Of Men and Animals: Herge's 'Tintin Au Congo,' a Study of Primitivism (1996)

I. The genesis of Tintin au Congo: a primitive, primitivistic album Tintin au Congo can arguably be considered as a primitive album in Herge's aeuvre--or at least in the most prominent and substantial part of it, the world-famous Les Aventures de Tintin series--since it was only preceded by Tintin au pays des Soviets, an adventure that, due to its rarity, had long become something of a myth in the world of the strip cartoon (Peelers, 27) when a facsimile edition of the original version was finally publ:shed in 1981. Tintin au Congo is so ostensibly and naively permeated with primitivistic and colonialist prejudices that it has long been dismissed by critics and the author alike as a historically dated, gross and all-too obvious caricature. The greater part of the most prevalent stereotypes and tropes of the primitivistic canon are indeed to be found in this album, including the image of the Other as simultaneously alien or exotic and familiar or true-to-type(1). Admittedly, the Belgian creator of Tintin significantly revised the initial album (1930) for the color version (1946), deliberately dehistoricizing and generally toning down the overtly colonialist ideology of the 1930s.(2) As I hope to show, however,this ideological stance can still be traced in the new version as more than just vestigial residue, only in a more complex or insidious way than its seemingly transparent primitivistic outlook might suggest. Behind the flagrant immediacy habitually perceived and decried there may be found a displaced--perhaps more powerful--type of primitivism, weaving its way into the superficial fabric. As a preliminary to a reassessment of the album, some of the comments the author made (or did not make) on Tintin au Congo in the course of conversations he had with various interviewers need to be reviewed. The most salient point, perhaps, is that Herge appears repeatedly reluctant to discuss the album at all (a statement like Passons, sans plus larder, a l`album suivant in an interview with Numa Sadoul (143) encapsulates his overall stance), except in simultaneously apologetic and defensive terms. In the rare instances where Tintin au Congo is indeed touched on by its author, the album is essentially presented as a piece of commissioned work. Herge claims to have been literally pushed in that direction by Father Wallez, the then director of the Belgian catholic daily, Le XXe Siecle, whose weekly comic supplement, Le Petit Vingtieme, was to feature Tintin au Congo. Herge dutifully complied, biding his time for a more personal project, Tintin en Amerique: Pourquoi et comment ai-je fait le Congo? . . . En realite, j'aurais prefere envoyer Tintin directement en Amerique apres son retour de Russie. Mais l'abbe Wallez m'a persuade de commencer par le Congo: Notre belle colonie, qui a tellement besoin de nous et pour laquelle il faut susciter des vocations coloniales, taratata tarataboum! Ca ne m'inspirait pas beaucoup, mais me suds rendu a ces et en avant pour le Congo! (Sadoul, 143) One may well question the ethical validity of je me suds rendu a ces [ses?] arguments, but of more importance, perhaps, is the fact that this of argument is directly linked to the ongoing polemic over Herge's putative racism--most visibly reflected in Tintin au Congo, according to his detractors--and his ties, if not his affiliation, with Belgian right-wing movements in the interwar years(3). The issue inevitably comes up in the interviews, and Herge's self-exonerating counter-move or line of defenseis no longer based on the influential and hierarchical impact or pressure of one particular individual but on the collective, dominant, mainstream ideology of a specific period in time. In other words, the paternalistic, colonialist perspective pervading the album must be contextualized and historicized: C'etait en 1930. …