TinTin In Congo Too Racist For Brooklyn, But Not For Congo
August 21, 2009 — Raphael AlexanderAn 80-year-old book is being banned in Brooklyn, New York, because the library’s director, Richard Reyes-Gavilan, says it’s racist and depicts Africans as monkeys. The move comes on the heels of a complaint by a reader who said it is “racially offensive”. The Belgian cartoonist, Georges Remi [nee Hergé] who authored the book is revered in Europe, whose style mimics the great Japanese masters of his era. But one book, “Tintin in the Congo”, is considered inappropriate for children because of the manner in which Africans were drawn.
The book can still be seen, but by appointment only, and by adults. The move is likely only in the news because Steven Spielberg is making the cartoons into a major motion picture in 2011. The TinTin book would be the only book blacklisted by Brooklyn, with others considered for censorship being Ann Coulter’s anti-liberal book: Godless.
Of interest, a blogger who spent 3 months in the Congo, Nuala Sawyer, snapped a few photographs of TinTin as he appeared in Frescos, a bar named after the European boy, and a statue carving of Captain Haddock. As Ms.Sawyer writes:
© Nuala SawyerThe comic book Tintin in the Congo is pretty much banned in the USA for being too racist (even though a lot of Herge’s books, written in the 1930s, seem racist by today’s standards). The funny thing is that the Congolese seem to embrace Tintin—I think that interpretations of racism are incredibly different in the Congo than the USA.
Reminds me of the Nigerian reaction to Gazprom’s new energy project in Africa, unfortunately named “Nigaz”:
“White people are making too much of this.
“As long as the Russians pay us, they can call it what they like.”
h/t Tintin blog
No comments:
Post a Comment