Tintin Au Congo / Tintin in the Congo (Tintin)

Rating:
Summary: The infamous "racist" Tintin adventure in the Congo
Review: "Tintin Au Congo" ("Tintin in the Congo") was the second adventure of the intrepid reporter and is one of the most controversial stories (along with "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets," albeit for different reasons). The problem with this Hergé offering from the 1930s is that it contains racist ideas and images. "Tintin Au Congo" fully embraces Belgian colonialism, white supremacy, and heroic missionaries bringing the word of God to the unwashed savages. Tintin himself is almost unrecognizable to readers who have come to love him through the traditional 21 adventures in the easily available canon. Tintin calls natives "boy," bullies them around, and has clearly come to Africa to have a grand timing shooting animals during his safari holiday. More recognizable are the local gangsters who assume Tintin is there to bring them to justice and take pre-emptive action, which results in the recognizable series of perilous escapes. The best part of this adventure is that Milou does more than his fair share in rescuing his master from trouble and ends up becoming the king of the pygmies.

As you would expect Hergé works in as many exotic animals as he can into the story. So there are plenty of crocodiles, snakes, buffalo, giraffes, rhinos and the like. But the problem is that there are also a tribe of monkeys who bear an uncomfortable resemblance to the natives. Fortunately, the benevolent Belgians are there to make the Congo a better place. Now, as far as I am concerned there are clearly a lot of indefensible things in "Tintin Au Congo." Hergé's story and art clearly contain racist elements. I do find the story to be of historical value because it represents a clear manifestation of the racism of the times. Does this get Hergé off the hook? Absolutely not. But given the humanitarianism that is evident in the vast majority of the Adventures of Tintin it is clear that Hergé's attitudes changed for the better. If George Wallace and Strom Thurmond could get away with similar conversions on substantially less evidence in their favor in the political arena, than Hergé can get the benefit of the doubt when we take into account his entire body of work.

Young kids who love the Adventures of Tintin should not read "Tintin in the Congo" until they are older and can better understand why an author they admire could tell a story so racist and offensive. They certainly do not want to read this story at a point in their lives where they cannot realize what is wrong about this particular story. This is the second Tintin story, but it should not be one of the first Tintin stories anybody reads. With its rather limited availability, it probably will not be.

Rating:
Summary: The infamous "racist" Tintin adventure in the Congo
Review: "Tintin Au Congo" ("Tintin in the Congo") was the second adventure of the intrepid reporter and is one of the most controversial stories (along with "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets," albeit for different reasons). The problem with this Hergé offering from the 1930s is that it contains racist ideas and images. "Tintin Au Congo" fully embraces Belgian colonialism, white supremacy, and heroic missionaries bringing the word of God to the unwashed savages. Tintin himself is almost unrecognizable to readers who have come to love him through the traditional 21 adventures in the easily available canon. Tintin calls natives "boy," bullies them around, and has clearly come to Africa to have a grand timing shooting animals during his safari holiday. More recognizable are the local gangsters who assume Tintin is there to bring them to justice and take pre-emptive action, which results in the recognizable series of perilous escapes. The best part of this adventure is that Milou does more than his fair share in rescuing his master from trouble and ends up becoming the king of the pygmies.

As you would expect Hergé works in as many exotic animals as he can into the story. So there are plenty of crocodiles, snakes, buffalo, giraffes, rhinos and the like. But the problem is that there are also a tribe of monkeys who bear an uncomfortable resemblance to the natives. Fortunately, the benevolent Belgians are there to make the Congo a better place. Now, as far as I am concerned there are clearly a lot of indefensible things in "Tintin Au Congo." Hergé's story and art clearly contain racist elements. I do find the story to be of historical value because it represents a clear manifestation of the racism of the times. Does this get Hergé off the hook? Absolutely not. But given the humanitarianism that is evident in the vast majority of the Adventures of Tintin it is clear that Hergé's attitudes changed for the better. If George Wallace and Strom Thurmond could get away with similar conversions on substantially less evidence in their favor in the political arena, than Hergé can get the benefit of the doubt when we take into account his entire body of work.

Young kids who love the Adventures of Tintin should not read "Tintin in the Congo" until they are older and can better understand why an author they admire could tell a story so racist and offensive. They certainly do not want to read this story at a point in their lives where they cannot realize what is wrong about this particular story. This is the second Tintin story, but it should not be one of the first Tintin stories anybody reads. With its rather limited availability, it probably will not be.

Rating:
Summary: Artistic advance for Herge, but too many dated attitudes
Review: 'Tintin In The Congo' is something of a taboo for devotees of Herge - how to reconcile the famed humanitarianism and tolerance of the Tintin books with the unthinking racism that informs this adventure? And so there have been attempts to pretend it doesn't exist - you won't find it on the back cover of Tintin books with the other volumes - or to excuse it, by showing how Herge was merely reflecting the attitudes of his time, although, three decades after 'Heart Of Darkness' and the findsings of Roger Casement, it's difficult to justify as naive the (ahem) white-washing of genocidal Belgian colonialism, with the benevolent missionary project celebrated here, full of heroic action-priests. This is certainly the most difficult Tintin to read - watching our hero referring to natives as 'boy'; bullying them into working, and generally abusing them for his mistakes; treating Africa as a big playground where people exist to serve him and animals for the jolly slaughter.

Tintin is on a safari holiday to the Congo. His presence, however, is minsinterpreted by the area's gangsters, who send one particularly unlovely goon to get rid of him, which he attempts to do by raising the natives against Tintin. Among the various trials inflicted on our hero, the most memorable include being hung over a river of hungry crocodiles, being charged by an army of M'hatavus; and precipitating on a branch over steep rapids.

'Congo' is really Snowy's adventure - from his opening struggle with a parrot on board their cruise, Snowy is prominent, getting into scrapes, endlessly rescuing his recklessly adventurous master, at one point even made king by a tribe of pygmies. This focus is appropriate in an environment stuffed with animals; encounters with crocodiles, snakes, monkeys, buffalo, hippopotami, giraffes and rhinos make up the bulk of the action. This has a sinister side - the monkeys bear a striking resemblance to the Africans, whose flock-like instincts, dumb obedience and malleability marks them as barely above the level of animals, their minds as primitive as their way of life.

There are two types of colonialism in this adventure - one, bad, that exploits the natives, treats them as slaves and robs them of their resources; the other, that of Tintin and the missionaries who teach the natives that their home country is Belgium, is benevolent, bringing railways, medicine, education technology, progress. I think it's possible, however, that Herge, contributing to a right-wing Catholic magazine, was straining at his story's ideological limits - the reduction of the train service to a rickety tin-can hardly heralds the success of colonialism; the repeated imagery of holes, trees, fluids (water, rubber seeping from trees), arrows etc., might take on a Freudian dimensnion, suggesting unconscious anxieties behind the optimistic facade - the incident with the buffalos might suggest as much. When Tintin prepares to shoot a rhino, the film camera he had been carrying is turned away - this is an activity best not documented. At one point, a gangster disguises himself as a priest, momentarily suggesting a connection between the two (exploiting) groups. Throughout the story, judgements and observations made by Tintin based on appearances - the wandering of a leopard into a schoolroom; the charge of whooping pygmies - are shown to be inaccurate. The importation of the less pleasant aspects of colonialism - especially militarism - is seen to blow up in the natives' faces.

The well-meaning attempts to ignore 'Congo' is wrong, a denial of history, an attempt to pretend Western Europe was never fundamentally racist. The real shame is that the book is a big improvement on its predecessor - the drawing is much more controlled and imaginative - memorable images include the torchlight revelation of a hunting monkey; the rescue attempt by the priest on two wires over the rapids, with the knife-wielding gangster looking on; the pygmy charge through the forest; the silhouette of Tintin hanging from the rope ladder of a biplane as he escapes a herd of buffalo. Most brilliantly, the landscape often mirrors the action, e.g. the palm trees overlooking the homicidal witch-doctor at night.

Rating:
Summary: TINTIN AU CONGO
Review: I bought the entire collection of TinTin books to interest my grandson to read and get off the tube. I love all the books, but my favorite in Tintin in Tibet but let's stop trying to analyze stories that were drawn by a young boy scout, who probably, like most of the children in Belgium, had never seen a black person. Tintin au Congo must have been the first I book I "read". These pictures and story were drawn and written when you were still lynching blacks. White comedians appeared in black face..so keep trying to find fault in a book that was solely written for children. Belgium was never an imperialistic nation, it's a kingdom. It was a funny story, the world of make believe, Tintin did not put a stick of dynamite after drilling a rhino. It was adventure for children, to see other people with chilldren eyes,
a marvelous adventure with animals we had never seen. How do these rightgeous critics rate TinTin in America with only gangsters and cowboys...the Blue Lotus, with British harrassing Chinese and the Japanese all look like jackasses. Captain Haddock inhales whisky, but he is also the president of the League des Marins Antialcooliques. ...

Rating:
Summary: Tintin goes on a big game hunt in the Congo
Review: The plot to The Aventures of Tintin in the Congo has Tintin on a big game hunting vacation in the Congo to shoot animals with gun and camera. (Camera only comes into play in the last eight pages of the book when he has already shot 15 antelope, a monkey, a large snake (which was eating a man, so not really bad to kill) and an elephant.) On the boat ride over Snowy gets into scrapes with a parrot, an electric fish and a stowaway who remains undiscovered except by Snowy. In the Congo the stowaway follows them and keeps trying to cause trouble for Tintin. Is he still mad about Snowy or does he have deeper motives? ....

Probably people are going to do racism to death in the other reviews. I don't see it as much of an issue. Most scenes show Tintin alone in the forest shooting animals, so there are no natives to portray negatively. (If British people were in the mood to complain about Thomson and Thompson they could.) Obviously the racism issue is why this Tintin book gets released less frequently than others.

I suggest reading some other Tintin books before you read this one. TIntin does do clever things for example using an electro magnet to escape danger and assuming a disguise to unmask a crime ring. However he also does clever things like feed alkaseltzer and water to a leopard and get a snake to start swallowing its own tale. Mostly he is just shooting animals and getting rescued by Snowy or missionaries and is very passive compared to in other books.

Rating:
Summary: The 2nd Tintin Episode.
Review: This was the 2nd Tintin comic book that the Belgian author Herge' (1907-1983) wrote in 1931 after "Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets". In this episode Tintin travels to Congo in Africa and takes on a bunch of gangsters whom he'll meet again later in America in episode #3. This particular book has never been translated into English because apparently it is considered to be racially charged and demeaning to the African people, and also contains many cruelty scenes to animals. Nonetheless I had to pick this up since I have all the other books in English and needed to complete my collection of Tintin books, eventhough I can't read French too well. Many years ago I also had this same book in my mother-tongue (Farsi) and back then as a child never even thought a "comic" such as this to be considered as racist. It was only when I came to the USA that I noticed there are so many sensitive racial issues here where one can easily be tagged as racist based on only a subtle remark. Moral of the story is if you are politically correct you may as well want to skip this one, but be aware that a few of the other Tintins had to be modified as well before their first English publication. (for example "The Black Island" episode, since the original edition had apparently misrepresented the British people.)