Oh so this is why they won't come here. XD

And I'm sorry but the Congo ones are brutally racist. I've seen more flattering depictions of black people on KKK posters.

Tintin teaches everyone how to be a real man, or person or dog of decent character. It's his function as the hero of the story. You mean he for some reason can't lecture someone if they happen to be black? Come on.

This is beyond the topic of Tintin in Congo but ok, I'll bite - with a rant straight at your face, since you asked for it.
It's entirely obvious that you only complain when a regular white cartoonist (in this case Hergé) draws a Jew in unflattering exaggerated ways but what about the -highly- anti-semitic cartoons in Muslim media of present day? (and not just in small publications)

The likes of you seem to operate on a hypocrite level that is quite Dragonballish. Any time a white person does anything antisemitic/misogynistic/homophobic you're all up in arms but soon as Muslims do it you're suddenly awfully quiet. Why? Because most Muslims have brown skin ad you're afraid you'll be called a racist if you call them antisemitic/misogynistic/homophobic? As far as I know, antisemitism is antisemitism regardless of who does it.
Same goes for women's rights and gay rights. Any infringement against those rights done by a white person will bring down the wrath of the entire internet. But if it's Muslims doing the infringement, all you goody-two-shoe folks will immediately look the other way, due to the inane "1,5 Billion Muslims" argument = "they're not all doing bad things so there isn't a problem, it's a few bad apples not the religion blablabla more excuses etc etc"

You progressives will even go as far as to demonstrate and participate in street protests side by side with self-professing Islamists against Israel. White knighting for the poor Palestinians = ok, even if you're standing next to people who want Israel wiped off the map? And that for some reason isn't antisemitic but all of a sudden entirely "purely political matter"? Nice, really nice.

I used to be neutral in the Israeli vs Palestinians matter but screw that. The more I study up on the matter, the more I understand Israelis. To go into detail is absolutely beyond the scope of this topic but believe me when I say I don't take sides easily. My pro-Israel stance is now of course by progressive definition racist against Palestinians - or at least that's what you're going to say. Unfortunately for you, I don't care about your opinion. I would, -if- it was based on sound logic.

Like I said earlier, what Hergé personally thinks is irrelevant to me. I'm taking the comics at face value and I explained in detail why Tintin in Congo doesn't contain any racism unless you're severely projecting what you know/think you know about the man and your agenda in general.
I almost feel pity for you that you aren't able to enjoy this great comic the same innocent way I enjoy it. Innocent doesn't mean uninformed, just that I don't interpret all manner of crap into comics.

Why don't you take your social justice verbal activism to some place where it's a matter of life and death, as in the present day Islamist countries and circles? But of course you won't. My suspicion that it's all about your image seems to be accurate. You're only picking on perceived easy targets ("those backwards evil right wingers and white Republicans etc")

That's not standing up for what you believe in, that's just lazy and you seem to quite hate it when someone calls you on your double standards.

Like I said, all you dare to do is pick on perceived easy targets, in this case a dead man. How brave of you. I clearly stated that I'm not defending the man, I'm defending his work, in this case specifically Tintin in Congo because this one gets the most heat for no good reason. You can try as much as you want but there's not a single panel that you'll be able to objectively brand as racist. You've brought up two scenes, feel free to bring up as many as you want. I have the book right here with me.
I don't take offense at your insults towards me, I do take however take offense to you cheapening actual racism by watering it down with unwarranted examples. There is real racism out there, and real misogyny and real homophobia etc, take on some real legit cases and I absolutely won't be in your way. Pick on a dead man who can't defend himself and who drew my favorite comic and I'll do what I'm doing right now which is giving you another point of view. It seems like you could need one.


I'm surprised you're not calling the Picaros racist as well because South Americans are depicted as hopelessly corrupt banana republic inhabitants who will never get their act together. Same for the Eastern Europeans who are so knee deep in a political mess in the Tintin series that they even get fictional countries who hate each other to a ridiculous degree. I guess they're all not black enough to trigger your racism alert.

You seem to not understand that comics caricature things and there are stereotypes all over, e.g. Séraphin Lampion the ever annoying insurance salesman. Everything and everyone is at the butt of a joke at some point and I see no reason to be so selectively sensitive about it.
At no point did I get the impression that black people are being depicted as inferior because of their skin color. You seem hell-bent on shaming for the sake of shaming to fill your shaming quota, it doesn't come across as genuine the least bit. More like self-righteous.

Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao7gB0kjY_Q

A GERMAN Shepard!
GERMAN = Nazi = Anti-Semite!

HA! I told you!

Little shithead Arian mutt.

I didn't know there were Tintin games. I read the comics multiple times as a kid, borrowed from the lcoal library.

Of course the TV show was frequently on TV as well here in Canada (the show itself was made in Canada). I don't remember if I saw the show first or the read the comics first.

I haven't read since I was a kid but I did buy the DVDs a few years back. 2 box sets, 10 discs, 39 episodes. I actually started rewatching a few days ago.

Unfortunately my DVDs don't include Tintin in America. So 38 episode. If that episode was made available on GOG, I guess that would be cool, I might actually buy that.

I feel that GOG should try to distribute niche anime, cartoons, manga, and comics. But then, I want everything through GOG...

All doggie's are great.....

You're not missing much, that episode is... different, and not in a good way.

Well, I do also like this different, lighter, more naive and more improvised tone of the early albums. I admit it feels like a different series from the post-Tchang era, and it's much more kiddie-like on many levels, but it has its own cuteness. Also, that story touches to many themes already (Hergé's irony towards freaky industrialism, natives spoliation, frantic monetisation, etc), so, it's not really "empty". And stuff like that still make me giggle, feels a bit too 'charlie hebdo' for a kid books.

But yeah, it's not exactly a Coke-en-Stock kind of tintinesque construction. It's still kid doodles. It's still close to the, hm, "bécassine" era. But it still had a few striking moments and imageries. Though maybe they mostly work when you're a kid, I don't know.

The term "racism" doesn't really fit "Tintin in Congo" as the notion of "racism" (as understood today) didn't really existed at that time. "Colonialism" is a much appropriate word for this album.

A good example of this era (although Hergé was a generation later) were the "colonialist expositions" where local natives were shown to the European public like we do with pandas and tigers nowadays. If you can read French, here's an article over our expo under the reign of Leopold 2:
http://www.lebureaudesreptiles.be/roman/themes/lexposition-coloniale-de-1897/

PS: I had once seen on the web a Tintin spoof (img) where he was shown as drunk, violent, racist, sex-crazed, tatooed, etc. That got me ROFL although I love Tintin adventures :o)

If the PC games are anything like the platformers on the SNES, they don't even come near the quality bar GoG is supposed to have.

Also the racist sure wrote a ton of :words: to say he isn't racist.

No, I wasn't talking about the album. What I (and doady) had in mind is the Tintin in America episode from the animated series.

Uh, Gobineau is from mid-19th century, you know.

And this wouldn't change the fact that this album presents blacks as some retarded, incompetent and irrational versions of whites, ready to jump down to their knees in front of the white man's technological and intellectual superiority, to worship their dogs as gods, or to obey to their natural and righteous authority. Yes, this album was basicaly meant as an advertisement for belgium's colonial endeavour, but paternalist racism (and pseudo-scientific racialism) was underlying -and justifying- it all. Heck, we owe them the racialisation of hutus and tutsis, with the consequences we know.

The original album had tintin openly mentionning a "pygmy" being fearful "like all of his race", if you imply that it's a matter of word. But it's above all a matter of representation.

Is it very different ? I thought these cartoons (well, the ellipse ones) were rather faithul, but I have just half-watched half of them.

It was the last episode to be released, and they took some liberties. No big deal in itself, but it's arguably the least faithful adaptation. Here's the episode, so you can have your own opinion.

That would be a more more differentiated way to describe things, sure. I assume you're in particular referring to the classroom scene where Tintin tells the kids that their country is Belgium - which until 1960 was a reality. So technically, Tintin is possibly but not necessarily patronizing the kids and simply explaining political reality. Whichever way it is, worst case it's colonialism but still has nothing to do with racism neither in the original nor the newer edition. In the newer color edition,Tintin teaches the kids that 2 plus 2 equals 4 so that edition is a more politically correct, and less entertaining in regards to this particular scene. I thought it was darkly amusing that Tintin would - without a hint of irony - tell Congolese kids that they're Belgians despite being thousands of kilometers away from Belgium proper.

Thanks for the links, my French is just acceptable enough for reading but fortunately I'm already up to speed about the history of The Congo, watched a documentary about Leopold a couple months ago and went on to fill a lot of gaps in my historical knowledge from further sources, it's definitely an interesting topic I hadn't known much about. As a kid, I knew nothing about the dark side of Congolese history but regarding Tintin in The Congo, my opinion that there isn't anything racist about the comic book has not changed. Not due to naivety or nostalgia but because there are no sufficient arguments to build a case of racism here.

There sure is some weird stuff out there... let's not forget that rule 34 goes for anything and everything! I'm aware of spoofs where Tintin and Haddock go to Bangkok for sex tourism including the same-sex variety and even stranger spoofs where Tintin and Bianca Castafiore get it on (also some action between Castafiore & Calculus if I remember correctly), now that's just scary. Haven't read any of those spoofs in full as I have doubts about the storyline being all that entertaining but seeing selected panels gave enough of an idea to get the general gist of things.



Nothing even remotely racist about one culture jumping to the knees of the technologically and (in terms of science) intellectually more advanced culture. The technological gap in this case was wide enough to explain how certain inventions might have appeared as nothing short of magic to the technologically less advanced culture.


Dogs are worshipped in e.g. Hinduism, you saying that worshipping dogs is bad or that Hindus are primitive? Is worshipping dogs only racist if the dog is white like Snowy or what? Or is it dogs in general? In that case, you'd be a speciest - which is worse than racism because you are discriminating on more life forms on an even more overarching level.
Snowy is a badass hero of the series, I'd rather worship him as a god than follow any of the other man-made religions which arguably includes all of them. There's nothing bad about worshiping Snowy who took on a lion all by himself, an animal many times his size. It is only natural that such bravery is honored.
Anyway, next!

Hold it, now you're projecting instead of taking things at face value meaning that regardless of whichever the author's intent was it's all in the eye of the beholder here. Which is why we've taken a close look at specific scenes in the book and addressed them in this thread.
As for the radicalization of Hutu vs Tutsis, are you trying to insinuate this is entirely the white man's fault and that black Africans are so hapless that they can only do what the white man made them do and that they have no will or responsibility for their actions of their own? Positive racism of the finest, again.
I'm old enough to remember the Rwandan genocide well and I'm aware of the colonial history that engineered social resentment between the Hutus and Tutsis by giving one group more power than the other. The Rwandan mass genocide however happened decades after the country's independence.


It only makes sense that the pygmies were represented in the comic as super cautious if you look at the way they were treated by the colonials as well as (!) other African tribes. I'd say, they would be stupid if they weren't very careful and wary of any and all outsiders. Tintin is making a stereotypical observation but how exactly does this make the comic racist?