But I must disagree that Tintin isn’t a known entity in the good ole U.S. of A.

Hell, read this:

http://darkpartyreview.blogspot.com/2006/08/5-questions-about-tintin.html

If it’s reached the stage where libraries in the US are afraid to stock ‘Tintin in America’ because it might cause offence to PC Nazis, the US might as well declare itself a fascist dictatorship and have done with it.

Whatever next ? PC fundamentalists might start burning copies of Tintin books and issuing death threats to the publishers. There could be riots outside the Belgian embassy and the burning of the Belgian flag in response to this monstrous affront to the PC faith.

I can picture the headlines: ‘Tintin – the new Salman Rushdie’; ‘Belgian super-sleuth driven into hiding by fatwa’; ‘Captain Haddock requests police protection’.

Who will stand up for freedom of expression ?

which is odd, given that Tintin wasn’t French. (Or at least Herge wasn’t.)

It’s a tribute to him that he managed to largely overcome his upbringing, started doing research, got in contact with people of the cultures he was setting Tintin’s adventures in and created a classic of European comics. Much of which is due to his friend, Chang Chong-jen, whose name you might recognise from certain of Tintin’s adventures…

So yeah, skip the first three Tintin albums because even if you can see past the prejudices, they’re just not very good, only of interest because of what the Tintin series would grow into.

And I’ve been really good about not pulling the Ann Coulter and Michael Savage books off the shelves, too. Even though I want to.

Keep them. Just file them under “insane, bigoted garbage”.

I feel, in some ways, this scene makes up for Tintin au Congo.

On the general issue, my advice to librarians would be to start the collection at Les Cigares du Pharaon. Starting there, the stories are vastly superior to the previous ones and political controversies are thus mostly averted.

At the Lotus, Hergé already had evolved, even if his earliest books (Congo, Soviets) are rather nasty.

Iirc Congo is readable, just add a “racism of these times” warning.

well, I basically agree with z and doug k about this (and sk, you’re just being silly). I want to emphasize that I was not endorsing any possible complaint against the book, which (and indeed I said that I would buy it myself).

Here’s the problem. The cover represents a pervasive cultural stereotype. Most librarians have no problem with that per se, especially in the context, and want to choose books according to some rough algorithm balancing literary merit with popularity. Despite what Timothy Burke says about it (that is, despite what he says about it being true!) TinA has more literary merit than almost any books that will enter libraries because they are popular as a result of tie-ins etc. So most librarians would be happy to have it in their collections. BUT most librarians have only so many hours in the day, and they know that the presence of that cover will give rise to numerous complaints from other teachers and from parents. Furthermore, not all librarians can read every book in their collection, in order to defend it effectively. People do judge a book by its cover, and the librarian always has to make a judgment about how much time will be wasted by dealing with wrongheaded but predictable complaints. So, I guarantee you that hundreds if not thousands of elementary school librarians will buy this book (after the movie comes out) and then face a dilemma about whether or not to put it on their shelves. I was trying to help.

And I’ve been really good about not pulling the Anne Coulter and Michael Savage books off the shelves, too. Even though I want to.

As z noted, after The Blue Lotus, Tintin is always on the side of the oppressed local and opposed to the colonial authorities, which is an interesting turnabout. In any case, “general extreme-right undertones” are rather a recommendation to a large subset of US society, they’ll sell like hotcakes.

Also don’t see the problem as stated with T in America: seems to me it depicts all Americans except the Indians as violent buffoons, the Indians are rather sympathetic than not, even if cartoonish. Wait, it is a cartoon !