Just found this at the official Moulinsart site. Originally published September 1, 2009, I think it must have been in response to all the online craziness over censoring Tintin in the Congo. It is a little bizarre to me that Moulinsart would produce something that would try and excuse the issues found in Hergé’s book. In doing so, they only draw attention to the fact that the book has a WHOLE MESS of serious problems. I would have assumed that being quiet and letting the controversy die out on its own would have been a better strategy. It certainly doesn’t do the government of Belgium any favors. In any event, they wrote it, published it, and now you can read it. What do you think?

Old rumours and knee jerk reactions

Mardi 01 Septembre 2009 à 14:49:50

Among the most doubtful, the crown goes to the accusations of racism that Hergé became accustomed to. One of the recent accusations resulted in a court case that finished badly… for the plaintiff, who lost interest and disappeared before the judicial process could come to a conclusion.

Trying to pass judgement over such a work of literature is only really possible if one considers the context of the era in which the work was published. Reading and understanding a Tintin book in the twenty-first century requires a certain amount of intellectual honesty to safeguard against simplistic or smug anachronisms.

Consider Aristotle, the philosopher who remains one of the founding figures of western thought. He was an avid proponent of slavery and couldn’t imagine an efficient economy without slaves. Should Aristotle be banned from libraries?

Like Aristotle, Hergé was a man of his time. As all Belgian schoolchildren, he learned about Belgian and Congolese geography through reading an exercise book authored by F. Dussart and R. Contreras. The book taught that, “Negroes are victims of human decadence (…).The intellectual development of the Negro child stops quite quickly (…).Tradition and the belief in occult powers prevent the adult from escaping the poorly developed civilisation in which he finds himself (…). The Negro is idle, not very clever and has very simple needs.” This exercise book was used throughout the Belgian education system until 1960.

In 1958, the highly respected and official Guide du Voyageur, published by the Office for Information and Public Relations regarding the Belgian Congo and Rwanda-Burundi, stated that, “the Negro displays a keen intelligence in his very early years.He learns easily, but this faculty rapidly diminishes due to sexual excess and alcohol abuse.”

Hergé had already edited Tintin in the Congo as early as 1946, when the story was to be published in a colour version. He deleted or modified sections that denigrated the Congolese. In as much, Hergé was one of the pioneers of human rights and respect for global cultures and civilisations. This was before the 1950s and 1960s, a time when the majority of “exotic” comic strips were happy to perpetuate the views propounded by the exercise book on The Congo.

These other publications aren’t the subject of retrospective indignation, but then it’s true that tall trees catch much wind…