We see the frenzied reporter Tim, on the right in the picture at the stake with his faithful dog Struppi, penned by the notorious Belgian artist Hergé. His situation seems hopeless, he is sweating, his cheeks are even redder than usual. Will the “Indian chief” “scalp” him in the following picture? No, that much can be revealed. Our young hero escapes! Anyway, out of this dilemma, today Tim is fighting against other opponents.
The picture is the cover motif of “Tim in America”, the third volume of the 24-volume Tintin series. The adventure first appeared in black and white as a comic strip in 1931 in the children’s supplement of the Belgian newspaper “Le Vingtième Siècle”. In 1932, the volume Tintin en Amérique was first published in 1932 with a small printed illustration on the cover.
She showed Tintin sitting on a rock with Struppi lying next to him. On the occasion of the third edition in 1937, the small title picture was replaced by a picture showing Tim riding a horse. It was not until the 1940s that new printing techniques made it possible to have a full-page color cover photo.
But the picture drawn in 1942, which has adorned the color edition of the volume as a cover motif since 1946, is misleading. Because the prairie is just a sideshow. Tim is actually traveling to the USA to track down the gang leader Al Capone in Chicago, who already played a role in the band “Tim in the Congo”. Even before the reader finds out what Tim is investigating, he falls into traps, gets ambushed, is threatened, kidnapped and almost murdered several times.
Of course, Tim doesn’t let that deter him. He’s chasing a bandit west on the train. And here, it must be somewhere between the Canadian province of Alberta and the American state of Montana, the Belgian reporter meets a tribal group of the indigenous people of the Niitsítapi is just one episode of the adventure that Tim experiences in the USA.
Cover photo of “Tim in America” since 1946
Which: © HERGÉ/TINTINIMTime.newsNATIO 2023
But this episode of the adventure that Tim experiences in the USA is condensed in the cover motif into that bouquet of discriminatory clichés for which Hergé alias Georges Rémi (1907-1983) is notorious: It goes to “Redskincity”, where just behind the town sign a “real redskin” is sitting in the grass.
Shortly thereafter, the “paleface” is captured and the “Indian chief” named “mole-with-the-eagle-eyed” is presented by the “noble tribe of the black feet”. Immediately the “hatchet is dug up” and Tim is sentenced to death. But he uses a trick to trick the Indians, who are described as proud but uncontrolled, into beating each other up, after which he can flee.
Hergé: Colonial with a clear line
Because of these clichéd depictions, Tintin, as Tim is called in the original, and his inventor are now blowing the wind of the cancel culture. For all too clueless from today’s perspective, Hergé had his reporter travel around the world, then still a pre-postcolonial one, on behalf of a newspaper (for which he rarely wrote a line).
Especially because of the racist stereotypes that Hergé uncritically spread in the second volume “Tim in the Congo”, the draftsman, who is also praised for his “clear line”, has a lasting flaw. Only with volume five “The Blue Lotus” did the tide slowly turn, and Hergé began to research more closely.
But already for “Tintin in America” Hergé seems not only to rely on his imagination and Western resentment. However, he probably also processed well-founded sources of his time. Hergé’s Indian chief seems like a spitting image of the then head of the Piegan, a Blackfoot tribal group.
The Mountain Chief was photographed with ethnomusicologist Frances Densmore in 1916 while recording Native American languages. In this photo, which was widely published at the time, he also wears embroidered moccasins, clothing decorated with fringes and the feathered bonnet that distinguishes him as a successful warrior.
Was Mountain Chief a role model for Hergé?
Quelle: Getty Images/Underwood Archives
Because of these genre and time-typical simplifications and exoticizations, the Tintin world is a fodder for today’s decolonization offensives. In contrast to the black population of the Congo, which was bloodily subjugated by the Belgian King Leopold, as Hergé caricatures them more than outlines them in “Tintin in the Congo”, the “redskins” come off comparatively well. Rather, Hergé criticizes the white gangster gangs, whose affiliation to organized crime or organized capitalism can hardly be distinguished: After Tim escapes from the reservation, the Blackfoot are driven out because oil is found on their soil.
While academic literature also recognizes socio-critical echoes in the comic series, it repeatedly falls victim to the cancel culture in the popular culture struggles. Ten years ago, Swedish institutions boycotted Tintin. In Canada, for example, “Tintin in America” was banned from a public library in 2015 and removed from the program of a bookstore chain.
Victim of a book burning
In 2019, an Ontario school board conducted a cleanup of its institutional libraries, removing thousands of books. 30 were even burned in a “flame cleansing ceremony,” including “Tintin in America.” The ashes of the books were then used as fertilizer to plant a tree. The school board spokeswoman hailed the book burning as a “gesture of reconciliation with First Nations.”
Die-hard fans of the comic series don’t mind this; even less the collectors. Especially the original drawings for the covers of the volumes are traded high and high. The French auction house Artcurial holds several auction world records for works by Hergé. In 2012, the original drawing for the 1932 cover of “Tim in America” was sold for 1.3 million euros. Two years ago, Artcurial auctioned the colored draft for “Le Lotus Bleu” in Paris for 3.1 million euros.
Hergé’s cover art for Tintin en Amérique from 1942 is estimated at 2.2 to 3.2 million euros
Which: © HERGÉ/TINTINIMTime.newsNATIO 2023
On February 10, 2023, the title motif drawn in 1942 for a new edition of “Tintin en Amérique” and used internationally since then will go under the hammer: The sheet is appreciated, which impressively demonstrates Hergé’s epoch-making “ligne claire”, but also his simple world view, to 2.2 to 3.2 million euros.