Posted on 08/22/2009 11:31:45 AM PDT by past_present
Brooklyn's chief librarian has yanked a nearly 80-year-old book from the shelves because it depicts Africans as monkeys.
Tintin Au Congo is the only book in the city library system hidden from public view after a reader complained that it was "racially offensive."
The popular Belgian children's work - due to be made into a movie by Steven Spielberg - is locked behind a series of hidden doors on the third floor of Brooklyn's central library.
"'Tintin au Congo' was relocated," said director Richard Reyes-Gavilan. Library officials across the city said they've debated pulling about 25 books and DVDs from city shelves, including "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," by Ann Coulter, and a Harold Robbins novel, but rejected the requests.
Only "Tintin" was blacklisted in Brooklyn - and quietly yanked from the
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
I am not by any means a "book burner" but to some extent to believe in "community standards" which has kept pornography out of libraries in conservative communities. So, in the case, I must stand with the Brooklyn Library, while you stand with the ACLU.Actually, I stand with no such thing. For one thing, saying we can assail the library's own internal censorship doesn't mean that we can't approve it, so long as it didn't assume that its own policy could or should become another library's policy in another community or venue. (This works, too, with a book the Brooklyn Library might okay, even if another library in another community rejected it, and this wouldn't even come close to remaining the exclusive province of porn which I think we'd all agree should be kept away from children, and not just in libraries.) Even if I think they're fools to pull or hide an ancient book that's being held to a standard that didn't exist, rightly or wrongly, in its own time and place (I don't believe one ancient Belgian book is going to turn a kid into a racist), never mind how foolish they were to have thought of pulling or hiding nothing more dangerous than one woman's political writing.
For another, and perhaps more important thing, you probably don't need me to tell you that the standard I enunciated in my original post would probably be hammered by the ACLU as sanctioning censorship of any kind! They'd see what I said in my first sentence and, perhaps having a case of apoplexy over that sentence, never even get to the very next sentence. Show me a cherry tree and I'll show you the spaces from which the ACLU has plucked very selectively the various fruits . . .
Well, it would appear that many on this thread stand with the ACLU in their assailing the Brooklyn Library for banning this book.
So, it appears that you are opposed to the banning of this particular book, that being the case, are there are books or subject manner that you believe should be banned from public libraries?
Looks as if they'll find a way to blame Sarah Palin for this too </sarcasm>
It appears that this situation is just as true as the BS stories about her doing the same thing during the campaign.
That was my thought as well. Herge's work uses the standard cartoonist caricature of the day for Africans--the lips and mouth depicted as a dot on a rounded white protrusion on a black face--that every cartoonist used, including Rube Goldberg and nearly every early animation studio. Whatever else might be said, they don't resemble monkeys. The protest says much more about the protesters and their need to read "racism" into everything than it does about Herge.
Well, it would appear that many on this thread stand with the ACLU in their assailing the Brooklyn Library for banning this book.Even the ACLU can be right once in a blue moon, even if in so doing they find themselves standing aside people they'd ordinarily and otherwise fight.
. . . are there are books or subject manner that you believe should be banned from public libraries?Given the absolute choice I'd probably sooner see public libraries impose control over access to certain books or publications without banning them outright. That said, I've never really understood the necessity for something like porn to be accessible in a public library myself, and I've never favoured its accessibility to children, even if I happen to think there's probably something very wrong with, say, a boy who didn't want to look at a pretty or sexy girl even once, it being understood that merely wanting to look at a sexy girl even once doesn't automatically mean said boy is going to turn into a raving sex offender.
But I don't believe it would be a terrible imposition upon some adult whose, ahem, taste runs that way, to find it available only through certain retail outlets and under certain conditions and not by way of his (or her, for that matter) local public library.
If you're asking me about other kinds of controversial materials---say, political or social writings, fiction or nonfiction---I don't have a problem with a library making them available, whatever they are. (If only because it's always good to know what your adversary might be thinking, assuming you can call it thinking in a lot of cases.) My worry regarding political or social writings over which my hairs would stand on end, especially those in which you can discern a pronounced eagerness on the author(s)' part not just to communicate a viewpoint but to consecrate it into a living and even legal prescription, is in the end the same as enunciated by Frank Chodorov in 1949. He wrote specifically of the prosecution (under the old Smith Act) of the top leaders of the Communist Party USA, but he could have been writing about anyone communicating any idea, even one far less grotesque than Communism:
The danger, to those who hold freedom as the highest good, is not the ideas . . . espouse[d] but the power . . . aspire[d] to. Let them rant their heads off—that is their right, which we cannot afford to infringe—but let us keep from them the political means of depriving everybody else of the same right. (From "How to Curb the Commies"; analysis, May 1949; republished in Fugitive Essays: Selected Writings of Frank Chodorov [Indianapolis: LibertyFund, 1982].)
Er, apology for the clumsy HTML . . . ;)
Look, at least be honest enough to admit you don't have much of an argument.
What you are putting up is not an argument, it's just name calling.
Not all that much different than being called a racist because I object to the health care plan.
Not, name calling, but rather pointing out that some posters are in agreement with the ACLU.
I think someone was badly confused, as the book doesn’t really depict Africans as monkeys. What seems to have happened is that the Africans are depicted in a cartoony manner (standard for the era) that was interpreted by modern writers unfamiliar with the caricatural style of the past as monkey-like. It would have been more accurate to say the book depicted Africans using insulting or demeaning stereotypes. The monkey interpretation is simply wrong.
The history of the book is garbled, too. It goes back some 80 years, yes, but the version shown here is the updated one that was redrawn after World War II. The original was done when Herge was in his early 20s and still very crude as an artist, the book was filled with youthful excess (Tintin seemingly slaughters half the animals in Africa playing big game hunter), and there was some rah-rah Belgium nationalism that no longer played very well. Unfortunately, the depiction of Africans wasn’t much improved but the book was probably unsalvageable in that regard as far as American sensibilities are concerned.
It was the second book in the series. The first book, TINTIN IN THE LAND OF THE SOVIETS, still makes leftists spew venom (it was never redrawn or reissued as part of the regular series, and while available as a facsimile reprint, it’s more a historical curiosity than an “official” Tintin book). The third book was TINTIN IN AMERICA, which opens (at least in the original) with the words, “In Chicago, where criminals of all kinds reign supreme...” (The plot of TINTIN IN AFRICA had to do with Al Capone trying to muscle in on the Belgian Congo diamond business, and in the next book Tintin went to America to confront the gangsters directly.) Readers will note that in TINTIN IN AFRICA, Herge hailed Belgium’s colonial policies in Africa as noble work bringing modern medicine and education to the benighted natives but in TINTIN IN AMERICA he blasted Americans for treating Indians badly.
It should be remembered that the 22 or so TINTIN books were published over a span of some 45 years, from about 1930 to the last one in 1976, and the series changed a lot over time. Also, Herge practically reinvented the series after the war by redrawing and updating the older books while continuing to produce new ones. The early books generally available now aren’t the really old versions (which have been reprinted for the enthusiast market in all their creaky old glory, but you’d have to be a French-reading fan to obtain them). In any case, it took serveral books for Herge to really find his footing. Fans might disagree on when the series really “got good,” but it was probably five or six books in. Meeting a Chinese artist when he decided to do an adventure set in China (”The Blue Lotus”) is considered one of the turning points, as he became friends with the artist and began to realize it wasn’t enough to just send Tintin to some exotic place and have him have slapstick encounters with funny stereotypes of the natives. The series doesn’t really take off until Captain Haddock is introduced in the ninth book (”The Crab with the Golden Claws,” and some have argued that Haddock took over the series and is probably the real hero after that). By that time Herge had developed as an artist and shed his youthful excesses, and was delivering solid adventure stories mixed with comedy.
Herge was either canny enough to relaize Tintin couldn’t be the voice of conservative Catholic Belgium in the post-war era and had to be a more universal character, or he changed himself in some ways. I think it was a bit of both (he also had a lingering reputation of being a collaborationist to fight — he had continued to draw Tintin during the German occupation for a pro-Occupation newspaper). I also think Herge was one of those people who went along with the times and reflected what was around him. The world had changed after the war and Herge went along with that.
By the time Herge was negotiating with Spielberg about a possible Tintin movie in the early 80s, a lot of water had gone under the bridge. Herge had been accused of being a racist, an anti-Semite, and a Nazi collaborator in his time, but he was convinced Spielberg was the only one who could do Tintin justice as a major motion picture. (There had been a couple of live-action Tintin movies before, but they’re pretty dire...) It can also be seen that Spielberg has been working on this project for an awfully long time, since Herge died in 1983. And no doubt that as the Tintin movie project moves along, all of the ancient history will be dredged up as though it was just as current as the later and better part of the Tintin series.
There used to be a very funny joke about Michael Jackson flying home from Africa after picking up Bubbles, the Chimp...OW! Who pinched me??!!
Okay, so it would appear that you would stand with the ACLU in that no books should be banned from a public library. I would be in agreement with you on that point except that librarians at the local level have a responsibility to respect local standards.
However, that standard of what is taken off a library shelf must be extremely high and only include works that are universally offensive. And even though the standards of race are different today than they were in 1929, depicting Africans as monkeys does reach the point of being universally offensive.
However, that standard of what is taken off a library shelf must be extremely high and only include works that are universally offensive. And even though the standards of race are different today than they were in 1929, depicting Africans as monkeys does reach the point of being universally offensive.A library is a repository of knowledge. Even nasty offensive knowledge. It would be better if they just added a disclaimer or some history context.
Libraries are supposed to be places that expose you to new ideas, and if you're willing to work hard enough to get at them, offensive ones as well.
Okay, so it would appear that you would stand with the ACLU in that no books should be banned from a public library. I would be in agreement with you on that point except that librarians at the local level have a responsibility to respect local standards.I don't think we disagree regarding a librarian's responsibility.
But I think that, when a librarian is acting not just on behalf of, say, keeping children from porn (which shouldn't really be in the library, anyway) or from non-pornographic material that isn't quite at their comprehension level (librarians to my knowledge discuss and debate that business pretty constantly, as well they'd have to), but acting on behalf of suppressing political writings, for example, there's a very discomfiting thicket through which to navigate.
[T]hat standard of what is taken off a library shelf must be extremely high and only include works that are universally offensive.Probably higher than that. And if you've ever tried discussing "universally offencive" in the context of a library's content, you don't need me to remind how how discomfiting that thicket can be. Of all people to have the discussion, a library's staff probably have to be even more scrupulous, even more diligent, and even more acute in their knowledge and comprehension of the weight between community standards (actual or alleged) and the law. I don't envy them there.
And even though the standards of race are different today than they were in 1929, depicting Africans as monkeys does reach the point of being universally offensive.It does reach that point, to be sure, and a discomfiting point at that. As much could be said for ancient books depicting, for example, some indigenous South Americans as various types of Brazilian jungle creatures.
But here is where a library can act as a mediating and a teaching influence. I can remember attending a session at my childhood public library in which a very similar book (and this was circa 1964-65), though I forget just which one, was presented and its content discussed for children such as myself, in ways we could comprehend, and handled by a very intelligent librarian it was concluded that the book's lingering value was precisely in showing that what was once acceptable, however artful or high quality its actual composition might have been (I remember thinking, vaguely enough, that I didn't think it was all that well done, but I also remember there were those who concurred and those who did not), was no longer acceptable. Taken and presented in that fashion, there's nothing terribly wrong with keeping such a book and making it available for the curious.
I suspect a private library might have a simpler time of such things, but I don't think a public library could fumble it if its staff approaches it the right way. Certainly we don't want children thinking Africans are monkeys, but just as certainly we can show them such a book and show them how wrong the book's depiction actually was, in hand with teaching them a lesson or three about a) how wrong an earlier era's attitude happened to have been, in hand with b) how wrong it often is to apply a contemporary wish that the earlier era had been otherwise to rewriting that earlier era's history for better or worse.
But of course that would require teaching, and you probably know better than I know the problems (not entirely of teachers'---or, for that matter, librarians'---own makings) with teaching nowadays . . .
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