There's a story in today's Le Figaro about Belgian comics character Tintin being censored in England. Here's my translation of part of the story from French into English:
From now on, in order to read "Tintin in the Congo" on the other side of the Channel [that's in England], a person must be at least 18 years old.... The reason: it's a decision of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) ... [because some British lawyer thinks] "Tintin in the Congo" suggests that Africans are subhuman, that they are idiots, that they are savages.[Link to Le Figaro]
"The Adventures of Tintin in the Congo" (the original French version was published in 1931) is one of 24 Tintin comic books, published by a Belgian named Herge, and published beginning in the 1930s and for the next couple decades. This particular book, number two in the series, was for many years not translated into English precisely because it is widely considered racist. It finally was published in the UK, in English, a few years ago, and only now is it being censored.
At that link to the Le Figaro story there's a sample of the comic in question. It depicts Africans as black monkeys, which seems racist to me.
The questions on my mind are, one, should the government have the legitimate authority to limit the sale of items expressing racist sentiments only to those people over 18? And, two, if this story becomes more widely known, will it have any effect on Steven Spielberg's and Peter Jackson's planned Tintin movie trilogy, the first of which is scheduled for release in 2009?
[Tintin movies on Wikipedia]
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