Post a controversial opinion

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

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.

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.

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.

Xps

George always seemed more like a stand-in for a child than for a non-white ethnicity

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.

Huh thx

'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).

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.

tintin au congo is studied on uk linguistics courses as an exemplar of racist colonial literature

I can't think of a better use for it tbh.

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...

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.

yeah again, not to be all deadhead-ish but the early ones you read aren’t so good

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

yeah I loved that one as a kid. You’re probably right.

Flight 714 rules fuiud

Besides the racism, the other obvious issue is that Tintin is a child doing an adult job.

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

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?

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.

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

yeah it's v weird, he's a nullity

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

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.

Britney Spears is a Republican.

In the 1991 Nardwuar vs Sonic Youth interview, Nardwuar was the bully and SY were within their rights to lash out.

I have no idea what anybody finds amusing about that terrible terrible cunt

^^ 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).

I don't understand why everybody doesn't just headbutt the fucker and then kick him to death tbh

the man does research!

????????

#lolUSA

Films aren’t art.

― president of deluded fruitcakes anonymous (silby), Wednesday, September 25, 2019 8:42 AM (six months ago)

came here to post this again, oh well.

All my posts in this thread are good

Dance isn't art.

How am I doing?

could try harder

saying things aren't art is performance

Saying it's performance to say things aren't art is performance.

it's not art to say that saying it's performance to say things aren't art is performance

Performance art is bad art

that famous dorothy parker dismissal of the winnie the pooh books is stupid and wrong and not even particularly clever ("tonstant weader fwowed up" or whatever)

i don't know if this is controversial but ppl love to quote that review for some reason

it's wrong but it's funny

the former never matters when the latter is true

otm

is it actually funny tho

kinda up to individual

winnie the pooh wont hit everyone the same way, neither will parker's zing of it, this seems a somewhat universal kind of phenomenon

it's wrong but it's funny

― Elon's musk (sic), Thursday, May 7, 2020 11:38 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm, also new board description, etc.

J B Morton's put-downs of A A Milne were better, of which this is my fave:

Hush, hush,
Nobody cares!
Christopher Robin
Has
Fallen
Down-
Stairs.