This piece shows how Tintin is helping the Africans avoid a fight by helping them share their hat. In the process, he actually ruins their hat, but they are both seemingly happy.
This episode shows how the African natives are asking Tintin to come save them from the ferocious lion. “White mister! You come save us!” This serves as a metaphor for the Europeans coming to Africa to ‘tame’ its natural features. The Africans are asking Tintin to help, implying that they need European intervention.
Most Europeans felt empowered and righteous by vowing to protect scientific advances and inquiry, specifically highlighting exploration and mapping of the mysterious continent of Africa. When European nations were colonizing Africa, they thought they were helping the countries by spreading impertinent knowledge and technology to the ‘savage’, ‘uncivilized’ continent. Looking at this episode, we see that Tintin has outsmarted the group Africans by using an electro-magnet to attract the spears toward the tree and away from himself. The Africans were unaware of this piece of technology. After Tintin uses this technology, the Africans who were trying to kill him are praising him as their king. In his paper, Headrick quotes Rondo Cameron: “It is sometimes asserted that the rapid progress of Western technology in the 19th century was a major determinant of the imperialist drive…” (Headrick, 232) This reinforces the colonial attitudes of Europeans at the time. They believed that through technology they would be helping the Africans to become a more civilized and educated nation and eventually would happily submit themselves to European rule.
This cartoon reinforces the attitudes that Europeans had about Africans by showing how ‘necessary’ missions were. Here we have Tintin asking a group of Africans the simplest arithmetic question 2+2. Tintin repeats the question over and over but gets no reply. Burbank and Cooper write, “As more Europeans went to Africa or Asia to explore, exploit, and rule, the experience of conquest and domination could seem to validate theories of racial hierarchy” (325) This cartoon reinforces European attitudes of innate dominance and supremacy by implying that the Africans were not intelligent enough to solve something as simple as 2+2.
Additionally, all the Africans know who Tipin is as soon as he walks in. Hochschild writes, “African explorers became some of the first international celebrity figures, their fame crossing national boundaries like that of today’s champion athletes and movie stars” (27) This celebrity status given to Tipin is consistent with European attitudes of the time.
This image is the last scene in the book. It depicts a village in the Congo after Tintin’s departure. In the top left-hand corner, we can notice a statue of Tintin and his dog, both of them on a pedestal. An African man is kneeling (praying) to it. This reinforces the attitude of European supremacy. On the top right hand corner, two African men are talking at a “cafe.” The addition of a “cafe” in an African village shows how the Europeans positively influenced the Congo. One man is telling the other man that “in Europe all white men is like Tintin.” The improper grammar reinforces the European stereotype that Africans are uneducated. In the lower right hand corner, a woman is telling her son that if he doesn’t behave, he will never be like Tintin. On the lower left hand corner, an African man is preaching to younger African children, calling Tintin “all powerful” This once again highlights the European belief that Africans looked up to their colonizers, seeing them as gods.
Conclusions: “Many Europeans might have thought that their advances would allow them to do what they willed to their subjects – exploit them without restriction or remake them in a European image.” (Burbank and Cooper, 328) This comic book shows how Europeans believed that they could use technology, medicine, and religion to civilize African natives. This comic book shows the Africans to be primitive, childlike, and submissive. They are happy to get help from Tintin. Even after some of the revolt, they realize that Tintin is superior and crown him as their king. I could understand why this comic was under scrutiny. It displays many racist stereotypes while reinforcing European supremacy. However, this book should not be censored. It is pivotal to the understanding of the history of colonialism and how stereotypes that are present in this book helped to perpetuate it.