I don't know if I will be watching this film. All I know is that it involves pirates and sunken treasure. That said, there is a more serious side to this. The Tintin I grew up with look like this:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4668268860759158229
The aformentioned video is the Tintin I was familiar with. It was the story of two adventure men, one of them a young, idealistic man and the other a slightly grumpy old man. Both are doing the things I want to do: Going all of the world and traveling, having all kinds of adventures. Nothing about this cartoon would have led me to suspect that Tintin was a very disturbing comic when it originated. Then again, I was around 9 or 10 years old when I saw this as a cartoon, so I was highly naive.
The origins of Tintin did not start in some studio in the 1990's. It was a comic book series started in 1929, with a Belgian artist named Georges Remi(aka Hergé). The first comic of Les Adventures de Tintin to be released was Tintin in the Land of the Soviets.
According to some scholars of cultural literacy, the first comic book did not portray a factual image of the Bolshevik Revolution. I didn't know what to feel as I know from history that Marxism has not done much good in the long term perspectives for the former Soviet Union. Is it a comic book or a factual portrayal of world events? Caricature, or accurate description? I've never read the comic(or any of them), so I wouldn't know.
The next comic released was Tintin of the Congo. This one made me upset. It is a throwback to the days of Blackface, Little Black Sambo, and other caricatures of people of African descent. I guess being Black, I am going to feel offended by this. The biggest reason is because it doesn't represent Black people, but rather, a caricature portraying Black people(and specifically the native population in the Congo) as generally child-like, lazy, and stupid. Look at the artwork on it. The cartoons portray Blacks as more simian than human. I shouldn't be surprised by this. This was 1930, and racist stereotypes were all too common in the entertainment industry, and this includes cartoons. Also, elements of colonialism were involved too. Belgium was ruling the Belgian Congo(now the nations of Burundi, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo) at that time and there were very "paternalistic" portrayals of Blacks, stemming from the colonial era. Hergé said that he wasn't trying to be intentionally racist, but rather he was being patronizing.
In 2007, the Commission for Racial Equality called for the Tintin comic books to be removed from bookstores in the UK after David Enfield and his wife, an African woman, and their two children saw it in a Borders.
Like many interesting shows, some, like Tintin, have a less than stellar beginning. One the one hand, there are people who are in favor of freedom of speech and expression, who feel there is nothing wrong with it. On the other hand, there are those who don't want things like that on the shelves, citing that it is indeed a throwback to more racist times. My view is this. I am very aware of racial stereotypes and of what some people would think of me, a Black man, and might act accordingly to their thought processes. In some cases, this can be a bad thing. It would not do my self-esteem any justice to constantly see images of myself as savage, child-like or other stereotypes that do not represent me as a person. On the other hand, the Tintin I grew up with bears no resemblance to Tintin of the Congo. Personally, I don't know what to feel about the movie because the movie itself could be innocent enough. The cartoon I saw in the 1990's was innocent enough. It was the comics of the 1930's that are controversial. Hergé died in 1983, so I don't think he would benefit from anyone buying his stuff. The cartoon I grew up with was different from, and this movie might be as well. Whatever turns out, it gives you something to think about.
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