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Comment by jordigh | Hacker News Reader

Not everyone loved it. Astérix and the Goths was an early and very unfavourable depiction of the Germans as militaristic and ruthless, written with WW2 still fresh in mind. The Germans did not like this early strip. Goscinny and Uderzo seemed to regret this early portrayal, as Goths in latter Astérix strips were depicted more sympathetically.

My point here is that "political correctness" has a point. Of course most Europeans love Astérix. It's usually harmless and in good fun. It's punching upwards or sideways. But making fun of genocided cultures by completely misunderstanding them is not in good fun. Oumpah-pah or Tintin in the Congo are a different sort of thing than Astérix In Helvetia.

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>Astérix and the Goths was an early and very unfavourable depiction of the Germans as militaristic and ruthless

As opposed to the real life French experience of them?

>My point here is that "political correctness" has a point.

That we should ignore historical experience and portray peoples and cultures as totally the same and interchangeable except in purely decorative areas (e.g. cuisine, music)?

Because a Germany that shed cruel blood and huge toll all over Europe was for 5+ years the direct experience of Europeans that wrote those comics, and for many decades still a trauma...

The English genocided southeast Asia contemporaneously but I'm not sure that was part of their characterization in the comics.

It would have been if the comics were made by southeastern Asians, but they were made by French who had other experiences (and weren't themselves that good to southeastern Asians)...

That's funny, I am German and that comic book was always one of my favourites. I never made the connection that it was supposed to be demeaning or that there was a controversy around it. I always took it as being cheeky like Asterix in Britain.

Are you perhaps younger? It had a not great contemporary reception and when translated in West Germany included a lot of anti-East Germany propaganda.

I think you are talking about the first publisher who tried to insert controversial elements into Asterix. He was somewhat of a nationalist. His license got pulled and the comics got re-released in the normal format. Those were two different things.

Right, are you younger and far removed from the experience of a German reading this comic soon after WW2? Those were the Germans who did not like this comic.

Yes, I was not born when the original German translations were released, so I cannot comment on the reactions in the time. But I can also not recall any media controversy around the comic other than the initial publisher mishap, that is why I am bit confused about these comments. Surely there must be some people that complained to Uderzo but that is unavoidable.

Erbfeindschaft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French%E2%80%93German_enmity) is still alive and well in Germany so it's not like there is no awareness of these sentiments anymore. Although under the EU project that has improved a lot in the recent two decades because both the French and Germans found a common enemy in the Brits ha.

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