UK bid to ban 'racist' Tintin book

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Allegra

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BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Bid to ban 'racist' Tintin book

'The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) is calling on high street shop Borders to pull a Tintin adventure from its shelves completely.

Tintin in the Congo has already been moved to the adult section over complaints that its content is racist.
A spokeswoman said the book contained "words of hideous racial prejudice, where the 'savage natives' look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles". Borders said they are committed to let their "customers make the choice".'

(While Spielberg is making the movie and Belgium celebrated the centenary of the birth of Herge, the cartoonist.)
 
I agree that the comic is extremely un-PC and rather distasteful, I think that banning books is never a good idea, for any reason. Just gives it more notoriety if you ask me.
 
There are plenty of old books which aren't PC. Are we expected to believe that after all these years as a peacful children's book, "Tin-Tin" will suddenly become a rallying cry for the KKK?
 
Have been reading Tin Tin since I was a kid. As Joel says, a whole lot of the older books are comics can now be construed as being racist or otherwise non-PC. Asterix, probably the whole Archie and Jughead set of comics, etc

Whole generations of kids have grown up reading these things and I don't see anyone out on a rampage and I really don't think it's going to happen now either.

I think this whole non-PC business is being carried just a tad too far. Half the time no one even thinks or feels that something is non-PC until they have their faces rubbed in it or everyone starts screaming it out in letters a mile high.
 
Well, obviously I am a fan and always will be. That aspect never influenced me either but rather Tintin's sense of adventure did. I am reading these to my son now.

Interesting that here, when you go to Chapters or Indigo (our version of Borders) in the kid's section they have a big red-checkered rocket display of all the Tintin books.
 
I dont think kids care about racist things in comics. They are too young to understand. So i dont agree with this banning. It gives a legendary comic a bad name. I was a huge fan of Tintin,Asterix and co as young and i never saw any racist thing cause of my age.

I mean they might as well ban all american comics from the 30`s,40´s.

I have seen alot of panels full of disgusting racism things much worse than this thing.

Its a product of its time nothing more nothing less.

But no one dares touching american comics but a european comic like Tintin is free game apparently....
 
This hole non-PC is going too far. It bugs me.

Instead of making an issue of nothing they should go deal with real problems.


I think they can do something against rasism in other ways but i geuss this one is easier and more public.....
 
Connavar of Rigante said:
But no one dares touching american comics but a european comic like Tintin is free game apparently....
Click to expand...

No, in the US we go right for the throat. We want to ban Mark Twain and other literature because some of the terms used aren't PC today. "PC" is just another form of bullying. What you say or write might offend someone, so don't say or write anything. Censorship is wrong in any form. I am entitle to make an ass out of myself and so is everyone else. Give people credit for being able to tell a good idea from a bad one and decide for theirselves. Show me everything, if it's crap, I just won't read it.
 
Tin Tin in the Congo is one of the first, if not the very first of the series, and as such is very old. It clearly is very racist, but it reflects the views that were held in western society as a whole at that time. I don't think the whole series should be attacked because of this book. I have a Dandy annual from 1954 that is extremely racist, but the comic today has moved on with the Times. Didn't the Beano just withdraw plans to celebrate an anniversary with the reprint of an old edition for the same reason?

I don't believe in banning books, but maybe a warning on the cover might be appropriate.
 
I guess the crowd asking to ban Catcher in the Rye and other books and comics have just changed from religious zealots to overlly-PC types. While racism has no place in children's litterature, my kids take Tintin for what it is: a story that obviously older than the Dad (i.e. me) who is reading it to them.
 
I agree, children have much more awareness than they are often credited with. Books need to be taken with the historical perspective of when they were written. You can read the book and say, that is how people thought back then, and they will realise why it is that we don't think like that now. That itself, is a far more powerful way to illustrate rascism than banning the book. Banning anything is negative.

If you begin to rewrite books the same way that they rewrote Noddy to remove the Gollywog then you begin a dangerous slippery slope that ends with Orwell's Ministry of Truth and the Thought Poilce.

Next they will have to rewrite Oliver Twist and remove the anti-semitic Fagin.
 
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It's worth pointing out that Herge himself was well aware that the first few books in the series did rely a lot on horrible cliches. Whilst he was writing Tintin and the Blue Lotus (IIRC) a Chinese student helped him out in depicting China as it really was in the late 1930s, and after that Herge very strictly researched real-world locations and cultures before using them in his stories. Maybe he should have gone back and revised the first few books, but evidently he chose not to.
 
So obviously we need to eliminate most of Kipling (maybe we can sanitise the jungle book, but the just so stories are out), the health and safety wallahs can get rid of Alice and Swallows and Amazons,and I've no doubt the house at Pooh corner is slated for renovation. Most fairy tales will be classed as inciting violence, and I'll be obliged to read morally uplifting stories to the next generation (mind you, if you've ever heard what I do to "Goldilocks" or "Hansel unt Gretel", the moral majority might find they've backed a losing horse there)

Why this assumption, against all evidence, that small children are so malleable?
 
I picked up a copy of the first famous five book a while ago while sitting having a coffee in Waterstones.

Couldn't believe that the editor had changed the content. Didn't read more than a few pages but instead of coming home from school for the summer holidays and being glad that they could wear shorts in the new book it was jeans they changed into.

Obviously to make it relevant to a new generation who don't know what shorts are!
 
I hate it when books are treated like this. They shouldn't change the content or language - it reflected the times when the book was written. If it was a modern book containing that sort of language, especially a children's book, then I'd be more concerned.
 
Grrr!!! Books are history! I know it's acceptable for the winning side in a conflict to write the 'official version' of what happened, but if the PC-morons get their hands on fiction, it's taking it too far!

All of the 'ism's are a result of poor education, not comic books and tv programmes. Instead of banning books and censoring and editing, use them to promote discussion and enquiry: Why are things different now? Are the views in this book accurate or acceptable? Kids AREN'T idiots, and the best way to teach them is to let them think for themselves.

I remember, after reading the blue lotus, forming some strong impressions about Chinese people, and I was very surprised to learn they don't have slitty eyes and buck teeth. I din't think they were all devious toe rags out to entrap young boy reporters!
 
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