This is pretty relevant for me, as I'm working at Borders HQ

[novapsyche]

Borders stores in UK shelve Tintin book

Borders is removing "Tintin in the Congo" from the children's section of its British stores, after a customer complained the comic work was racist, the company said Thursday.

David Enright, a London-based human-rights lawyer, was shopping at Borders with his family when he came upon the book, first published in 1931, and opened it to find what he characterized as racist abuse.

"The material suggests to (children) that Africans are subhuman, that they are imbeciles, that they're half savage," Enright said in a telephone interview.

"My black wife, who actually comes from Africa originally, is sitting there with my boys and I'm about to hand this book to them.... What message am I sending to them? That my wife is a monkey, that they are monkeys?"

The book is the second in a series of 23 tracing the adventures of Tintin, an intrepid reporter, and his dog, Snowy. The series has sold 220 million copies worldwide and been translated in 77 languages.

But "Tintin in the Congo" has been widely criticized as racist by fans and critics alike.

In it, Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi depicts the white hero's adventures in the Congo against the backdrop of an idiotic, chimpanzee-like native population that eventually comes to worship Tintin — and his dog — as gods.

Remi later said he was embarrassed by the book, and some editions have had the more objectionable content removed. When an unexpurgated edition was brought out in Britain in 2005, it came wrapped with a warning and was written with a forward explaining the work's colonial context.

Enright, who said he first complained to Borders and Britain's Commission for Racial Equality about a month ago, argued such a warning was not enough.

"Whether it's got a piece of flimsy paper around it or not, it's irrelevant, it's in the children's section," he said, adding that he felt the book should be treated like pornography or anti-Semitic literature and not displayed in mainstream bookstores at all.

Borders agreed to move the book to its adult graphic novels section, but said in a statement it would continue to sell it.

The Commission for Racial Equality backed Enright, saying in a statement Thursday that the book was full of "hideous racial prejudice."

"The only place that it might be acceptable for this to be displayed would be in a museum, with a big sign saying 'old fashioned, racist claptrap.'"

Here's the BBC's take.

Comments

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

It seems like a warning label or sticker of some kind would be preferable to an outright ban. This kind of thing makes me uncomfortable, but it's part of our racist heritage, and I don't know that we should just destroy the evidence.

What's your take on all this?

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

I'm definitely not for book burning or banning. I support Borders, actually, and am glad that they didn't drop the book altogether. At the same time, I agree with Mr. Enright: a book with these sentiments should not be marketed to children.

Disney doesn't sell Song of the South anymore (and I've never seen it as a result). I think that's analogous. I am glad the book is still around so that we can look at it as an artifact of its time.

[jennkitty.livejournal.com]

The Tintin books are not, on the norm, read by children anymore anyway. It would have been smarter and wiser to put them amongst the adult graphic novels even before this whole fiasco.

It's also important to remember how old those books are (Tintin in the Congo was written in 1930-31), and the fact that Herge's work was heavily influenced by the views of the society by which he was surrounded at the time. He later changed some of the panels in the Tintin books to be *less* offensive.

I was rather shocked and amazed to see copies of Little Black Sambo on the shelves when i was working at Books-A-Million down south, honestly. Mostly because I expected someone to raise a fuss.

There were definite racist overtones in the Tintin books, but that doesn't mean they should be banned, or destroyed, or remain unread. If anything, they should be treated, as you say, as artifacts, accurate portrayals of some opinions in a time before our own.


meh.

[fadedpaladin.livejournal.com]

Wow. I didn't actually know that that Tintin was still in print.. when I was a kid, I collected the british editions of the books, and Congo was one of the seriously tough ones to get. I did finally find it, and it is quite racist. But, in truth, so are quite a few other of the books, albeit not so much.
The fact is that it is part of the literary/graphic novel heritage, seated in many of the societal views of the era it's from, and folks can't have it both ways- there will almost invariably be people who cry either racism or censorship, no matter what is done.
Tangentially, Song of the South can be found on youtube. Along with some amazingly offensive old Bugs Bunny cartoons.