As a kid, I owned at least 10-15 Tintin comics, and re-read them obsessively. I wonder where my copies went? I don't really remember any details of the plots, nor did I read Tintin with an adult's sensitivity to racism and jingoism. If I don't get around to Tivoing this documentary, I'll probably rent it from Netflix.
TV Review | 'Tintin and I': Hergé, Mild-Mannered Father of the Adventurous Tintin :
This P.O.V. documentary should be a treat for avid Tintin fans, who come to it with a thorough appreciation of the character and his adventures.And although Mr. Remi rarely left his desk, much less his native country, he made Tintin a world traveler, an observer of cultures that his creator had never known firsthand. Some of the early works, like “Tintin au Congo,” were unabashedly racist. Mr. Ostergaard and the film conclude that Mr. Remi wasn’t particularly racist, even then; he was just “a bit of a sponge,” absorbing whatever attitudes were prevalent at the time. (The father of Mr. Sadoul, the interviewer, was a high-ranking official in what was then the Belgian Congo.)
The strip quickly became political, though. Tintin encountered a villainous dictator named Müsstler, which was surprising, since Mr. Remi’s mentor at the newspaper was a fan of both Mussolini and Hitler. After the Nazis invaded Belgium in 1940, they closed down the paper. Mr. Remi moved on to the Brussels daily Le Soir, but the Nazis assumed control of it, and when the war ended, he was arrested as a Nazi sympathizer.
“It was seen as treason” to have worked for Le Soir, Mr. Remi says, arguing that no one seemed to feel that way about bus drivers and waiters who also went to work every day and collected their salaries while the city was occupied.
Tintin and I
On most PBS stations Tuesday (check local listings).
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