Deji Olukotun Offers His Thoughts on Tintin in the Congo Ruling
In an article on his site Fiction that Matters, Deji Olukotun, author of Running the Lines for Fulgence, responds to the recent ruling by a Belgian court against accusations that Tintin in the Congo “incites racial hatred”.
Tintin in the Congo, the second book in Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin series, has repeatedly come under criticism for its patronising portrayal of the Congolese as well as its treatment of wildlife. There have also been many attempts to ban the book, most recently by Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo, a Congolese man living in Belgium, whose application was vetoed earlier this year. Several UK bookstores moved the book out of the children’s section and into “graphic novels” to protect junior citizens from exposure to its offensive content.
According to Olukotun, not only is the book offensive but it “represents an utter failure of his imagination”. South African artist Anton Kannemeyer, co-founder of Bitterkomix, parodies Tintin in the Congo in his book Pappa in Afrika.
I suppose I am one of the few people who have actually read Tintin in the Congo. I flipped through it while working at a children’s book store, sometime between shelving board books and selling Mexican jumping beans at the register. The story itself is fairly milquetoast by Hergé’s standards, as the author seems to have been carried away by drawing the animals and the natives—the latter with lots of red ink for the lips.
A Belgian court has rejected an application to ban a colonial-era book about the Congolese adventures of the cartoon character Tintin for breaching racism laws.
Documents from the court of first instance in Brussels show that it did not believe the 1946 edition of Tintin in the Congo was intended to incite racial hatred, a criteria when deciding if something breaks Belgium’s racism laws. The decision was issued late on Friday.
Book details
- Tintin in the Congo by Hergé
EAN: 9781405220989
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Photo courtesy The Telegraph
- Pappa in Afrika by Anton Kannemeyer
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EAN: 9781770098718
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Apr
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