Still a surefire way to get on the news
You may or may not be aware that a while ago, bookseller Borders in the UK moved all copies of the comic book Tintin in the Congo to its adult section, and added stickers warning of shocking content, because it was considered racist. Since Tintin is Belgian, this made the news here at the time.
If you aren’t familiar with the album, in it, Tintin visits Congo, which was a Belgian colony at the time (1931). The actual storyline isn’t very interesting, but he interacts with the natives on several occasions, and yes, by today’s standards it’s quite racist.
And now, it’s in the news again.
Parket opent onderzoek naar racisme in ‘Kuifje in Afrika’
Bij het Brusselse parket is een vooronderzoek geopend naar de strip ‘Kuifje in Afrika’ van Hergé nadat een Congolese student een klacht had ingediend omdat hij het album “een belediging voor alle Congolezen” vindt.
A Congolese student filed a complaint because he thinks the album is “an insult to all Congolese”.
In particular, he objects to the stereotypical way the Congolese are drawn and speak, and the way Snowy talks to them.
This is a comic book written in 1931. Hergé was aware it was racist, but he was trying to capture the Zeitgeist of the time. He was quite explicit about this.
Nevertheless, he still toned it down when it was redrawn in 1946, and he even removed references to Congo being a Belgian colony, even though they wouldn’t become independent for another decade and a half. Newer editions are toned down even further.
Hergé has been dead for twenty-four years. The album is seventy-six years old, and somehow it went without lawsuit for all that time.
It’s a work of art, very obviously not intended to target blacks. It reflects the spirit of the time, and is emphatically not covered by hate speech or discrimination laws.
This guy is complaining about a cartoon dog thinking rudely in the general direction of cartoon black people.
It’s just a retarded attempt to get national attention, and apparently it worked.
If there was any sort of black/white racial tension in Belgium (there isn’t, really; Flanders can be retardedly racist, but really only towards brown people), this would be exactly the sort of thing to make it worse.
Congratulations, Mbutu Mondondo Bienvenu. You’ve successfully wasted the court’s time, and fed the stereotype of blacks being hypersensitive to racism.
Oh, and you got to appear on national TV. Go you.
mark said,
August 10th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
you know, something like 1/3 of the congolese people were killed when it was a belgium colony. it’s not like they were being racist, they were being genocidal. oh, and the white guys collected black hands. from the living and the dead.
this was the world’s primary source of rubber for bike and car tires for a long time, hence the slaughter. all in all, incredibly fucked up.
so i think the congolese people might still be a bit sensitive about that, and justifiably so.
Cairnarvon said,
August 10th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Trust me, I know about the Belgian/Congolese history. It wasn’t a Belgian colony at the time, it was the private property of Leopold II. You’ll remember it was the Belgian parliament that put an end to it in the end (in 1908).
This has nothing to do with Belgian colonialism, though; it’s just one guy looking for attention.
mark said,
August 13th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
Another example is the American war in the Phillippines right after their war with Spain. My Filipino friend knows about it, or at least one of them does. But nobody else I’ve ever talked to about it. We basically killed 1/3 or 1/2 of the population. Took no prisoners. And this was after “liberating” them from Spain. Seriously, if every American knew about that, they might think twice about America.