They never really got completely past it, but The Blue Lotus was some kind of breakthrough. It was pretty rare to have anyone point out what militarized Japan was doing, much less so a children's cartoonist. The whole series is honestly a lot weirder and uneven than people say.
― Frederik B, Wednesday, 11 March 2020 22:43 (four years ago) link
itt Οὖτις acting the goat
― JoeStork, Wednesday, 11 March 2020 22:47 (four years ago) link
idg the Curious George ref. Where is there Orientalism in Curious George? I only know the original 7 titles, and those all take place in NY, with no depictions of any non-white ethnicities that I can recall
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 11 March 2020 22:50 (four years ago) link
and with Tintin it goes beyond Orientalism - Native Americans, Africans, middle easterners, they all get the treatment.
tbf there's other stuff from the era (or even earlier - thinking of Windsor McCay primarily here, and Barks afterwards) where the overall style and imaginative execution on display is so overwhelming I'm willing to accept the racist context that they were operating in. But Tintin doesn't pass that bar ime.
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 11 March 2020 22:53 (four years ago) link
and of course there's this classic with the Jewshttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c7/Herge_cartoon_-_Tintin_and_the_Jews.jpg/330px-Herge_cartoon_-_Tintin_and_the_Jews.jpg
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 11 March 2020 22:54 (four years ago) link
Οὖτις have you read your son The Shooting Star? It's got a background villain that is markedly antisemitic (certainly by now standards so er this may serve as a warning if you haven't). These are mostly reasonable (I take issue with the lack of scale criticism as certain expanded panels such as the rocket reveal and lunar landscapes in Destination Moon are so embedded in my imagination from childhood) criticisms of an evidently controversial artist and series of books tho - surprised and interested to read that Tintin is 'everywhere' - I don't have kids to read it to but can share mixed feelings about that.
― nashwan, Wednesday, 11 March 2020 23:08 (four years ago) link
haven't read Shooting Star and lol I doubt I will now. We've read the following;Tintin in AmericaCigars of the PharaohThe Black IslandRed Rackham's TreasureFlight 714 to Sydney
when I say "everywhere" I mean available at the school library, the local library, and the local comic shop, all of which we frequent regularly.
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 11 March 2020 23:13 (four years ago) link
The opening of Shooting Star is incredible!
― Frederik B, Wednesday, 11 March 2020 23:17 (four years ago) link
I admit if I was reading these for my own pleasure I might approach them a little differently, but the calculus of "do I want to have yet another complicated conversation with my son about racist imagery from the past century" kinda undermines that
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 11 March 2020 23:21 (four years ago) link
You probably need to avoid Tintin In The Congo fyi
― ymo sumac (NickB), Wednesday, 11 March 2020 23:23 (four years ago) link
I legit don't think i'd have such an overwhelming interest in world cultures, travel and history (including the history of European perceptions of others) if i hadn't been such a huge Tintin fan as a child. Perhaps it's not so important now kids have access to the internet and a million TV channels, but thirty years ago it was a window into the wonder of human existence like few others. It has been a while since i last re-read them but iirc they still stand up well as adventure stories.
― ShariVari, Wednesday, 11 March 2020 23:29 (four years ago) link
i like tintin but the early books (the first 10 or so, maybe?) are indeed flawed for all the reasons mentioned -- tintin in the congo is so horrific in so many ways it actually made me angry when i read it. (tintin in the land of the soviets is pretty funny, though: iirc there's a scene where tintin stumbles on lenin and trotsky's stash of buried treasure, or something like that.)
herge did become quite a bit better later on, though -- the moon books, castafiore emerald, tintin in tibet all display real growth: better art, more convincing characterization, better plotting + humor. if you're not into them, tho, no reason to keep going imo.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Wednesday, 11 March 2020 23:32 (four years ago) link
Flight 714 is weird!Don’t you need to read The Secret Of The Unicorn for Red Rackem’s Treasure to make sense?The other ones you read are early ones, not so great, imo, later ones get much better.Agree about the racism, obv
― brimstead, Wednesday, 11 March 2020 23:32 (four years ago) link
The Dalai Llama has praises Tintin In Tibet, fwiw
― brimstead, Wednesday, 11 March 2020 23:33 (four years ago) link
praised
There's a very good passage in The Blue Lotus where Tintin and a young boy discusses Europeans racist views on Chinese. He got that out of his system, I think. There's still a lot of other stereotypes throughout the series, though
― Frederik B, Wednesday, 11 March 2020 23:34 (four years ago) link
I don’t believe Tintin In the Congo is available in the US? It wasn’t when I was growing up in the 90s anyway
― brimstead, Wednesday, 11 March 2020 23:34 (four years ago) link
shooting star is (or used to be) my favorite of the early books but it was serialized during the nazi occupation of belgium, which makes the problematic stuff even more disturbing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shooting_Star#Antisemitism
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Wednesday, 11 March 2020 23:34 (four years ago) link
Sorry, stepped away to heat up some pork. I didn't mean to suggest that Curious George is orientalist -- but it relies on period-equivalent icky colonialist attitudes. While it wasn't written to be racist, clearly, it definitely uses shifty power dynamics from the end of imperialism to illustrate power dynamics that reinforce white hegemony.
― rb (soda), Wednesday, 11 March 2020 23:35 (four years ago) link
Tintin In The Congo has mostly been reprinted as a for-adults historical-curio with contextual introduction, it's been many decades since it was available for kids.
A lot of the othering depends on caricatures that a kid today isn't likely to pick up on because the specificity of the caricature has been erased, like the semitic financier in Shooting Star. (It's mordantly amusing that this was originally created under Nazi occupation, and Herge revised the character to remove the specific elements that he thought were Jewish, not just cartoony, for the collected editions. It was still totally obvious by 1950s standards, but doesn't really read today. Vindication at last.)
Herge definitely gets much much better as he goes on, in terms of racism as well as (obv) storytelling. Later books are explicitly anti-colonial and anti-bigotry (eg Prisoners Of The Sun, The Castafiore Emerald), presumably partly as a corrective, and partly just because Herge became quite personally woke. But the computer lettering in the post-2005-ish editions is so painful that they're best enjoyed for the illustrative work by the studio artists.
― Fantastic. Great move. Well done (sic), Wednesday, 11 March 2020 23:50 (four years ago) link
Idg that at all about Curious George. Can u be more specific? Is it just the white paternal figure steals a monkey from africa? Thats just the first book.
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 11 March 2020 23:54 (four years ago) link
Xps
George always seemed more like a stand-in for a child than for a non-white ethnicity
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 11 March 2020 23:56 (four years ago) link
In a (fairly) well-anthologized kid's lit essay, June Cummins talks about George as a 'mimic-man.' He's part of a mid-century wave of characters that read very differently depending on audience. Article here: https://ziggysroom.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/article-the-resisting-monkey-curious-george-slave-captivity-narratives-and-the-postcolonial-condition.pdf. See also: Oompa Loompas, Babar.
― rb (soda), Thursday, 12 March 2020 00:46 (four years ago) link
Huh thx
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 12 March 2020 01:36 (four years ago) link
'Tintin is bad' it otm, but hardly a controversial opinion (depends where you live perhaps?). It's one the few cultural touchstones that's been well called out on its racism, at least over here (and ppl here *love* to wave away racism in stuff they used to like as a kid).
― Le Bateau Ivre, Thursday, 12 March 2020 08:20 (four years ago) link
In the French-speaking world, these days it's customary to acknowledge that Tintin is hopelessly problematic while at the same time holding it up as a masterpiece of comic book art.
― romanesque architect (pomenitul), Thursday, 12 March 2020 08:31 (four years ago) link
tintin au congo is studied on uk linguistics courses as an exemplar of racist colonial literature
― ogmor, Thursday, 12 March 2020 08:52 (four years ago) link
I can't think of a better use for it tbh.
― romanesque architect (pomenitul), Thursday, 12 March 2020 09:00 (four years ago) link
When I was younger the view seemed to be that he was hopelessly dodgy at the start, but then he came over it. And it sorta changes when people say he got over it, from Tintin in America to Tintin in Tibet to never really...
― Frederik B, Thursday, 12 March 2020 09:05 (four years ago) link
tbc the racism wasn't my *only* complaint - I think he's a pretty shitty storyteller too! some pretty pictures tho. I can detect his influence on all kinds of things I like way more (Moebius, Wes Anderson) but there's a flat, repetitive quality to it that does not appeal.
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 12 March 2020 14:35 (four years ago) link
yeah again, not to be all deadhead-ish but the early ones you read aren’t so good
― brimstead, Thursday, 12 March 2020 17:39 (four years ago) link
idk I thought the ones I listed were all over the place time-wise. The one we just read (Flight 714) is one of the last ones - ends with a totally nonsensical deus ex machina after a bunch of convoluted capture/rescue/shootout sequences with too many characters
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 12 March 2020 17:43 (four years ago) link
yeah I loved that one as a kid. You’re probably right.
― brimstead, Thursday, 12 March 2020 17:44 (four years ago) link
Flight 714 rules fuiud
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 12 March 2020 17:44 (four years ago) link
Besides the racism, the other obvious issue is that Tintin is a child doing an adult job.
― gramsci in your surplice (gyac), Thursday, 12 March 2020 17:46 (four years ago) link
it just feels like none of his stuff follows any kind of standard narrative structure - there's no themes, no sense of pacing the action, no building-to-a-climax, no real resolution, a lot of these stories feel like just a lot of random stuff that happens as an excuse to draw Tintin in a jungle, or a desert, or in a submarine or whatever.
xps
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 12 March 2020 17:46 (four years ago) link
Tintin is a child doing an adult job.
haha yeah is this ever given any kind of explanation? I feel like after having read a lot of these I should have some grasp of where the character comes from and why he's in the position he's in and yet... like, where is his family? is he an orphan? Does he have a job (sometimes he appears to be a reporter, for some reason)? Why does he do any of the shit he does?
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 12 March 2020 17:50 (four years ago) link
and don't say "it's for children, who cares!" Uncle Scrooge's motivations and defining characteristics, as a counter-example, are crystal clear. Even Little Nemo is based on a premise that serves to explain all the nonsense.
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 12 March 2020 17:52 (four years ago) link
fwiw when i love comics did a poll like 15 years ago tintin ranked no. 1!
tintin himself is kind of a strange character -- not just ageless but kind of without any real personality at all, he's more like a stand-in for the reader than anything
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, 12 March 2020 17:53 (four years ago) link
yeah it's v weird, he's a nullity
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 12 March 2020 17:59 (four years ago) link
which is by intention, I would think.
Herge himself seems to have been something of an empty vessel*, who also started his life's career as a school-aged teenager.
* he married a coworker on the orders of their boss, who kept a portrait of Mussolini in the office and conducted the wedding ceremony
― Fantastic. Great move. Well done (sic), Thursday, 12 March 2020 18:53 (four years ago) link
The reason Tintin is a kid doing an adults job is because the strip was originally about teaching kids about the world. It was a newspaper strip in the kid section of a right-wing newspaper, and was just meant to indoctrinate about Soviet, Congo, US, etc.
It never really moved beyond that serialized mentality. Every page is it's own thing, and yeah, a lot of it is bad excuses for pretty drawings. That was indeed the point.
― Frederik B, Friday, 13 March 2020 08:09 (four years ago) link
Britney Spears is a Republican.
― rusted (crüt), Wednesday, 25 March 2020 15:14 (four years ago) link
In the 1991 Nardwuar vs Sonic Youth interview, Nardwuar was the bully and SY were within their rights to lash out.
― Sund4r, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 11:18 (four years ago) link
I have no idea what anybody finds amusing about that terrible terrible cunt
― A rat done bit my sister Nell with Biden on the nom (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 1 April 2020 11:21 (four years ago) link
^^ otfm. Baffled by the love for him. I don't get the "nardwuar is a national treasure he may not die!" but I'm guessing it's one of those #lolUSA things I'm better off not understanding anyway (yes, I know he's Canadian).
― Hey, let me drunkenly animate yr boats in about 25 to 60 days! (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 1 April 2020 11:52 (four years ago) link
I don't understand why everybody doesn't just headbutt the fucker and then kick him to death tbh
― A rat done bit my sister Nell with Biden on the nom (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 1 April 2020 12:00 (four years ago) link
the man does research!
― ogmor, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 12:11 (four years ago) link