Quote:
Originally Posted by Kostas
Nice post!
It resumes a well-known controversy in France, Belgium and elsewhere.
It's true that non-white people is usually depicted as mentally simple in several Tintin books as opposed to the insinuated superiority of white race. Personally, as an adult (?) I think that it is clearly racially offensive. I am pretty sure that such content could not be published today.
I read too a lot of Tintin as a kid (in French), but I was not able to make such a judgement being so young. Actually (and not proudly), I remember that I was dumb enough to smile with the way that black people was supposed to speak in french.
I hate censorship, but the fact that racism is rather insinuated in Tintin and these comics are supposed to be read by kids makes the case completely different as compared to "mein Kampf".
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When I read those comics, I didn't even know racism existed. One of my best friends at elementary school was a Moroccan. Who cared where his parents came from (they came here in the '70's when there was a boom and there was a huge shortage of cheap labor)? Not me.
When I read those Tin Tin comics, I never even put the link from Herge's. Africans to real Africans. It was a comic and in comics nothing is real.
Children don't judge, parents do, and children will copy their parents. Just because parents decide that a book isn't for children, will children think there's something more happening inside that book. Parents should let their children read it and then point to the fact that that is how people thought about those population groups so many years ago and that the reality is completely different. Point them real life people from that ethnic group to show the difference.