Publisher’s Weekly broke the story yesterday that Little, Brown is canceling its plans to publish Tintin in the Congo, a book which has garnered a lot of controversy abroad due to its racist portrayals of Africans. The book will also not be included in an upcoming box set featuring all of Herge’s stories about the boy reporter:
Publicist Melanie Chang did not give a reason for the standalone book’s cancellation, but of its omission from the box set she said, “Given the controversy surrounding the Congo title, we felt including it in the box set would eclipse the true intention of the collection, which is to showcase Hergé’s extraordinary art and his remarkable contribution to the graphic arts.”
Tintin in the Congo, written in 1931 by Belgian artist Hergé, was slated for publication this fall. Part of a series of books centered on the adventurer Tintin, Tintin in the Congo depicts black Africans who strongly resemble monkeys and dialogue widely considered racist. After an uproar over the book’s publication in the UK (prompted by a complaint from a British lawyer that the “highly offensive” book contained racist images), Borders reacted by announcing its U.S. stores would stock the popular but controversial children’s book in an adult-oriented section of the store because of material the retailer said “could be considered offensive by some of our customers.” Little, Brown had planned to wrap a belly band around U.S. editions of the book acknowledging that the book “may be considered somewhat controversial as it reflects the colonial attitudes of the time it was created.
I understand the publisher’s concerns, but it just doesn’t seem right publishing a “complete Tintin” set and not including Congo. It’s not like impressionable minds will have the money to pony up for a high-ticket item like that.
October 3rd, 2007 at 10:52 am
This is sad and just goes to show that we have no sense of historical context in this country and that parents are too lazy to explain to children why things were portrayed a certain way and why it’s not okay to portray it that way now. Of course, that would mean that parents would have to spend time with their kids and want to communicate with them. I guess this is why Mark Twain gets banned too. Of course, it really comes down to a corporation (Borders) being afraid of how it’s going to affect their bottom line.