This review is about perhaps the most famous reporter in the history of journalism. Actually quite sad that this is a fictional figure and that it was conceived by a man with a dubious reputation. Of course I am talking about the reporter Tintin. Hergé made "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets" in 1929 for the magazine "Le Petit Vingtième.
In this first Tintin story, the newspaper "The Small Twentieth” sends reporter Tintin to the Soviet Union to inform readers of what is happening there. Soon it becomes clear that all the positive news that the Bolsheviks tell foreign reporters is a lie. It’s obvious that these Bolsheviks use every possible means to get rid of Tintin who is going to expose them for what they are.
It is clear that the propaganda is splashing off the pages. There is not a single page on which we are not alerted to the imminent danger posed by this new communist state to Western civilization. Is this bad? I would say 'no'. One of the reasons is that anyone who has paid a attention during the history lesson in school can understand that this is not really based on real facts. And for those who have been asleep during class or just too young, the notions of Soviet Union and Bolsheviks will probably mean little, because the Soviet Union no longer exists, the concept of Bolsheviks is no longer used and the Communists no longer pose a threat.
What remains is a story with funny situations being told full speed. The latter is probably because Hergé thought up the story during the making. It has therefore probably become a sequence of action scenes. You can have all sorts of opinions about Hergé as a man and his Tintin comics, but it can not be denied that Hergé had completely changed the comic strip landscape with Tintin. Not only with the way of telling a story, but also with the new drawing style that is called the ‘Klare Lijn’.
Someone from the 'Linkse Socialistische Partij' wrote on his / her blog about the colored reprint that Casterman had issued in honor of 100 years of Russian Revolution: "The very dominant anti-communism is accompanied by all possible clichés." Later this blogger writes: "On the At the end of his life, Hergé justified the propaganda in his first comics by referring to the political context of that time, as if such racist ideas were generally accepted. '
Personally I think Hergé has a point when it comes to this first album. It was 1929, it was normal to find your own country, race and faith superior. Anyone who thinks that the First World War, which ended eleven years before, had brought the nations closer together is mistaken. In September 1917 the German sociologist Max Weber wrote 'Today there is a gang of African and Asian savages on the western front, and a bunch of thieves and tramps from all over the world.'
The Great British Empire had 1.4 million Indian soldiers, France half a million men from Africa and Indochina and the Americans recruited 400,000 African-Americans to their armies. The general tendency was that these soldiers were ‘nothing more than dirty n*gr**s’ who could only serve as cannon fodder. I do not think that this mentality can change much in 11 years. So yes, I think we should put this album in a historical context.
As far as the clichés are concerned, I have to admit that there are quite a few in this comic. Slipping over a banana peel was indeed a cliché even in 1929, but Hergé also invented elements that are now a cliché, but were absolutely original in 1929. Think of a super pocket knife with which you can cut a propeller from a tree trunk. The total absurdity of the idea makes it all the funnier. As far as I know, nobody had used this kind of gadgets before 1929. Now it has become a cliché because it is used so frequently in the popular James Bond films.
After all Tintin albums have read, I have come to the conclusion that "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets' surely is my most favorite.
Hergé on Wikipedia
Hergé on the Comiclopedia
Tintin in the Land of the Soviets on Wikipedia
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten