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> When Hergé published this comic book, he was only 23 years old and wrote it as part of government-led initiative to encourage Belgians to take up commissions in Congo ... Later on his life, Hergé would say: "For the Congo as with Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, the fact was that I was fed on the prejudices of the bourgeois society in which I moved ... It was 1930. I only knew things about these countries that people said at the time: 'Africans were great big children ... Thank goodness for them that we were there!' Etc. And I portrayed these Africans according to such criteria, in the purely paternalistic spirit which existed then in Belgium".
See: Tintin In The Congo, by Hergé (Georges Remi) - https://archive.org/details/tintin-in-the-congo-herge-george...
My friend is a big fan of Tintin and has a lot of really nice hand carved large wooden figurines of the characters and vehicles from the series.
I would normally think these figurines would be made for tourists but I don't think there is much of a tourist trade in the DRC. These figurines would sell for a lot of money in the USA or Europe.
Isn't it? Not sure about today but I bought a copy maybe 10 years ago after never having seen it for sale in living memory before that. It did come with some wrapping around the front that said it was of its time though.
I got a new French copy more recently than that as well (can't remember when exactly but it may have been in the last two years).
The coloured editions seem to be the same in both languages except for the rhino encounter (plus the English edition having a content warning before page 1). I believe the changed rhino encounter was initially done for the Dutch translation many years ago.
That's part of what makes art good: it reflects its time, warts and all, it's not just something pandering to the current sensibilities.
It is a classic challenge with art: whether to view it in the context of its time or as self contained and removed from its context. Dunno if either view is better; they serve different purposes.
But I do think it’s notable that art from the same era, created by people with similar backgrounds, can vary widely in how much it parrots what we consider to be “warts” from the era.
Compare Jan Eyre and North and South: authors with similar social contexts, yet one perpetuates racist/colonial stereotypes and doesn’t question Victorian ideas about class, and one is much more modern in its view of gender and class.
I’m not sure I would say that part of what makes Jan Eyre good is its unquestioning colonialism. It’s a great book, no doubt, but its prejudices are a weakness, not a strength.
Art can be good whether it panders to sensibilities or not. There are many more factors involved than that. For art involving social critique it's best to not pander, but not all art is like that.
But once it's created, it should be left to reflect its era, its creator, and the actual semtiments he had and wanted to express. Not retrofitted with later moral posturings.
>Compare Jan Eyre and North and South: authors with similar social contexts, yet one perpetuates racist/colonial stereotypes and doesn’t question Victorian ideas about class, and one is much more modern in its view of gender and class.
They are not redducible to one another though, as they cover different aspects of life, from different angles and viewpoints.
We should preserve Bronte's viewpoint though, not erase it or reject it, or keep the plot and change it's views and morals to our taste.
> We should preserve Bronte's viewpoint though, not erase it or reject it, or keep the plot and change it's views and morals to our taste.
Eh, this is more complicated to me. If you were producing a modern play/movie of Jane Eyre, would you keep the psychotic creole woman locked in the attic, unchanged?
Sure. I'd want to retain art as an ark of its time. The idea is to present the work of the writer, not to use their mere basic plot as a starting point.
Should we not judge a man according to what was acceptable during his time and not ours?
Herge was a very open-minded man for his time, but maybe not so much according to today's standards. But this probably applies to every man ever lived including our own parents
I can’t speak to Herge or his era; if he was in the 98th percentile of tolerance and growth, I’d think super highly of him. If he was 60th percentile, less so, but as you say, we are all products of our time.
What I really dislike is the recurring talking point that we can’t judge people for merely being typical of their time.
There have been lots of historical times where the typical views were horrific, and where minorities who argued against those views were persecuted. I don’t truck with the “we can’t blame the persecutors, it’s what everyone was doing” line of thought.
That's all very noble but you have to apply it to yourself too. If you just go along with the popular morals of your time, you're no better than them. To a future society, our time may well look immoral.
Morals aren't universal. They depend on the environment people live in. As an example of something widely accepted today - we make children spend most of their childhood at school. Many of them don't much like doing that and it sounds like a fairly abusive practice if it didn't have any purpose. But kids have to go to school so they'll be successful as adults. It's a bad thing we do to people due to the circumstances of our society. Maybe in some kind of future utopia or a non-industrialised world there would be no need for school and the compulsory schooling of today would look like child abuse.
Are you sure you've progressive enough to even identify the bad beliefs of today's progressives, let alone stand up against them?
The world did not change very quickly in regards to social norms or acceptance even in 1950, and colonialism was still very much in vouge back then. The US didn't give up the Philippines and UK didn't give up India until WW2 was wrapping up. Most economic studies I've seen draw a thick line at 1950 as "post war economy" etc etc. Values of "efforts to improve" may not have existed at all in the mainstream media back then. Tintin was/is the French equivalent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe today.
This is not to diminish moral responsibility (which I think is an essentially moot topic at this juncture). But rather to bring the focus back to how these regimes actually worked.
You didn't need to be an active collaborator. You just had to not actively resist, and keep your mouth shut (or at least keep your grumblings insubstantial and subdued).
Rather like in corporate environments today.