Tintin in Congo

Tintin in Congo ( the adventures Tintin to defer to the " Small Vingtième" in Congo , Hergé, 1931) is the second an album of Cartoon of the Aventures of Tintin , published in black and white of 1930 to 1931 in the pages of the " Small Vingtième" , supplement of the newspaper the Twentieth Century.

Synopsis

The history proceeds during the colonial time. Within the framework of its work of journalist, Tintin, accompanied by its Milou dog, goes by steamer to the Congo, large the Belgian colony of the time. Tom, a man embarked clandestinely on the same boat, will try several times to once kill it they will have arrived at good port.

A succession of adventures brings Tintin to the kingdom of Babaoro' m, where he becomes the appointed wizard. He will discover that the white men who want his death are gangsters affiliated to Al Capone, which wants to control the production of diamonds in Congo…

Characters

Tintin
Milou
Tom : Appears on page 5. It is sent by Gibbons to remove Tintin. It is the “malicious one” of the album, but will never manage to carry out its mission. It is devoured by crocodiles on page 48.

Coconut : Appears on page 11. He guides Tintin lasting his adventure and saves the life to him.

the king of Babaoro' m : Appears on page 21. He asks Tintin to go to hunting to the lion.

Muganga : Appears on page 24. It is the wizard of Babaoro' Mr. He becomes jealous of Tintin. With Tom, it will try to get rid of deferring. He is member of the brotherhood of the Aniotas.

the missionary : Appears on page 34. It saves Tintin of the crocodiles.

Jimmy Mac Duff : Appears on page 38. He is supplier of animals for the European zoos.

Gibbons : Appears on page 51. It is the owner of Tom. He received by Al Capone the Gash the order to kill Tintin. Not to confuse with another character of the name of Gibbons which will appear in the blue Lotus .

Analyzes

About 1930, Congo represented true a Eldorado for Belgium. Congo, eighty times larger than the country which colonized it, had an extremely rich basement. At that time, the territory missed labor. The tendency of the time was thus to make publicity for this country.

The publication of the album began the June 5th 1930 in Small the Twentieth and finished the June 11th 1931. The album was initially published by the editions of Small Twentieth then it was taken again a little later by the editions Casterman which made sure the publication of the Adventures of Tintin of exclusiveness.

For the resumption of the album in 1946, Hergé redrew the adventure. It put it color, reduced it by 110 boards to 62 pages and modified the ideology colonialist of the album. Thus, the geographical lesson and history which Tintin gave on “Your fatherland, Belgium” was substituted by a lesson of Mathématiques. Hergé also redrew the near total of the images, refined the decorations, gave again clearness with cutting and modified the dialogs to make them sharper.

Hergé affirmed later that during the creation of Tintin in Congo , just like for Tintin with the country of Soviets , he lived in a medium full with prejudices. It is besides the characteristic of Tintin in Congo : the album, well far from the standpoint anticolonialists which appears in the work of Hergé as of the blue Lotus , is filled with stereotypes of the vision of Africa by Europeans at that time.

Hergé will declare thus in connection with the album: For Congo just like for Tintin with the country of the Soviets, it is made that I was nourished prejudices of the medium in which I lived… It was in 1930. I knew of this country only what people at the time told: " The negros are large children, fortunately who we are there! " , etc And I drew them, these Africans, according to these criteria, in the paternalist pure spirit which was that of the time in Belgium.

Conscious of these stereotypes which are indeed at the base of certain judgments of this work for racist contents, Hergé however defended its work by saying that its characters were blacks of imagination , and quoted in this direction an eulogistic article published by the review Zaire in 1969, according to which “ so certain images caricatural of the Congolese people given by Tintin to Congo make smile the White, they make laugh frankly the Congoleses, because the Congoleses find there matter to make fun of the white man who saw them like that ”

In 2007, controversy related to these stereotypes becomes again of topicality following opinion of Commission British for equality of races ( British Commission one Racial Equality ) who considers the cartoon “racist”, and require to withdraw it bookstores. The bookseller Borders then decided not to more sell this album with the “ray child”, moving it towards the “adult data bases”. A little later a Congolese studying with the Universit3e libre de Bruxelles deposits felt sorry for racism and asks that the album be withdrawn from the trade.

Anecdotes

Tintin is stopped by a leopard whereas it gives a lesson of arithmetic. In the initial version (included in the Files Hergé ), the black board is in fact a chart of geography, and Tintin known as: “Today I will speak to you about your fatherland: Belgium”.
If, in this album, the Congoleses speak in an approximate syntax, the elephants and the monkeys, they, are expressed between them excel of it French.
Tintin shows in this album a certain cruelty towards the animals, contrary to the following albums: it gives kicks to a weakened leopard, it explodes an rhinoceros, it kills and cuts up a monkey to go to recover Milou which was removed… The feature wants to be caricatural but one will find well there reason to show it " genocide écologique".
In the current version of the album, Dupondt makes a short appearance in the first box whereas they are absent from initial version; in the same box, on each side of Tintin, one sees Quick and Flupke but also Hergé which represented itself at the sides of his/her friends Edgar Pierre Jacobs and Jacques Van Melkebeke.
In this adventure, Tintin explodes an rhinoceros by boring there a hole that it filled up of dynamite. The editor Swedish did not appreciate this passage and obtained his modification. In the new page redrawn for export, the rhinoceros flees after the shot that Tintin draws accidentally. Nevertheless in the French version the initial scene was preserved with explosion of the rhinoceros.
Tintin is called twice “Swell-Matari” (p. 28 and last page). Swell-Matari which means the “breaker of rock” was the nickname given by the natives as a sign of respect and respect to the English explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley. (http://sourcebook.fsc.edu/history/congo.html) (http://users.skynet.be/aloube/avantcolo.htm)

Quotations

Dupondt: “ It appears that it is a young person to defer who leaves for Africa! ”
Two Blacks fighting for a hat: “ white Li Li very right! Li given to each one half of the hat! ”

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