tintin " crude, racist and must be banned"

[guinnessdrinker]

You forgot witloof (what is that called in English?) and sprouts.



Have no idea who that is.

salaam.

witloof might be either chicory or endive. it's a bit confusing endive is chicory in english and vice versa, and I believe that difference also exist between proper english and lower rank american english.

as for Johnny Halliday he is the biggest french rockstar that you never heard off (and I don't blame you). his father was belgian, but it's unclear whether he was born in liege or paris (1943, during the war...). all his career has been based in France but he only ever sings french cover of american rock songs, no own materials apart from one song, I believe. he is of national importance in Franceconfused: ) . he famously asked recently for belgian nationality, which, if you know france, had the entire nation in hysterics. he claimed he wanted to return to his origins or something, but the real reason was that he could live in Monaco without paying tax (french citizens have to pay french taxes if they want to live there, ever since De Gaulle threatened to send in his tanks, but it's a tax haven for everybody else). he then went to switzerland during the presidential campaign, saying he would only come back if Sarkozy was elected, so he would pay less tax in france (an insurance policy in case he did not get his cherished belgitude, I am not sure, but I believe he may have finally got his passport). this was on french radio, practically everyday during the extended electoral campaign. come the second round of the election, guess what, after the announcement of the provisional but accurate results, the first item on the news was that he was back and vastly enjoying himself with some other cunts in one of the swankiest hotel in paris (Le Fouquet)!

he is a cunt.

 

[Fledgling]

Yes, I suspect the Horse and His Boy and The Magicians Nephew wont be filmed (if they're going to make a series of them).

I always liked the bolshie dwarves in the Last Battle, they were having none of it.

No chance they'll shoot The Horse and His Boy and the Last Battle, which is a shame because I thought they were both excellent books. When I was yuonger I enjoyed reading about the adventures people had in Narnia, I suppose nowadays kids are responsbily informed about the potnetial controversy in such books and are thus more careful in thier reading. Why and how do people a. spend the time looking into books such as Tin tin and Narnia for controversy and b make such a fuss that people will want to buy them. I want to buy Tintni in the Congo now, I didn't know that book existed before.

 

[Aldebaran]

You should read the Western narratives which created the myth about us Ayrabs as teh most retarded, illiterate, cruel low life subhumans the earth has ever witnessed stepping on it. And not to forget our women as the most low-life lazy whores any man can dream of in his sexually focussed obsessions.
Dear Hergé is nothing compared to that. We alwayus won and win.

salaam.

 

[Roadkill]

I don't care. Tintin's the most ludicrously overrated pile of bequiffed comic book tosh anyway. Did anyway actually enjoy reading them?

Yes, me. I read Tintin as a kid, and tbh, if I saw a job lot of them going cheap I'd buy them again now. I don't much care what the author's attitudes were (and thinking back over them, I can well imagine he'd hardly be a liberal hero in this day and age...!): they were often good stories, and well illustrated. They didn't turn me into a raving racist, any more than they did the vast majority of people who read them.

Herge, IMO, should be read as a product of his times, like everyone else. And if the attitudes of those times don't chime that well with ours, well ... live with it and say why not. Banning things is the worst sort of bigotry.

 

[Aldebaran]

The Genius Solution of Aldebaran (TM)

Plop a bottle of Champagne to celebrate diversity and remember in a flash of sudden insight that normal people have normally functioning brains, able to recognize historical societal influence on outdated - but still bought and read - comics today.

If you are not able to see that you belong on an Other Planet. Please let me know how Life is overthere because I'm always in for New Discoveries. Thank you.

salaam.

 

[Louloubelle]

You should read the Western narratives which created the myth about us Ayrabs as teh most retarded, illiterate, cruel low life subhumans the earth has ever witnessed stepping on it. And not to forget our women as the most low-life lazy whores any man can dream of in his sexually focussed obsessions.
Dear Hergé is nothing compared to that. We alwayus won and win.

salaam.

While there' is undoubtedly a lot hostility towards Arabs today it's my impression that the figure of the Arab has been prone to a kind of romantic sexualisation in our (UK) culture over the last century or so.

From Rudolf Valentino, to the numerous 20th century romantic novels in which an Arab prince sweeps the romantic heroine off her feet to ravish her in his tent, right through to the now defunct advertisements for Fry's Turkish Delight (nothing to do with Turks, more to do with a Valetinoesque fantasy of seduction) , the cultural lens through which the figure of the Arab male has been seen has invested him with exoticism, orientalism and sexual prowess.

Obviously Burton's writings, especially his notorious privately printed translation of the Perfumed Garden, fueled the prevalent fantasy of Arabs as sex obsessed.


I have some ancient anthropology books in which most photos of Arab women show them topless but with their faces veiled. The western perspective of the "harem" and the first attempts at anthropological photography (largely focusing on sex workers) undoubtedly depicted Arab women as mysterious, sexually available, hidden yet revealed.

I suppose the point that I'm making is that while the reality of Arab people's has obviously been distorted by the lens of western romanticism, I don't agree with your suggestion that Arabs are seen as being retarded and illiterate.

Cruel, yes. In a sexy kind of way.

I think the traditional perspective has been more that Arab men as either heroic romantic figures or as evil, cunning, sorcerers who kidnap princesses.

I'm not any kind of expert on this and could be completely wrong, but having collected a huge number of antiquarian books my sense is that Africans have been depicted as sub-human and animal like, Arabs have been depicted as very clever, sometimes heroic and sometimes evil.

Obviously I'm talking about the 19th and 20th century, recently all this has changed. Obviously.

 

[zoltan]

Tintin was still always shit though.

Um

take tintin out of the books ( hes an everyman/ bland siort of fellow) and the books are snapshots of politics and times now gone.

Read them as an adult and you can see the inferences and disguised personalities/ countries/ politics in them - fascinating

 

[tarannau]

Or I could just read a history book and skip the patronising tales of the quiffed boy and his less than fascinating adventures.

Tintin's not half as clever as it's made it out to be. I thought it was outdated, borderline racist and frankly dull when I was a nipper. And I'm, depressingly, a child of the early 70s.

 

[tim]

Nothing interesting comes from Belgium.