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Thursday, July 19, 2007

Rudd Relieved as Tintin Banned in Australia


Kevin Rudds pitch to liberal voters has been enhanced by a decision by Borders to ban Tintin in the Congo from public view. Rudd, very successfully cartooned as Tintin by Bill Leak in the Australian, staved off a Coalition attempt to brand him a rampaging racist, with an eye on environmental destruction. The books are now available in brown wrapping to discerning eligible voters looking for any reason to vote for John Howard.

The cover of the book purportedly showing Kevin about to tour remote Aboriginal Communities was deemed too explosive in an election year.

The Spokesman from the Labor Party said they had nothing to do with the decision.


I was drawn to this story by an interesting article by Robert Sharp, himself a Tintin fan and his love hate relationship with some of the not so PC aspects of the storyline.

Based on his writings, Tintin was about as progressive as my grandparents generation. Robert writes:

I’ve read Tintin in the Congo, and it is indeed appalling. In addition to the obvious racism, it is also distinctly environmentally unfriendly. Tintin blows up a rhino with a stick of dynamite, shoots an entire herd of impala by accident, makes a snake gobble its own tail, performs a summary execution of a chimpanzee, attempts to shoot a crocodile in the face, and poaches an elephant for its tusks.

Where to begin with the racism in the book? Throughout, the Africans are portrayed as simpletons, who idolise Tintin and Snowy and fetishize anything western they can get their hands on. The chief of one tribe has a rolling pin for a sceptre.

Kevin can rest easy that he will just be mocked rather than vilified in the cartoon community.

7 comments:

Crushed said...

Tintin in Congo seems to have become a hot issue.
I still have all the Tintin books, but I don't have this in English, because it wasn't available in English when I was a kid.

Anyone who has read the Blue Lotus, or Ottoaker's Sceptre will see that Herge was certainly not a Fascist. He himself acknowledged that the book, being one of his earliest (Tintin in the Sovets is only available in black and white) was not really researched ans wasn't as serious as later books.

Incidently, there are two major examples of political censorship in Tintin. Tintin in America had most of the black characters turned into white ones, because the US publishers of the time didn't approve of children reading comics with black people in them.
The Land of Black Gold was originally set in British Mandate Palestine, but those references were removed in the seventies. The original pages are available on line, in English.

Anonymous said...

And by Tintin and the Picaros, he is an active revolutionary!

Anonymous said...

Forgot to say: thanks for the link!

Colin Campbell said...

Thanks for the educational tips. I just enjoyed Tintin for the comics. When I was in Vietnam, he was very popular there. We have a number of T Shirts and Laquer Prints with Tintin. Obviously there are many academic lines on his work.

The people who held his copyright got bent out of shape with his association with a Politician in Australia. Obviously some kind of commercial arrangement has been made. There were concerns that his integrity as a character may be compromised. Obviously he is a very complex character and that the superficial use of his character does not necessarily undermine this.

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