According to the BBC, “the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) is calling on high street books to pull a Tintin adventure from its shelves over claims it is racist.”
I’m genuinely not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, many of the Tintin books encompass the worst of colonialist bigotry; on the other, “the book’s publishers Egmont said the book comes with a warning that it features ‘bourgeois, paternalistic stereotypes of the period – an interpretation some readers may find offensive.’” So, the edition in question contains printed acknowledgement of the offensive contents and isn’t attempting to excuse them, which casts the issue in a somewhat different light.
Where do you draw that line? Is there a clear line at all? Should the book be relegated to the “adult” section? Should stores even carry it? Is there an ethical difference between what content should be tolerated in Tintin, which is considered a seminal and canonical piece of comics literature, versus other, less “classic” works? Should there be?
I’m wary, in some ways, of any attempt to “hide” our past by not reprinting such works. The question of “lines drawn” aside, I’m paranoid that the act of not publishing these kinds of works means that we simply forget the lessons of the past. It’s important to publish them so that we can have the discussions, be reminded of the horrors of the past, and keep working for a better world.
I think we’ve all seen that, without people being engaged in struggles, they tend to think everything’s OK. And historical works that are biased, or just downright ugly, are a wake-up call to not allow those images and prejudices a single point to dig into the social psyche, any more than they already are.
Comment by Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill — July 12, 2007 @ 12:32 pm
The book has already been published; the question now is whether and how bookstores ought to carry it…
Comment by Rachel Edidin — July 12, 2007 @ 1:24 pm
Of course these things should be published! I hate hate HATE the way prejudices of earlier times are swept under the carpet by revisionists who like to pretend that our current values have always been true.
What we need is not censorship but explanation. If I were publishing this TIntin book I would include a foreword that set the work in the context of the time, not to apologise for it but to show how unthinking we can be as a society. Society can’t learn from its mistakes if it keeps trying to pretend it didn’t make them.
Comment by Marionette — July 12, 2007 @ 1:56 pm
If it’s a question of whether or not bookstores should carry it, I think it’s just going to have to come down to what bookstore owners and managers think will best serve their clientele. If you think that a product is going to upset the majority of your clientele, you have the right to choose to not carry it in your store. That’s not censorship, that’s common sense. If a customer really wants that book, it can still be special ordered for them, even if the owner decides to not have it on their shelves.
I personally don’t want to see books like this forgotten about, because even though we might find things totally offensive, they are still worth studying. But if this is a matter of a bookstore owner thinking that it could be damaging or alienating to their customers, then there’s certainly nothing wrong with them deciding to not have it in their store.
Comment by Caribou23 — July 12, 2007 @ 3:22 pm