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TechnoratiAttempt to ban ‘Tintin in the Congo’ in Belgium
A Belgian court is due to rule Tuesday whether or not to ban Tintin in the Congo or if it must carry a warning label. A Congolese man living in Belgium brought the case to the cuorts, asking for a ban of the comic strip because of its racist stereotypes.
Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo has brought up a ban several times before the Belgian courts, and he has also asked France to do the same.
Tintin in the Congo, the second book in the comic strip character’s adventures, appeared in 1930. It has crude, stereotyped depictions of Africans which Belgian cartoonist Hergé later said were reflecting racist, colonialist views of the time.
A Belgian court will hear the case for banning the book Tuesday, but Mondondo’s case might be undermined because he may have lied about his profession, according to the online comic strip magazine actubd.com. And there are some reports that he has not been able to pay the lawyers representing his case.
The UK's Commission for Racial Equality called for the book to be banned three years ago, and the book is now sold with a paper label warning of offensive content.
Comments (1)
Banning Tintin in the Congo
If we ban Tintin in the Congo for its crude stereotypes, then by the same logic we should ban silent films like "The Lost World" for their portrayal of blacks as subhuman morons (even when they wore tuxedos). We have to make grudging allowances that these are products of less enlightened times and the stereotypes were seen as par for the course, not offensive and ignorant as they are today.
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