2023-12-11 06:01:00
Tintin in the Congo, Hergé’s highly controversial work published in 1931, has just been reissued with a new cover but also and above all with a preface aimed at putting the work in its context.
The album is sold in a box set called “Les colorisés”, released on November 1 and also includes Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (1930) and Tintin in America (1932).
Hergé himself faced controversy before his death. “I only knew regarding this country what people said regarding it […] I drew them, these Africans, according to these criteria, in the purest paternalistic spirit which was that of the time,” he defended himself.
The author of the preface, who is none other than Philippe Goddin, president of the Les Amis d’Hergé association, also believes that there is no racism in Hergé’s work.
Bad times for Tintin
“It has been said that Hergé odiously caricatured the Congolese. Racist, him? He vigorously defended himself […] He cheerfully mocks everyone, white and black,” he writes.
And to clarify to our colleagues at AFP: “We are racist from the moment we want to denigrate, demean the other, which is not the case with Tintin in the Congo. Of course, there are stereotypes, caricatures. Hergé insisted on big lips and flat noses, like many designers at the time. But for me, even if the border is fragile between caricature and racism, he does not cross it.”
An opinion that Pascal Blanchard, a historian specializing in colonialist imagination and propaganda, does not share. “In the album, Africans are the only ones who express themselves like idiots. Even a dog speaks better than them. We might no longer leave young readers faced with this, without context, without explanation,” he denounces.
After “Tintin in the Congo”, another Hergé album creates controversy
Pascal Blanchard would have wanted more: a second preface signed by a great historian like Elikia M’Bokolo, a Congolese specialist in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries,” he suggests.
“These albums are almost 100 years old. We no longer read them in the same way as back then. It seems useful to put things in context. And it’s always better than removing entire passages or rewriting Hergé’s entire work,” said DH cartoonist Frédéric du Bus.
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