week 2

Week 2 Questions – Tintin

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

Tintin in the Congo was an early work of Herges and depicts blatant, and racist caricatures of black people, it depicts the Congolese people as having exaggerated features like larger red lips contrasting their extremely black skin reminiscent of blackface, and more often than not these racist caricatures also show them of having little to no intelligence, by making them confused over western objects like guns. To the reader, they end up looking like complete idiots who would still be uncivilized “savages”, if not for the colonizers who introduce their own idea of education. This is further proven in the panels when Tintin enters into a classroom and begins to teach the class by saying, “talk to you about your country: Belgium!”, which pushes the idea of the colonizers being white saviours and the native Congolese as displaced in their own land, as it now belongs to Belgium. Herge had clear political views as he had a background in working for a rightwing magazine, and those ideals had remained with him long into his career on Tintin, as races other than white seemed to be boiled down to mere caricatures of themselves constantly playing out stereotypes, while the white golden boy Tintin goes around stumbling his way into success, and returns home to a big parade.

It is clear what Herges political affiliations were, and through the albums; Tintin in the land of the soviets, it was thinly veiled anti-communist propaganda, “…the first two Tintin albums are pure right-wing propaganda.” (Mountfort, 2016), and once again looking at Tintin in the Congo, its imperialist propaganda which seeks to demoralize the Congolese by making them seem lesser in intelligence and portraying them as “Savages”, who don’t know how to use basic technological advancements like gramophones. Herge also displayed multiple cases where he would depict different races as mere caricatures, for example; the depiction of  Chinese people as pigtailed torturers in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (1929), and native Americans, as people who are constantly begging for money in; “Tintin in America” (1930) also, his caricatures of black people in, “Tintin in the Congo”, “Tintin: Cigars of the Pharaohs”(1932), “The Red Sea Sharks (1956-8) “.  

Herge did, however, change many of his depictions of other races when being reprinted, For example; “Tintin in America”, the depiction of the Native American character was changed, taking away him begging and smoking a pipe. His views on Chinese pope were changed as well, in, “The Blue Lotus (1935-6) ”, where the Chinese are drawn normally, and Tintin even defends an Asian Rickshaw driver against a racist character who was shouting, “Dirty little China-man!…to barge into a White-man!”, with Tintin responding with, “Brute”, and “Your conduct is disgraceful sir!”. Despite this, he continued to portray a Japanese character; “Hergé’s representation of the Japanese villain Mitsuhirato as pig-snouted and therefore risibly subhuman”(Mountfort, 2012). and squinty eyes in the same album, which could mean he didnt actually grow as a person and realise his transgressions, and the only reason for better depiction of Chinese people is because of his student and friend; Zhang Chongren. 

Herge was known to be critical of the Nazi regime in the 1930s, as he took a hard stance against Japanese Imperialism, but when the Nazis took over Belgium, Herge continued to draw propaganda cartoons for the “Le Soir” newspaper. It is important to note that many other Belgian Newspapers refused to publish for the Nazis and preferred that they shut down. However, Herge was an outspoken critic of how Americans stole land from the already settled tribes and basically pushed them into alcohol addiction and homelessness, as shown in, “Bayonet diplomacy”, in “Tintin in America”, which depicts this. All in all, Herge was a complicated person with political and ideological views that were clearly conservative, he has shown grown in his depictions of some races but not others and his continued success despite the Nazi regime could mean he may have supported it to some extent. In my opinion, we should read Tintin and his adventures as just adventures, with the death of the author, and treat them as a reflection of what people were thinking in that time period. 

References 

Mountfort, P. (2012). ‘Yellow skin, black hair … Careful, Tintin’: Hergé and Orientalism. Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, 1(1), 34-49. https://doi.org/10.1386/ajpc.1.1.33_

Mountfort, (2016). Tintin as spectacle: The Backstory of a popular franchise and late capital. Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture, 1(1), 37. https://doi.org/10.5325/jasiapacipopcult.1.1.0037