Tintin Behind Bars

Since 2007, it's been hard to track down Tintin in Brooklyn: a book of Tintin comics has been moved to a vault where contested books live. Quite literally, even: the Times' image shows a bank-like vault door to protect readers from the horrors found within, as though the Necronomicon is waiting inside to peel at the brain of anyone foolish enough to attempt it. Due to accusations of racist depictions of blacks in Africa, the book Tintin au Congo was deemed "not for the public," according to a children's room librarian, and it was removed from the public shelves. It is still available to the public, if requested, but by taking it off the public shelves this does constitute censorship by restricting access.

This isn't the first suggestion of racism in Tintin comics: others have criticized Hergé's creation of a banker named Blumenstein as an anti-Semitic caricature - in fact, there's a cornucopia of archaic, cruel stereotypes in Tintin comics, but are stories from a time of Belgian colonialism, pre-World War II stereotypes appropriate to the period inappropriate today? Not necessarily, if context is provided, which is the common argument for classic works of literary art which offend modern sensibilities. In cases like Huckleberry Finn, what people are often offended by is a framework for defining and reinforcing their reason for offense, but I'm not familiar with Tintin enough to know whether that is the case for Hergé. That uncertainty is the root for the fear of a contextless racism: people don't want the book to be seen by those who do not understand it. It is a tragedy that people must only pursue what they already understand, and must be protected from the unknown, for fear they will reach the wrong conclusions.