Ideology of Tintin

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Hergé started drawing his comics series Tintin in 1929 for the children's section of the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle, run by the Abbé Wallez, a supporter of social Catholicism, a right-wing movement. During World War II Tintin appeared in the Brussels daily Le Soir; after the war he appeared in his own magazine, Tintin-- founded by a member of the Resistance, Raymond Leblanc-- until Hergé's death in 1983.

As a young artist Hergé was influenced by his mentors, specifically the Abbé Wallez. This shows in his most important works, the Tintin series. As the artist develops ideologically, so does the series, becoming more progressive and universalist-- till the final album, when a certain cynicism can be detected.

Contents

First albums

Tintin's first album, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, was anti-Soviet propaganda of limited outlook. The subject is said to have been dictated by the Abbé Wallez, though Hergé worked willingly: "I was sincerely convinced of being on the right path," as he said later. His only source was Moscou sans voiles ("Moscow without veils"), a book written in 1928 by Joseph Douillet, former consul of Belgium in the USSR. In this book, appearing not much more than a decade after the October Revolution, Douillet denounced the communist system for producing poverty, famine and terror. The secret police maintained order and the propaganda deceived foreigners. (Some of Douillet's denunciations have not aged well: he criticizes the Soviets for introducing co-ed high schools, for instance.)

Nonetheless, the anti-totalitarian theme of this first book would persist throughout the series.

Hergé wanted the second album to take place in the United States, which fascinated him. But Wallez disagreed: he distrusted the USA, the country of protestantism, liberalism, of easy money and of gangsters. Instead, he asked Hergé to draw an album about the Belgian Congo: the colony needed white workers at the time.

Tintin in Congo reflected the dominant colonialist ideology at that time. "This was in 1930. All I knew about the Congo was what people were saying about it at the time: 'The Negroes are big children, it's fortunate for them that we're there, etc.'"

Later, for the 1946 color edition of the album, Hergé toned down or removed some of the worst excesses: for instance, the Belgian history class given by Tintin to black students was changed into a mathematics class.

But the paternalistic description of the indigenous people of Belgian Congo was more naive than racist, and Hergé developed an important theme of Tintin in this album: international trafficking.

Turn-around with Tintin in America and The Blue Lotus

At last, with his next album, Hergé could send Tintin to the United States. Tintin in America represents a significant change in tone. Of course, this album was, like the previous ones, very caricatured, because of Hergé's limited knowledge of the country: America was the land of Al Capone, cow-boys, gigantism... But Hergé also took the defense of the American Indians, blacks and blue-collar workers. He criticized lynching, the theft of Indian lands, and American business rapacity.

Even more striking is the fifth album, The Blue Lotus, set in China. For this album Hergé was put in touch with Zhang Chongren, a Chinese student then studying in Brussels. Hergé was very concerned to portray the country accurately, and the album can be read as anti-imperialist. The album criticizes Japanese and Western involvement in China, including the international concessions and the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and shows (with great disapproval) Westerners making racist or ignorant remarks about China. The Japanese are portrayed with little sympathy, however.

The Second World War

Several albums were influenced by the menace of a second world war, and then by the war itself and the Nazi occupation of Belgium.

Despite the fact that Hergé was in favor of the neutrality of Belgium, King Ottokar's Sceptre was obviously anti-Nazi: Musstler (MUSSolini-hiTLER), the dictator of Borduria, tries to oust the king of Syldavia Muskar XII. The story is directly based on the Anschluss in Austria in 1938.

The early and unfinished version of Land of Black Gold alluded to the mobilization of Nazi war power. The beginning of the war and the defeat of Belgium prevented Hergé from finishing this version, though he did rewrite it later.

More controversial was The Shooting Star, which was about a race between two crews trying to reach a meteorite which had landed in the Arctic. Hergé chose the subject to be as fantastic as possible, to avoid trouble from the censors. Nonetheless politics intrudes, in that the crew Tintin joins is composed of Europeans from Axis or neutral countries, while their underhanded rivals are American. The Americans' financial backer had a distinctly Jewish name, although this was changed in later editions. Tintin also flies a German plane in the album (an Arado Ar 196).

The remaining albums written during the Nazi occupation of Belgium avoid controversy: in The Secret of the Unicorn, Red Rackham's Treasure and The Seven Crystal Balls, the protagonists leave the known, political world in search of treasure elsewhere.

Post-war

The post-war albums are less controversial, developing several recurring themes:

Hergé was however criticized for his depiction of the black victims in The Red Sea Sharks; in the first edition they speak pidgin French and seem rather simple-minded. He rewrote their dialogue in later editions.

The last controversial album is Tintin and the Picaros; it has been seen both as left-wing and right-wing. In it, Tintin goes through profound changes. For the first time, Tintin seems to be flesh and blood, and perhaps even has weaknesses; for instance, he is at first uncharacteristically unwilling to travel to San Theodoros. At the end he intervenes dramatically, through revolution, no less. But there are no good guys and bad guys in the political background here: Gen. Alcazar is financed by a banana company, Gen. Tapioca by the para-Stalinists of Borduria. And in the very last panel of his very last finished album, Hergé shows police patrolling the slums; the inhabitants are no better off and no worse; all that has changed are the uniforms and the names on the political placards.

Sexism

Hergé has also been accused of sexism, due to the almost complete lack of female characters in his books. Indeed, most women in Tintin's adventures are secondary characters, usually caretakers. Moreover, these women don't present a flattering image of women: for instance, General Alcazar's wife is an awful shrew. The only woman character of importance in a world of men is Bianca Castafiore. Hergé himself denied being misogynist, saying that "for me, women have nothing to do in a world like Tintin's, which is the realm of male friendship..."

References

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