When will Tintin disappear? Well, one could say that he perished when Hergé, his author, passed away as the franchise's character ended with this event and our young/old reporter will star no more adventures. Now the question is whether his memory will also disappear, and when. Could it be soon?
The reason for this question comes in the wake of the claim being made by various groups to withdraw from the shelves of bookstores and libraries all the volumes of Tintin. This claim is especially targeted to the adventure of Tintin in the Congo, because of its out of date, misleading and inaccurate portrait of that country, made through the prism of the colonial era, which becomes more obvious in light of the new century. I do not know how the issue will end, but as always, I can think of at least two points of view.
The first is that it would be a great shame that that happened. Tintin seems to me a delicious read, and I would not like to deprive other people to enjoy it. Furthermore, by creating such a precedent, we can be sure that when China is a bit more open and western comics enter the country, so will Tintin and the Blue Lotus, my favorite. If I think a little on the subject, this reminds me about the heretical books of the Middle Ages or the burning of Hebrew books during the Nazi era. Why do I feel so anxious when I hear of these censorship projects? Well, that's a deep subject, that of censorship, I mean, and I think that is part of another series of different questions.
Let's see. It is clear that Tintin is the result of his time, as was the Captain Thunderbolt, who was killing Muslims here and there, or the witch of Hansel and Gretel who had the children locked in her home to do weird things with them, ugs! It is also clear that they are all, to one degree or another, politically incorrect, and some of the values that can be distilled are out of sync with the sensibilities of our time, but are we still pretending to rewrite history? Should we remove from our shelves the novels of Jules Verne for not conforming to scientific progress? Do we burn the undemocratic books of Plato? “But the case is different”, some might say, because Tintin is aimed at children. There I do see prejudices of our time, to believe that a comic, as such, is aimed at children. But let us concede that this is the case. Can we fix it by putting on the cover "For Mature Readers"? Funny.
The second point of view is a reflection arisen from the same news that is disturbing, and is the initiatory role of stories told to children.
The stories often had an important bringing up role, showing children a series of values, archetypes and ideas that should teach them some things in their society. Under that approach, yes we should avoid frivolously showing them aspects that do not match reality. But by the same rule, should we eliminate sexism in the stories? Or eternally happy endings? Or the irrational fantasies? No doubt here a great debate could start, but it is not worth it. After all, those times when children are formed through the stories they were told are totally left behind. Now the stories do not come from the mouths of parents and grandparents but from television, comics, video games, Internet, mobile content, in spite of any parental controls. It is as inevitable as the Chinese end up hearing about what happens in "Tintin and the Blue Lotus."
