Sunday, July 12, 2020

Bias and Nostalgia in Hergé’s Tintin

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Anant Jani

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Bias and Nostalgia in Hergé’s Tintin

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Global Views 360

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July 12, 2020

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A collection of Tintin Comics

A collection of Tintin Comics | Source: Mills Baker via Flickr

Some of my fondest memories involve sitting under the guava or the European gumtree, perched on the wall of our garden as the sunlight dappled on an old copy of a Tintin comic. For some years, at least, before the gumtree was cut down, the leaves bore witness to me following the globe-trotting adventures of the Belgian reporter, replete with hilariously-named companions and witty play of words. My nostalgia is as much for the inked characters and words on the paper, as for the musty smell of the oft-thumbed and yellowed pages of the comic, and the permanently romanticized view of the sunny garden. The comics have left a palpable imprint on my sense of humour and love of a certain kind of literature. And perhaps it is this imprint, along with my pleasant nostalgia, that makes it a struggling task to accept Hergé’s racism through his Tintin comics.

Hergé’s (or Georges Prosper Remi’s) writings were, undeniably, a product of their times. His first two series in the Adventures of Tintin comics, Tintin in the land of the Soviets (1929) and Tintin in Congo (1931), have famously been the subject of much debate, since the late 1900s. In Soviets, Hergé offers a crude critique against Marxism – meant to inculcate anti- Soviet sentiments in the European youth at the time, by portraying the Bolsheviks as inherently evil without a full comprehension of how they rose to power or what their political views were.

In Congo, African tribes and leaders are portrayed as either infantile, or in need of saving, to the extent that Tintin becomes the embodiment of fairness for young Africans, even having a temple made after him. Congo itself was a colony of Belgium from 1908 to 1960, one of the two colonies that Belgium governed, and the comics grossly ignore the labour politics of the Congolese and their efforts in both the World Wars. It was not until after the decolonisation of Africa that European perception of ex-African colonies changed.

Much of the modern debate surrounding the banning of select Tintin comics is centred around the depicitons of big-game hunting in Congo and the anti-Semitism in the The Shooting Star. Besides the uncomfortable portrayals of the Congolese, a few panels in the 1931 edition of Congo depicted Tintin drilling a hole into a live Rhinoceros, filled with dynamite, and blown up. In the 1946 edition, this scene was replaced, with Herge apologizing for what he recognized as “youthful transgressions''. In the Shooting Star, the villainous financer was renamed, from the Jewish Blumstein to the innocuous Bohlwinkel.

Hergé’s subsequent works became politically neutral, written after the German occupation of Belgium and the German takeover of Le Vingtième Siècle, the conservative Catholic newspaper he wrote for. While the white-saviour narrative continued with Tintin leading as the embodiment of Europe that “natives” had to follow, the later works are much less politically biased.

However, he prefaced Tintin in America with a critique against the racism in the United States, alongside his anti-imperial stance in The Blue Lotus. He is also known, famously, for not joining with the far-right extremist forces in German-occupied Belgium at the time, as many of his colleagues had. Michael Farr, a British expert on The Adventures of Tintin series, claimed after a meeting with Hergé that “you couldn’t meet someone more open and less racist”. Others have called him an opportunist, heaving towards the side that was popular. Perhaps this was indeed the case, or equally, perhaps Hergé did change his views, and his writings in Soviet and Congo are merely reflective of the predominant Belgian culture at the time.

At any rate, the question still remains: how do we read, or re-read, Hergé (or many such childhood-favourite authors, like Dr. Seuss)? Shelving the books and forgetting the authors is undoubtedly impossible, and misguided besides. A recognition of the biases, and a plethora of context surrounding these texts must be made available at all times. A celebration of a character or a person must not come at the cost of ignoring their uncomfortable stances.

The depiction of Africa in 20th century comics has been abysmal. A tendency of depicting the 'other' as a 'noble-savage' is a familiar concern to those readers who have spent much of their lives in recently liberated colonies. It is, perhaps, especially imperative for such readers to keep this in mind and not repeat them.

In our Consumerist times, it seems, we sometimes forget to start dialogues on themes that are unfamiliar and maybe even uncomfortable to us. We forget which stories desperately need to be told and which have not seen the light of day under the shadow of popular literature.

This, at least, is what I have strived to do: to maintain a balance between nostalgia and a recognition of biases. My memory of the Tintin comics will remain just as romantic as the idyllic memory I started with in the beginning of this article.

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February 4, 2021 4:44 PM

World's largest graveyard of Dinosaurs found in South Africa

In a village in the eastern cape of South Africa lies one of the most significant dinosaur sites ever found in the world. The site was discovered when a shepherd, Dumangwe Thyobeka found a large bone on his way to his great-grandparents’ graves, in 2015. He then took the bones to a local dinosaur enthusiast, James Rhalene. Commenting on this discovery " Mr. Rhalene said, "Growing up we were told dinosaurs were a myth, I thought they were only tales our grandparents would tell around the fire at story time", and It wasn't until reading some books that I started to believe they may be real. I've been looking into the existence of dinosaurs since 1982. He added, "You can imagine my excitement at being part of this and discovering them in my own backyard. I am so proud. Books will be written about our small village; the world will come to know of us through this discovery.”

These bones are more than 200 million years old, of around the end of the Triassic era and the beginning of the Jurassic one. When the village elder, Sginyane Ralane came to know about the discovery, he reached out to universities in South Africa for looking into it. The news eventually reached Prof. Jonah Choiniere from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and in 2018 Jonah and his colleagues started excavating the site. “It has been one of those places where you sometimes find yourself literally tripping over a dinosaur bone. There are very few other sites I've had the chance to work where we have this richness of fossils.” says Prof Paul Barett, a dinosaur expert at The Natural History Museum, UK, after he joined the team.

A reason why this area is abundant in fossils, Natural History Museum explains, is because of the ancient river systems in the area. The area is arid for most of the year now, and the rivers flow only seasonally. However, in the ancient times, there were vast river systems flowing year-round in the region, with wide, shallow rivers which would consequently form a layer of rock 210 million years old which is up to 500 meters thick in some regions. These rivers supported diverse wildlife, including ancestors of crocodiles, possibly those of turtles and mammals and fish, amphibians and reptile-like animals. The existence of such large rivers meant that dead animals nearby would be buried in sediment before they decomposed.  

This discovery is scientifically important for a number of reasons; the era from which these bones are found is a boundary in which a mass extinction occurred. Prof. Jonah is trying to understand how the animals from before that extinction survived and how they flourished after. In the Triassic era, there were multiple dominating animals, like the crocodiles, big mammal-like animals and dinosaurs. In the Jurassic era, however, the dinosaurs are clearly dominating. Why this happened is unclear, and the rocks and fossils from this site might help with that. There were also other animals along with dinosaurs in this site which make it noteworthy. Of the animals found, there were rauisuchians, which relate to modern-day crocodiles, and were dominant on land during the Triassic. The team also found cyclodonts and dicyclodonts, where the cyclodonts are the early ancestors to all mammals, and dicyclodonts are an even earlier branch of the mammalian family tree.

All of these have a significant impact on the community too; the team signed a memorandum of understanding with the local government with huge. After the signing, local officials visited the site at Qhemega. The team has been trying to use the heavy machinery they had brought for moving fossils for improving access in and to the village. They are also developing a curriculum in high schools to include topics about fossil sites and to add geography to the curriculum, to train the younger generation about the mapping used in excavation and in many other scientific fields especially relevant in the mineral-resource rich South Africa.

So far, this site has only provided benefits for everyone involved; new discoveries and confirming data for the scientific community, and economic access, increased opportunities and a matter for pride for the local community.

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