What issues do his albums raise in terms of representation of ‘race’, and particularly ethnic and cultural stereotyping?
The stereotype is a fixed term of the impression, it is a kind of fixed impression instilled in the minds of people to derive a solid view towards particular people and things. The scope of the stereotype usually including race, gender, culture, country and politic. In society today, these opinions or views mainly come from the multimedia transmission, including news, film and television and entertainment works, which involve an ironic impression of others. For example, Asians know martial arts, French and Italians are very lively and romantic, Black Africans are very athletic, and women are the worst drivers (Quinn & Neil, 2007, P.2-3). Whether it is a positive or negative stereotype, it is always disgust people.
The adventure of Tintin’s comics created by a Belgian cartoonist Hergé, which involves many controversial racial ironies. From the perspective of dialogues and narratives of Tintin, Herge utilized various stereotypes to depict other races to highlight his own racial superiority. For example, in “Tintin in the Congo” refects the colonial attitudes over African ethnic groups, in which Black Africans are portrayed as lazy, slaves and unintelligent like childish people who speak in pidgin French (Mountfort, 2020). Tintin even refers to Belgium as the fatherland of African, meaning European people are superior over Black African (Mountfort, 2020).
In the Blue Lotus where the plot set in China, there are still many discrimination or contempt meanings towards the Chinese nation, which characterized the view of the world towards the Chinese, like how Herge narrated in Congo. For example, the Chinese were depicted as pigtailed torturers, also implies the Chinese government as brutal (Mountfort, 2011, P.30-35), just as most of the Western media criticizing the government of China today, as “commie” as a “tyranny regime” and without fairness judgement of good side of the Chinese government(Wu, 2010, P.1 & 5). In the story, there are also abusive dialogues towards Chinese people as dirty little yellow Chinese. When Herge describing the invasion of the Japanese in China, Herge did not consider views and feelings of the Chinese ethnic group (Mountfort, 2011, P.38-42). Besides, the adventure of Tintin also involves racial discriminations on Muslims, Indigenous peoples of the Americas and people of the Soviet Union. It despises the patriotism of the Soviet Union people is because of brainwashed by propaganda (Ha, 2015), which indirectly implies that the patriotism of Westerners is because of cleverness. Herge uses stereotypes throughout “Tintin”, and negatively described different races.
As for the reason why Herge had a discriminatory description, it can be said that the main reason was due to the environment in which he lived in Europe at the time, so the information he received was all positive news about the Western or negative news about other countries. As according to Mountfort (2020), Herge was subjected to the prejudices of the bourgeois society and under the purely paternalistic indoctrination during 1930, so he narrated those other non-Western ethnic groups based on the standards Herge received or heard. Furthermore, Herge was within in a European environment at the time, so he did not have a broader international outlook regarding the cultures and situations of other countries. As according to (Ha, 2015), Herge was only 22 years old who had never left Europe when he started drawing “Tintin” comic book, besides, it was a period of prosperity for Western civilization and modernization.
Quinn, K. A., & NEIL, C. (2007). Stereotyping and Impression Formation: How Categorical Thinking Shapes Person. The Sage handbook of social psychology: concise student edition, 68. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292932601_Stereotyping_and_impression_formation_How_categorical_thinking_shapes_person_perception
Mountfort, P. (2020). ENGL602 Popular Genres: Tintin and Blue Lotus[PowerPoint slides]. Blackboard. https://blackboard.aut.ac.nz/bbcswebdav/pid-5273121-dt-content-rid-12501818_4/xid-12501818_4
Mountfort, P. (2011). ‘Yellow skin, Black hair … careful, Tintin’: Hergé and orientalism. Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, 1(1), 33-49. https://doi.org/10.1386/ajpc.1.1.33_1
Wu, J. (2010). An Empirical Study of Stereotyped Images of China in American Media. Journal of Language Teaching & Research, 1(6). Quingdao University. http://www.academypublication.com/issues/past/jltr/vol01/06/26.pdf
Ha, T, T. (2015). Is Tintin racist? Uproar in Winnipeg opens new chapter in old argument. The Globe and Mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/is-tintin-racist-uproar-in-winnipeg-opens-new-chapter-in-old-argument/article23552666/
Pop Genres 2020 