Tintin In The Congo Context

3584 Words8 Pages

PS Culture and Communication
Prof. Manuela Kovalev
SS 2015

“Tintin in the Congo”- a critical analysis Lena Turek 1307748

Source: Tintin in the Congo. 1962 [1930]. Scanned by “Chicken Run” 2003.

Introduction
In 1929, Georges Remi (best known as Hergé) published “Tintin in the Land of the Soviets” (Tintin au pays des Soviets), the first comic strip that followed the adventures of Tintin and his loyal dog, Snowy. Hergé did not anticipate the success his series would have, both amongst adult and young readers. One year later he wrote “Tintin in the Congo” (Tintin au Congo) without ever having set foot in the central-African country. Depicting the Congolese in a rather stereotypical way, he revised the comic …show more content…

Since books for children transmit images, principles and values, I find this a particularly interesting field.
In the first part of the paper I will give an overview on colonialism, focusing on the Congo and its colonial past. I will then look into Hergé´s work and its criticism. My main question will be answered in the second part: How is colonialism reproduced in the comic “Tintin” by Hergé and what legal actions were taken against …show more content…

Patrice Émery Lumumba was the first democratically elected president of the “Democratic Republic of the Congo” (Curtis, 2002, p.37). The years after the “DCR” was established, the country was shaped by political instability, corruption and the fight to build up a nation with the ability to sustain itself. Since 2006, Joseph Kabila rules as the president of the DCR, but after he was re-elected in 2011, riots broke out in Kinshasa and official observers described that the election “lacked credibility” (Kara 2011: Online). Even though the DCR is a country with rich resources and a strong labour force, the country is still strongly determined by the colonial rule and the effect it had on the Congolese people, the countries´ economy and its social and political stability. Hergé with his depiction of the Belgian colonialism, willingly or not, reproduced many of the stereotypes embodied in the Belgian

Open Document