Contagious colonial diseases in Hergé's The adventures of Tintin

Abstract

This article analyses the portrayal of illness and disease in two well‐known Tintin books that were published in the late 1940s. It underlines how work from Hergé in this period continued to be marked with an imperialist mindset. In particular, it is important to appreciate that publications such as Les 7 Boules de cristal and Le Temple du soleil lend implicit support to common European myths of reverse, or ‘retro’, colonial invasion. Similarly, Hergé's post‐1945 attitudes towards colonialism are tarnished with other more complex kinds of quasi‐racist assumption. In short, the aim of this article is to measure the ambiguity of Hergé's discourse in a more thorough fashion than has often been the case in recent scholarly or media debates about this popular hero.

Notes

For example, see among others: VANDROMME, P., Le Monde de Tintin (Gallimard, 1959); PEETERS, B., Tintin et le monde d'Hergé (France‐Loisir, 1988); ASSOULINE, P., Hergé (Gallimard‐Folio, édition corrigée, 1998); SERRÈS, M., Hergé, mon ami (Moulinsart, 2000); BONFAND, A. and MARION, J.‐L., Hergé: Tintin le Terrible ou l'alphabet des richesses (Hachette, 1996); TISSERON, S., Tintin chez le psychanalyste (Aubier, 1985); FARR, M., Tintin: the Complete Companion (John Murray, 2001).

ASSOULINE, Hergé, pp. 236–330. See also the similar discussion in ORY, P., ‘Tintin au pays de l’ordre noir', L'Histoire 18 (1979), pp. 83–4.

DEGRELLE, L., Histoire de la guerre scolaire (Éditions de Rex, 1932).

Maxime BenoÎt‐Jeannin, Le Mythe Hergé (Éditions Golias, 2001). The latter publication offers a very critical reading of Hergé's career. Most factual points had been covered earlier in the aforementioned article by Pascal Ory. For a detailed, less polemical account of Hergé's war, see PEETERS, B., ‘Hergé’s trial without end', Rethinking History: the Journal of Theory and Practice, Special Issue: ‘History in the Graphic Novel’, 6, 3 (2002), pp. 261–73; the former is a reworked and translated part of the biography by PEETERS, Hergé: Fils du Tintin (Flammarion, 2002).

The chequered history of the publication of the two comics in question means that there are several versions of the text: an original beginning of Les 7 Boules de cristal published in 1944 under Nazi control; a post‐Liberation newsprint continuation of the story and eventually two postwar book versions. The texts I have used for this article are recent republications of the first album editions, the publishing details of which are HERGÉ, Les 7 Boules de cristal (Casterman, 1948 [reproduced unamended 2001]); HERGÉ, Le Temple du soleil (Casterman, 1949 [2001]).

PEETERS, Tintin et le monde d'Hergé, p. 83.

JACOBS, E.P., Les Mémoires de Blake et Mortimer (Gallimard, 1981), p. 76.

See for example JACOBS, E.P., Le Secret de l'Espadon (Éditions Blake et Mortimer, 1997 [1946]).

LOFFICIER, J.‐M. and LOFFICIER, R., Tintin. The Pocket Essential (Pocketessentials, 2002), p. 89. The animation of the original albums was made in 1969, directed by Eddie Lateste and broadcast by Belvision.

SONTAG, S., Illness as Metaphor/Aids and its Metaphors (Penguin, 1991), pp. 82–3.

BILLIG, M., ‘The extreme right: continuities in anti‐Semitic conspiracy theory in post‐war Europe’, in R. EATWELL (ed.), The Nature of the Right (Pinter, 1989), pp. 146–67. The question of rhetorical substitutability of victims is discussed in pp. 151–3.

Tintin scholar Frédéric Sournois has suggested that part of Le Temple du soleil resembles the novel, LEROUX, G., L'Épouse du soleil, translated as The Bride of the Sun (Hodder and Stoughton, 1916). For this thesis on the intertextual nature of the book, see SOURNOIS, F., Dossier Tintin: Sources, Versions, Thèmes, Structures (Jacques Antoine, 1987), p. 206. Leroux is of course better known in Britain as the creator of Phantom of the Opera. For what it is worth, these literary references are themselves often linked to the role played by E.P. Jacobs in the production of these albums. Furthermore, BenoÎt Mouchart has suggested that both artists were inspired by a third figure, Jacques Van Melkebeke. For this interpretation, see MOUCHART, B., À l'ombre de la ligne claire: Jacques Van Melkebeke le clandestin de la BD (Vertige Graphic, 2002), pp. 114–16.

OTIS, L., Membranes: Metaphors of Invasion in Nineteenth‐Century Literature, Science and Politics (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), p. 5.

DRIANT, E., L'Invasion noire (1894) is the classic example of French retro‐colonisation fiction. Indeed, it continues to be praised by extreme right‐wing intellectuals. See, for example, MABIRE, J., ‘La bibliothèque impériale’, Enquĉte sur l'histoire 8 (1993), p. 69. Mabire is a well‐known activist and writer associated with Jean‐Marie Le Pen's extreme right‐wing movement the Front national. The best known contemporary French version of a colonial retro‐invasion narrative remains RASPAIL, J., Le Camp des saints, or, in English translation, The Camp of the Saints (Charles Scribner and Sons, 1975). This novel does not merit comparison with Hergé's far more influential presentation of similar themes. For a more detailed discussion of Émile Driant's fiction, see the excellent essay by DINE, P., ‘The French Colonial Empire in juvenile fiction: from Jules Verne to Tintin’, Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques, 23, 2 (1997), pp. 177–203.

See BRANTLINGER, P., Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism 1830–1914 (Cornell University Press, 1988), pp. 235–6; ARATA, S.D., ‘The Occidental tourist: Dracula and the anxiety of reverse colonization’, Victorian Studies, 33 (1990), pp. 621–45.

Ibid., pp. 622–3.

For wider discussion of French paradigms of imperialism, see GIRARDET, R., L'Idée coloniale en France (La Table Ronde, 1972); C. FLOOD and H. FREY, ‘Defending the Empire in retrospect. the discourse of the extreme Right’, in CHAFER, T. and SACKUR, A. (eds), Promoting the Colonial Idea. Propaganda and Visions of Empire in France (Palgrave, 2002), pp. 195–210.

Hergé's first patron, Abbey Wallez, is described by Pierre Assouline as being akin to a French integral nationalist and being influenced by that tradition's leading theorist, Charles Maurras. See ASSOULINE, Hergé, p. 45. However, it should be noted that sometime earlier in collaboration with Wallez's newspaper, Hergé had published the more openly paternalist, procolonial, Tintin au Congo (Casterman, 1930). The strong possibility is that Hergé and Wallez shared a confused synthesis of racist reluctance and national pride regarding Empire building. Moreover, on the specific point of race mixing, Hergé allegedly stated as recently as 1982 that if he had had a daughter he would have not wished her to marry a ‘foreigner’. Cited in ROMON, P., ‘Tintin: l’histoire interdite', L'Evénement, 740 (1999), p. 78. Readers wishing to further research Hergé's earlier work on the Congo are advised to begin with the aforementioned essay by Philip Dine, or, for an alternative but complimentary approach, see also ROSE‐HUNT, N., ‘Tintin and the interruptions of Congolese comics’, in P.S. LANDAU and D. KASPIN (eds), Images and Empires (University of California Press, 2002), pp. 90–123.

TAGUIEFF, P., Sur la Nouvelle Droite (Descartes, 1994), p. 98.

SAID, E., Culture and Imperialism (Chatto and Windus, 1993), p. 228.

HERGÉ, Les 7 Boules de cristal, p. 1.

For an array of further recent popular discussions of Tintin and Hergé that gloss over the politically problematic nature of the œuvre, see: Géo, ‘Tintin: Grand Voyageur du siècle’ (Hors Série, 2000); Science et Vie. Édition spéciale: Tintin chez les savants (2002) and Télérama (Hors Série): Tintin L'Aventure continue (2002).