... Well, let's face it: Those who hold this discourse know nothing about Tintin, Hergé even less. They have not read his work or have just flown. I do not want to acknowledge a current of thought or defending a point of view against another, let alone challenge the freedom to think of everyone. But the truth is this: Hergé was in addition to one of the great authors of the 20th century, just confused medium, a total HUMANISTE. Humanism which he gorged his work.
Poles apart from each other in this remarkable work of the most striking of his time, there are two books: "Tintin in the Congo" and "Tintin in Tibet". Or both opposite faces of a single piece. The dark and the light. The beginning and the end, somehow. For this reason, I have tabled the same opinion on the two books ...
Lorsqu'Hergé is engaged in "Twentieth Century", Belgian newspaper he officiates entant illustrator, he is 18 years old. He immediately falls under the thumb of the Abbot Wallez, the director of the newspaper. Wallez is a strong, ultra-Catholic, ultra-nationalist, fascist and anti (A portrait of Mussolini in his office!). Hergé is a shy boy, unsure of himself, that criticism-without ceasing. And in this Belgium where church and state are separated, it is the abbot Wallez which will impose the young designer the first three adventures of Tintin (Tintin in the Congo being the second). When he begins his work, he has only 19 years old ...
Hergé later recounted how, during the creation of Tintin in the Congo (as in "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets" and "Tintin in America"), he lived in an environment of prejudice. That's why this album is far removed from the decision-anticolonial positions that appear in his work from the "Blue Lotus". This is why it is also filled with stereotypes, typical of the vision of the Europeans in Africa at that time. Hergé say: "Tintin was a game for me to Blue Lotus". Not to mention that he lived a time when the tragedy of the Holocaust had not occurred, where no one still had the necessary perspective on the future benefits of colonization and responsibility that all of this could face ...
It is when our man decides to send his hero in China comes in the person who will play a decisive role in the continuation of his work: Chang Chong Jen. Young Chinese came to Belgium to continue his studies, Chang asks Hergé to be careful with stereotypes about a country through a critical period and asks to be well documented. It is the catch: Hergé becomes aware of the reach of Tintin and awakens to the reason (He also immediately create the characters Thompsons, which will serve as an outlet endorsing him, supposedly to go unnoticed All the most egregious of the visited populations stereotypes! It also will make a companion for Tchang Tintin.).
From there, the most share of Tintin's adventures become politically engaged and take up the cause of the oppressed. Anticolonial in "The Blue Lotus" (only four years after "Tintin in the Congo"), antifascist in "The Broken Ear", the "King Ottokar's Sceptre", "The Calculus Affair" and "Tintin and Picaros" denouncing the slave trade in "Sea Sharks", defending the ROM in "Les Bijoux de la Castafiore," the humanistic side of his work culminates in the sublime "Tintin in Tibet", he wrote in 1958 after a serious personal crisis. Reintroducing the character of Chiang in the adventures of his hero, he focuses the plot on a small number of characters, exile in a quasi abstract sets and involves the Yeti, stereotyping by itself the primary side of humanity to to highlight the importance and sensitivity (sensitivity to a climax pushed through Captain Haddock, upsetting humanity to a character among the most colorful of all literary creation!).
So, ladies and gentlemen the "bienpensants", do not type more about Hergé without knowing its history and its journey. For doing so you trampling one of the most important artists and most humanists of the 20th century, just confused medium, who spent most of his life in a gigantic work of self-criticism and humanization of his work. Work which, from a very low precisely enabled him to awaken and engage in personal combat, thrilling to decipher, through the adventures of the little 24 See puff!
