The Adventures of Tintin: Tintin Turns 80 years old

Tintin, one of the most famous fictional character, turns 80 years old today. The adventures of Tintin have captured the imagination of generations of children across the world for decades.Even today, it is hard to tear me away from the The Adventures of Tintin reruns on Ghana television .

Alas, behind the youthful looks, the ever-present brown trousers and blue sweater, there is a darker side to Tintin. Sorry to disappoint you; I'm not about to reveal that Tintin had a soft-spot for strip-clubs and binge-drinking!

When I was a child, I came across the Dutch version of Tintin in the Congo which was originally published in 1930. It had never been translated into English at the time and I was shocked by images of thick-lipped, child-like Africans who Tintin (clad in colonial white attire) comes to save from a life of human sacrifice and ignorance. It was only during my undergraduate days when I was doing research for an anthropology paper on Tintin and popular culture that I finally got to know my hero better.
The fact is that even though Tintin is now known as a children's comic book character, he first emerged in a Belgian newspaper Le Vingtieme Siecle in 1929 and basically reflected the popular views as well as stereotypes people held at the time. Well, people in the the Euro-centric western colonial world that is.
Tintin in the Congo probably served to justify Belgium's atrocious colonial record particularly in the 1930s.

I still find this particular adventure patronising and irrelevant for a post-colonial world but apparently it is still popular. I read somewhere that defenders of this adventure claim that Congolese children are quite proud that their country features in one of Tintin's adventure. Say wha??? They probably did a poll of 3 Congolese children all under the age of 5! Africa is not the only place stereotyped.


Tintin in America published in 1931/1932 is like one non-stop western with Native Americans portrayed as if the year is 1831.

Although Tintin in the Congo and Tintin in America have basically remained the same, there are other adventures that changed when translated or were revised for later editions. Tintin in the Land of Black Gold as it was originally run between 1948 and 1950 was set in the Middle East in the British mandate of Palestine and showed Tintin caught in the conflict between Jews, Arabs and the British. In the later versions, the adventure takes place in a fictional Arab country and the Jewish and British characters have been omitted. But that is not to say that Tintin's creator Herge had particular sympathies in the Arab-Israeli conflict; he was also accused of anti-semitic representation of Jewish people in Tintin adventures during World-World II.

Another feature of Tintin comics, is the quizzical omission of a single (likable) female character in all adventures. Mmmm!

Anyway, the Adventures of Tintin series is a clear case of the less you know, the better! May (some of) Tintin's adventures continue to delight children young and old across the globe.