Author: chloepope0000

Week 2 Response – Chloe Pope

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.

Week 1 Response – Chloe Pope

  1. How has the academic reception of popular genres changes over time?

Prior to the late 20th century and beyond, popular genres were largely viewed as ‘below’ the ‘higher’ forms of literature, such as novels and poetry, and ‘not worthy’ of the analysis and criticism the latter received. In part, this was due to how relatively new the genres were. The majority of what we recognize as ‘popular genres’, for example, television, comic books, anime, and so forth, came about due to advancements in technology. Television and film being obvious; comic books, a result of improvements in the printing press, anime an advancement in both animation and the ability to share cultural media between Japan and America. Due to this, many of these ‘popular genres’ only came to wider public awareness in the 20th century, and their reliance on new and still not entirely explored technologies gave them an aspect of the ‘unknown’. Critics were uncertain how to deal with them – and so they didn’t. (Lister, Dovey, Giddings, Grant, & Kelly, 2009) (Schneider-Mayerson, 2010)

It wasn’t until around the 1980s that ‘popular genres’ began to be viewed and criticized at a similar level to traditional ‘high’ literature. This period brought with it a change in the way texts were being critically analysed in general; where previously much analysis had been focused on the text itself, it’s structure and content, that focus began to shift onto other influences such as the contextual, historical, environmental, ideological, and, most especially, audience. This favoured popular genres due to their intrinsic connection with the time period in which they were created and their unique, often ‘new’ forms of delivery, as critical analysis was no longer as closely tied to the form. (Schneider-Mayerson, 2010)

  1. What might the value be of studying them?

Popular genres have a tendency to be a product of their time – or at least act as a mirror of it at the time of their creation. Because of this, by studying popular genres, we can get an insight into aspects of the time period they were made in, such as human interests, perspectives and trends. This is exemplified with the ‘Tintin’ series, that ran from the 10930s through to the 1970s, beginning with the early Tintin albums, which carry many propagandistic and (to use the ‘popular’ term of today) problematic aspects which stem in large parts from the context in which they were created. Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, the first album, shows rather clear anti-Soviet and anti-communist ideologies that were common during the period it was produced (1930s) – and would continue to be throughout the 20th century. Tintin in the Congo is perhaps the most egregious example, with both the art and writing throughout the book depicting highly offensive race-based stereotypes – the character design resembling that of blackface caricatures and the roles and speech depicting the Congolese people as dumb and sub-servient. This is notable not just in that it mirrors how black people were viewed in many places throughout the world, but also in that it very specifically mirrors the perspective of the author, Herge, and the context he was writing in – a Belgium that was doling out one of the harshest colonial regimes onto the Congo that had ever been seen. However, as Herge’s career in writing Tintin would continue and as both he himself along with the world around him grew more racially sensitive and aware, he would alter go back and edit out some of the worst of the offensive racial aspects, and later albums would show at least some sensitivity in depictions of other races (even if still containing ‘problematic’ moments). (Mountfort, 2012)

References

Lister, M., Dovey, J., Giddings, S., Grant, I., & Kelly, K. (2009). New media: A critical introduction. Taylor & Francis Group.

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

Schneider-Mayerson, M. (2010). Popular Fiction Studies: The Advantages of a New Field. In Studies in Popular Culture, 33 (1) (pp. 21-35). Popular Culture Association in the South.