A wordplay.

;)

:)

There's already a Tintin game on GOG.

(Well, at least a Tintin rip-off, with all the Franco-Belgian colonial stuff and lots of Stargate as well).

:(

Explorers on the Moon would be On a marché sur la lune, the sequel to Objectif Lune.

For anyone intesrested in the dark side of the belgian Congo, here's the reference study
Aside from Tintin au Congo, how is Tintin perceived there?

Hard to say.
We fleed Zaire when I was, like, 2 months old.

It's as close as we'll ever get to http://www.unseen64.net/2014/10/20/tintin-ps2-cancelled-prototype/

No shit

Where exactly is there racism in Tintin in Congo? Page? Panel?

I've owned all the Tintin comics as well as all the (very awesome) audio tapes for decades so I practically know the entire series by heart but I just now read Tintin in Congo again to see if there is anything racist in it. Nothing there, sorry.
I've heard these lame accusations in the past and seen the corresponding news stories plus I can imagine which situations in the comic you could interpret as racist, so I already have answers for the given situations. But let's hear proof from you since you're championing the accuser's side here.

Btw, I'm well aware of the fact that you can warp the definition of racism to such a neurotic degree that you can find racist messages in the coffee dreggs on the bottom of your coffee mug Just as long as you can accuse someone or something of racism at least once a day, all is well in the world view of a progressive. Progressive being a potentially good thing, -if- it was done right. But in this case I'm using progressive as a pejorative, just in case you're somehow taking it as a compliment.

But it looks like yet another gratuitous racism accusation. Racism is actually a very serious matter and watering down the real existence of it with unwarranted accusations is not just lazy, it's a poor display of character.
You know what it looks like? As if you didn't care about the real victims and are more interested in moral powerplay, hogging the moral high ground for your political side which you believe are the "good guys".
Not realizing that by white knighting (no pun intended) for black people, you're actually committing the offense of racism of lower expectations aka positive racism, meaning you're insinuating that black people can't take being on the receiving end of a joke, even if the joke doesn't have anything to do with their race.

That kinda attitude is almost worse than negative racism because it's belittling the supposed victims, plus it's more patronizing than the patronizing you'll accuse Hergé of. As far as I see it, it doesn't even matter of Hergé held any racist views or not. It only matter if there is racism in his work or not because this is about his Tintin comics, not him as a person.
In my opinion, Tintin in Congo satirizes life during the colonial times quite poignantly and accurately, sure there is comic hyperbole but I'm not detecting any racism here, not a single panel of it. Some of the situations would even apply to modern times so the humor is surprisingly timeless in many regards. I found it extremely hilarious. If you think it's racist to laugh when the joke happens to be on a black person, then you're guilty of positive racism as explained above.

Anyway, maybe you're interested in actually stating your case and maybe you're just interesting in spouting your daily dose of racism accusing and Hergé just so happens to be "it" for today. Either way, next time you pick something for your daily progressive shaming attempts, you better not pick my favorite comic series.

*facepalm* here comes the UDC/SVP dimwit.

The whole "congo" album represents the congolese population as childish retards, and savages at best trying to mimick europe. Of course, nothing racist by your party's standards, but some others might slightly twitch at

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iaMcMZwAae4/USEI3_jq3xI/AAAAAAAABAI/KDJKKjq6FbI/s1600/tintincongo2.jpg
https://sitamnesty.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/tintin_au_congo_train3.png

http://thegeeksverse.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/stop_that.jpg
https://activeast.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/tintin-au-congo.png?w=614&h=197

or tintin teaching the incompentent african steward how to "be a real man" in the original version. That is, beside the whole background of "petit nègre" language and triumphalist missionary colonialism. The magnitude of Hergé's early racism (and antisemitsm, but antisemitism doesn't exist any more for KnGnBraLeYgnf than islamophobia exists for you) has been toned down edition after edition, as Hergé was progessively distancizing himself from his ultraconservative education, and conceded that his early work was based on the prejudices and worldviews of his youth's environment, but you can't just tweak the details of the Congo album, and Hergé later admitted that he'd be doing it very differently if he had to write it at that later time.

The whole trajectory of Hergé was a self-aware shift from ww2-era belgian extreme-right (his priests teachers and friends) and the traits he inherited from it, towards more intelligence, awareness and open-mindedness. He was someone who was questionning himself and his own work more that you'll ever question it yourself. Even though he kept admitting that he wouldn't let his (non-existent) daughter marry an African [edit : more precisely he would "hesitate to let her marry a foreigner"], he was anxiously pondering whether it was racism (yes it was).

The author of Picaros and Jewels of Moulinsart had very little to do with his earlier Congo-era self, and that's what makes his whole work interesting, and his interviews quite touching, but burying your head in sand because you don't percieve the racism on the Congo album is precisely the kind of idiocy above which the late Hergé stood. Most authors of that era were writing in that highly ethocentrically colonial environment, perpetuating its nocive clichés (africans are big children, waiting to be civilized by us, and just comically mimicking us because they don't know any better), but basically all of them outgrew this worldview. You still have some work ahead.

I'd forgotten the part showing "lazy" africans (in my books, that's clearly a racist reference) and Tintin lecturing them. Note that he won't push and stain his white uniform.

And even closer to Tintin au Congo, Hergé made fun of clichés about China.

And even EVEN closer to Congo, Hergé mocked anti-black racism in "in America" (although he mocks kkk-style homicidal racism, which is different than "benevolent" deshumanizing paternalism). That said, the way he illustrates japanese people in the same album where he denounces the chinese prejudices is itself a bit dubious. Okay, the japanese were brutal invaders, and politically the baddies, but still, these vaguely racialized big-teeth monsters used to freak me out.

Another interesting Congo element was the violence towards animals : Tintin is often reproached to be gratuitously slaughtering numerous wildlife animals, which, in that comic book's context, never bothered me too much, so I tend to find this specific criticism a bit unfair. But Hergé himself, later, was very critical of that aspect, and, as a self-proclaimed animal lover, was regretting it. So, another anecdotical evolution, there...

Still, to anyone interested in Hergé, I suggest his interview book by the ever excellent Numa Sadoul. Interviews, in my opinion, are always the best ways to know an author beyond his work.

In order for your low-level insults to have any effect, I would first have to respect you, which as you can imagine is not the case. So in order not to needlessly waste energy let's not go to that level. Even if I would respect you, you would still have to make higher level insults to make it work.
As I expected you brought up the train scene and the hat scene. I'm surprised you only bring up these two, there's other scenes I expected you to bring up as well but let's take a look at what you brought up so far (see further down in this post).

Any time a technologically more advanced civilization colonizes or otherwise comes into significant contact with a technologically less advanced civilization, the latter will adapt more from the former than vice versa. If a book/comic/movie/game depicts the Meiji Restoration in Japan when Japanese people started to wear Western dress and using Western machinery, that's the same as when Congolese people walk around in Western suits and use Western machinery in Tintin in Congo. In any case, it has nothing to do with racism, it simply illustrates the exposure of one culture to another. And what about Orientalism which was particularly popular in France and England in the 19th century. Is it racist against white people to depict white Westerners wearing traditional Oriental garments and hosting oriental style parties among high society?

I've been to the Middle East and Africa quite a number of times. Used European cars are very popular, more precisely Mercedes. Peugeot is looked at as inferior. Does that mean Arabs are racist against the French because Arabs would rather drive German cars which they find the most reliable? Just about every taxi driver in the Middle East I've met couldn't stop talking about how great German cars and their motors are. Except for the Bedouins in the desert who use Toyota Land Cruisers as their primary choice. There's nothing racist about pointing out the simple fact that Africa/the Middle East don't make cars or even motors and that they simply use what others have invented already. Is an Arab taxi driver racist for wanting a Western car instead of a local camel? Are Arabs racist for not making their own machines?
The Congolese in Tintin don't mimic Western civilization in everything, only in what they need from it (weapons, machines) and fashion which they find exotic and therefor interesting. It's not up to you to tell them to only wear traditional Congolese clothing, is it. Wouldn't want to be patronizing again, would you?

As for the Congolese being depicted as childish retards: Obviously, Tintin doesn't speak the local African languages so they speak in broken French to him. If Tintin would attempt to speak Kituba, he'd have no chance of making himself understood. Anyone speaking in a language that they don't know fluently is going to sound like a childish retard, including you and me. When I speak French, I don't sound much different than the Congolese in the comic because my French isn't all too good, either.

As for them being depicted as savages, well that's how you put it. What's your point here, is savage bad? What you describe as savage is the way Africans have lived for centuries, millennia even. How exactly is it racist to depict someone running around with a spear and a loincloth? Or is it only racist if you add a Western top hat to the outfit, because it (in your entirely subjective opinion) looks retarded? Methinks you're projecting, which says more about your prejudice than Hergé's.

Alright, now about the train scene specifically. What -precisely- is supposed to be racist here? Be a bit more concise, please.
Is it racist that the Africans have a crapolino train that falls apart after bumping into a car? That's comic hyperbole but I have personal experiences with trains in Africa and it's not quite the same thing as here, and the tech level difference back in colonial times was even more pronounced. This is in Africa, you can't expect the TGV or Shinkansen.

Anyway, you're actual complaint is probably how Tintin orders the locals around because they initially just stand around and won't help to get the train back up on the tracks. How does Tintin, a white man, dare to order around black people? Well, it's quite simple: Tintin isn't a politically correct pansy, he'll take the initiative to lead in any emergency regardless of what color of skin the people involved happen to have. That makes him less racist than people like you who would be thinking "darn I can't say anything or else I'l be called a racist...".

Poignantly, two of the Congolese passengers immediately draw the race card on Tintin (page 20, panel 1 in the German edition). A guy calls Tintin an "evil white man" and a woman points at a slightly injured kid and says "look at what you did to this poor black kid". They both ignore the fact that it was a simple accident. This made me lol because even nowadays the politically correct media would quickly report the incident as a hate crime (=Tintin hatefully destroying the poor black African's train with his evil white man car) even before the facts are in.

Naturally, Congolese people wouldn't feel too friendly towards white people, to a great part thanks to assholes like Leopold II. So the locals are understandably suspicious of Tintin but this is very often the case when the protagonist of a story goes somewhere and first has to prove himself to the locals. It's also understandable that they didn't feel inclined to fix the train because they didn't yet have enough rapport with this strange modern machinery stuff. Plus, don't forget that in their society they might also have different classes, just like in our civilization. The guy who (on page 20, panel 5) refuses to help for fear of making his fancy clothes dirty obviously belongs to a higher class and thinks he's too good for manual labor. I see this as a socioeconomic stab, not as a racist attempt at making all black people look lazy.

In my eyes, the train scene wasn't there to make Africans look lazy but to showcase how badass Snowy is. In panel 4 on the same page, Snowy single-pawedly tries to push the train up, making the humans in the screen look bad. Note: Humans. Perhaps it's time you acknowledge that black people are humans as well and not just "black people" in need of your white knighting.

Summary: No racism whatsoever in this scene, unless you project your own negative thoughts into it. When I read this story, I laughed at how Snowy made all the people look bad. Wouldn't have thought that anyone would make a racist issue about this scene until it was all over the news a couple years ago. I don't care of the lawsuit was initiated by a black person or if it's you beating the racist drums again now. The comic isn't racist. If it is, prove it or remain silent. You don't have any arguments here that stick.


The hat scene: This is a scene where Tintin teaches two egotistic teenagers how to share and get along. Valuable lesson, well taught. Tintin is the eternal boy scout who helps out whenever and wherever he gets a chance to. Happens to be black teenagers here. Africa is a huge continent with all kinds of different cultures. You expect everyone to be like the Efe kids in Zaire playing the harmonious Osani circle game?
There's also gonna be plenty of selfish people in Africa, just like everywhere else. And again, Tintin is the protagonist so it is his mission to overcome conflicts and obstacles. It's beyond me how you once again make this a racist issue. Remember that scene in another issue when Tintin slaps a kid that isn't black? Heaven forbid that was a black kid, you'd immediately label it a hate crime.


-> continued next post

Oh yes please do, your anthropological insight is fascinating.