Ah, Hergé. You could probably chart the times he’s posthumously embroiled in a controversy and predict the next one. This time it’s the racism question, raised in a preposterously over the top recommendation from the Commission for Racial Equality that one of his books be, in effect, banned. Quoting from the Guardian’s report (so context may possibly be missing):

“This book contains imagery and words of hideous racial prejudice, where the ’savage natives’ look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles,” she said.

“How and why do Borders think that it’s OK to peddle such racist material? This is potentially highly offensive to a great number of people.”

She added that the only place the book was acceptable was in a museum – with a sign accompanying it saying “old-fashioned, racist claptrap”.

Some old-fashioned, racist claptrap. It’s funny how much I really don’t want to have this image on my blog, but here it is. Eww.

The book in question (which I must admit I haven’t seen) is Tintin in the Congo, one of the very early stories which was published as an archival-style edition a couple of years ago for the first time in English, presumably aimed at the adult collector market which, for Hergé, is quite substantial. Borders (and Waterstone’s) had stocked it in the kids section. They didn’t do this because they’re in the business of “peddling racist material” to children. They did this because they’re ignorant of the content of the books they sell. This is normal. A bookseller, especially a massive, centralised bookseller, cannot possibly analyze the contents of their stock. But they can, eventually, take action when it’s brought to their attention. In this case Congo has been moved to the euphemistically termed “adult graphics” section. I love that. All comics that aren’t explicitly for kids are “adult”.

And that, in a nutshell, is where the problem lies. This is not so much about the CRE being idiots. And it’s not about censorship. Nor, really, is it about whether or not Hergé was a racist (he probably was in the 1930s but he grew out of it).

This is about a couple of things. Firstly it’s about comics. More specifically it’s about images. Comics have always had this problem in that it’s a very visual medium. You can quickly flick through a novel and not have a clue what it’s about, but you can flick through a comic and immediately form a judgement because the good ones are all about icons. You see a picture of Tintin and you immediately get it. You won’t get the subtly of the character or the complexity of the narrative, but you can form a pretty coherent opinion about him in a second. That’s what makes comics such a powerful medium but it also opens them up to kneejerk criticism from people who think that initial glance is all you need. Add to this the outdated and bigoted view in this country that comics are, as they say, just for kids and you’ve got a shitstorm repeating on you like bad wind.

The second, and possibly more interesting, point to come out of this is about gatekeeping. The CRE is in the business of recommending what can be done in our society to make it less racist. This is a noble and laudable mission and one I have great sympathy for. I think that which is known by idiots as Political Correctness is a wonderful thing and that our society is much better off for it. But PC, as I see it, is not about erasing our history. It’s about understanding it for what it is and appreciating the effect our actions have on others. But I’m straying off my point so I’ll direct you to Stuart Lee’s article on the matter which says it much better that I can.

Back to gatekeeping. This story has a number of gatekeepers. The publishers prevented the book being published in English for decades. When they did the bookshops decided where it should be stocked. Now the CRE are recommending that it shouldn’t be stocked or even published. The people making these decisions can be counted on a couple of hands. But in the digital age they don’t matter anymore. The book exists and will continue to exist forever. There is, no doubt, a scan of it floating around some dark corner of the internet, probably zipped up in a file called complete_tintin.cbr along with everything else Hergé produced. And even if the book had never been published in English some enterprising soul would have taken the French edition and translated it himself. This might not be as direct a form of distribution as picking up a copy of the book in Borders but it’s there. And it’s not unimaginable to think that in a few years we’ll be able to print our own books at home in archival quality.

How will the likes of the CRE police this? The fact is they can’t, and they should stop trying. In fact everyone should stop trying to suppress what’s out there. The way to deal with it is to put it in context and to make sure people are able to process that context through education. Not simply telling them what they’re thinking is wrong (cos that never works) but giving them the tools and experiences to figure out for themselves that they’re wrong. And I think there’s been progress on this front in that very few people would look at Congo and think it to be an accurate representation of black people. If anything it’s an indication of how far we’ve come that this stuff hurts to look at. Taking this progress and building on it constructively is what I’d hope the CRE would be doing. Not taking cheap shots at a historical and artistic artifact.

Finally, it’s interesting to see how Amazon sells the book. You immediately know what it’s about, what the historical context is and, thanks to the reviews, that it’s actually not very good really. Compare this to Borders and Waterstones where some underpaid neutered bookseller has thrown it onto the Tintin spinner along with the rest of the series without even noticing what it’s called because actually knowing their stock isn’t part of the job description anymore.

I never did really explain why this is about gatekeeping, but that’ll have to wait for another day. In the meanwhile, and as a antidote, here’s a nice panel from The Castafiore Emerald.

I wanted to use that scene in Prisoners of the Sun where they burst into the temple but can’t find in Google. Seek it out though. Mindblowing colours.