Congo as an example, visually, we see the Congolese people drawn in ways that fall in line with common racist caricatures of black people– with exaggerated features such as ink-black skin, overly large pink lips and bug-eyes. Given Herge’s unique and very particular style (the famous ligne-claire), it would be hard to argue that this was not a deliberate stylistic choice, and this certainty can only be bolstered by Herge’s background as both a Belgian and writer for a conservative paper that aligned with those who were supportive of Belgium’s occupation of the Congo. The depiction of the Congolese in the narrative similarly falls in line with a common black caricature of the bumbling, stupid African, in need of education by the white man. This latter point is even made explicit in the original 1930 publication (translated to English in 1991) of the album itself, when Tintin enters a classroom and proceeds to announce to the Congolese students that he is going to, ‘talk to you about your country: Belgium!’ Their written speech shows a similar depiction of the Congolese people, saying of Tintin, ‘White master very fair…! … Him very good white.’ (Herge, 1991) As with their visual representation, given the context of the rest of the album and the writer himself, it would be difficult if not impossible to argue this as a ‘stylistic’, genuine depiction of the Congolese accent and not, instead, as a caricature.

While with any text such as Tintin, this issue would be notably problematic on it’s own, it is made even more so by the position Tintin would grow to occupy in the broader media landscape. From the first stop-motion animation adaptation of The Crab with the Golden Claws in 1941 to The Adventures of Tintin directed by Steven Spielberg in 2011, with countless other adaptions, translations, and unofficial spinoff stories, Tintin would become one of the first ‘transmedia franchises’. (Mountfort, Tintin as Spectacle: The Backstory of a Popular Franchise and Late Capital, 2016) This further problematizes the issues with Herge’s ethnic stereotyping in his works as, while Tintin in the Congo certainly doesn’t have the popularity that the other albums do, the Tintin name and character alone still carries with it the global, transmedia recognition alone, and remains within the Tintin canon.

References

Dunnett, O. (2009). Identity and geopolitics in Herge’s Adventures of Tintin. Social & Cultural Geography, 583-598.

Herge. (1991). Tintin in the Congo. London: Sundancer.

Mountfort, P. (2012). ‘Yellow skin, black hair…Careful, Tintin’: Herge and Orientalism. Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, 33-49.

Mountfort, P. (2016). Tintin as Spectacle: The Backstory of a Popular Franchise and Late Capital. Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture, 37-56.