The first two Tintin books (or more accurately the first two collections of all the little newspaper comic strips the story was made up of over the course of a year or so) were some of the most disgusting colonialist apologist stuff I've ever read (they were called 'Tintin in the Land of the Soviets' and 'Tintin in the Congo' so you can guess how bad they were) and the second one was especially bad since it directly and repeatedly puts forward justifications for the Belgian occupation of the Congo.
Later they were heavily rewritten for the book releases (though it's worth noting that even as a child reading the English version of the rewrite of the second one I still thought it was pretty racist) as Herge tried to rehabilitate his image and pivot Tintin towards being a symbol of fighting injustice everywhere, as opposed to being a genocide apologist.
The rewrite of the second book features the standard racist thing of depicting black people with massive red lips and coal black skin, and such scenes as: Tintin threatening to beat a Congolese man because he won't help lift up a train (that Tintin derailed) while Tintin just stands back and watches, Tintin convincing a native tribe that he's a magical witch doctor by using the wonders of science to stop them from harming him, one of said native tribe saying "they say in Europe all white men are as brave and clever as Witch Doctor Tintin" on the last page, Tintin meets a 'civilised' white Congolese settler who's acting as a missionary to spread the word of god to the Congolese people and the missionary talks about them as if they're children or dumb animals and this is presented entirely uncritically, a rival tribe to the one that Tintin becomes the witch doctor to have a king who is depicted as fat, lazy and callous and the members of the rival tribe venerate Tintin when he deposes their King, the Congolese people are consistently depicted as being simple and falling for any trick the main (white) villains play on them, etcetera, etcetera (some of this info may be slightly wrong it's been a while since I read the book because I couldn't bring myself to read it again).
Herge, the creator of Tintin, worked for a conservative Catholic newspaper that would publish Tintin stories. His big dream was to do a story about native Americans but his bosses had him make reactionary propaganda instead. This gave us "Tintin in the land of the Soviets", an incoherent mess of anti-communist tall tales and "Tintin in Congo", an absurdly racist celebration of Belgian imperialism that portrays Africans as childish circus clowns that welcomes and benefits from the noble European efforts to civilise them
Later in his career Herge remade some of his early black and white Tintin stories in colour. The Soviet story was deemed unsalvageable and didn't get a remake. But "Tintin in Congo" was redone. The racism was dialed back a notch but it didn't help much. For instance in one of the scenes Tintin becomes a teacher in a Congolese classroom. In the black and white version he says that "Today I will teach you about you fatherland Belgium". In the colour version he teaches math and the students are too stupid to know what 2+2 equals.
Wait what?
The first two Tintin books (or more accurately the first two collections of all the little newspaper comic strips the story was made up of over the course of a year or so) were some of the most disgusting colonialist apologist stuff I've ever read (they were called 'Tintin in the Land of the Soviets' and 'Tintin in the Congo' so you can guess how bad they were) and the second one was especially bad since it directly and repeatedly puts forward justifications for the Belgian occupation of the Congo.
Later they were heavily rewritten for the book releases (though it's worth noting that even as a child reading the English version of the rewrite of the second one I still thought it was pretty racist) as Herge tried to rehabilitate his image and pivot Tintin towards being a symbol of fighting injustice everywhere, as opposed to being a genocide apologist.
The rewrite of the second book features the standard racist thing of depicting black people with massive red lips and coal black skin, and such scenes as: Tintin threatening to beat a Congolese man because he won't help lift up a train (that Tintin derailed) while Tintin just stands back and watches, Tintin convincing a native tribe that he's a magical witch doctor by using the wonders of science to stop them from harming him, one of said native tribe saying "they say in Europe all white men are as brave and clever as Witch Doctor Tintin" on the last page, Tintin meets a 'civilised' white Congolese settler who's acting as a missionary to spread the word of god to the Congolese people and the missionary talks about them as if they're children or dumb animals and this is presented entirely uncritically, a rival tribe to the one that Tintin becomes the witch doctor to have a king who is depicted as fat, lazy and callous and the members of the rival tribe venerate Tintin when he deposes their King, the Congolese people are consistently depicted as being simple and falling for any trick the main (white) villains play on them, etcetera, etcetera (some of this info may be slightly wrong it's been a while since I read the book because I couldn't bring myself to read it again).
Also Herge was a Nazi collaborator.
Welp, if I ever see my Tintin books again I may just have to chuck them in the bin (what is it with people who speak French being like this?).
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Tintin is Belgian
Herge, the creator of Tintin, worked for a conservative Catholic newspaper that would publish Tintin stories. His big dream was to do a story about native Americans but his bosses had him make reactionary propaganda instead. This gave us "Tintin in the land of the Soviets", an incoherent mess of anti-communist tall tales and "Tintin in Congo", an absurdly racist celebration of Belgian imperialism that portrays Africans as childish circus clowns that welcomes and benefits from the noble European efforts to civilise them
Later in his career Herge remade some of his early black and white Tintin stories in colour. The Soviet story was deemed unsalvageable and didn't get a remake. But "Tintin in Congo" was redone. The racism was dialed back a notch but it didn't help much. For instance in one of the scenes Tintin becomes a teacher in a Congolese classroom. In the black and white version he says that "Today I will teach you about you fatherland Belgium". In the colour version he teaches math and the students are too stupid to know what 2+2 equals.
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Wait, we started out with people recognizing it's too racist to publish in English.....and then someone thought 'it's okay now'?
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