Tintin 'to be sued' for Congo book

telegraph.co.uk ^ | 01 Sep 2009 | Henry Samuel

[paudio]

I don't know how many Freepers are familiar with Tintin, but this is another case of multiculturalism goes crazy. The comics were first published in the 1940s!

[pillut48]

Next he’ll be filing suit against the Asterix books because they make Romans look like morons! Always gotta be something to litigate!

[ReneeLynn]

This reminds me of some of those barf-worthy notices they’re attaching to old films these days explaining that there may be stereotypes in the film, but they were left in to reflect the times. Oh, keep your nose out of my old films!

Now they want to back censor?

[Charles Henrickson]

[freespirited]

Another rent-seeker. How original.

[Godwin1]

Oh please! Colonialism was no worse, and arguably better, than the chaos and unrestrained violence they have there now.

[achilles2000]

Only “arguably”?

[Oztrich Boy]

I don't know how many Freepers are familiar with Tintin?

Thunderbirds are Go?

[ReneeLynn]

Wait a minute.
“’...It makes people think that blacks have not evolved,’ he said.”

Evolved from what?! That’s quite a racist statement there.

[stormer]

I for one am offended with Captain Haddock making all us drunks look like fools!

[himno hero]

Take a trip to Africa. Cradle of mankind. But yet they all still live at the tribal level right down to politics. Nobody can get ahead of the chiefs,, not more friends, more money, more ideas/// cuzz if any man excells, the people are preconditioned to pull him down.

Show me one invention other than the mortar and pestle. Show me their humanity... Africans are the most racist going! Thats why the periodical genocides....

[Army Air Corps]

Ping.

[Disambiguator]

Almost all Tintin books contain stereotypes of one form or another. I’m surprised the Arabs haven’t jumped all over this, too.

The Bordurians were made out to look like Soviet thugs, but you don’t hear them complaining! ;^)

[ReneeLynn]

That’s cultural, not evolutionary. If he’s said ‘black African culture has not evolved’ I would probably still have a problem with his complaining, but it wouldn’t sound so racist.

[ari-freedom]

“Tintin’s little (black) helper is seen as stupid and without qualities. It makes people think that blacks have not evolved,” he said.

no, I think people who just do nothing but sue all day give that impression.

[super7man]

I grew up with Tintin books. Herge stereotyped everyone and he did it well. Chinese, Japanese, South Americans, North Americans, Middle Eastern, Muslums. I have every book and occasionally read one even now. Red Rackums Treasure is my favorite.

[Razz Barry]

In 2007, British race watchdogs pulled the book from children's shelves and attacked the Tintin cartoons for making black Africans "look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles".

Boy, times have changed. The only people we can depict now as imbeciles are white men.

[stormer]

Have you been to Africa? I have, and while there are a lot of places where what you say is true, it isn't all like that. There are places of unimaginable beauty where happy, warm, and intelligent people live.

[Nam Vet]

I guess Little Black Sambo would be totally out of the question. As I recall, he did get his clothes back from the tigers AND they all turned into butter(?), I think. Chasing around the tree, was it? Back areound '49 or '50, I think.

Whatever happened to Sambo's Pancake House?

Nam Vet

[himno hero]

The beauty of Africa is grandiose, and the potential excepting the upper third, is huge however it is quickly eroded by tribalism, corruption, uncle zoeee and his marriage to islam and their ability to relate to voodoo. Throughout africa the black heart and related corruption still prevails and their ability to get ahead is thereby limited.

The best thing that happened to them IS colonialism as bad an experience as it was. Look to Canada and Australia as examples of what colonialism can produce!