“Stand down: literature has defeated the Thought Police. Belgium’s supreme court has defeated the mischief-making of the whining PC brigade. Tintin is not banned. Huzzah!

The badness of the bad faith involved in the commentariat’s discussion of this issue, the relentlessness of their categoric elisions, the unpleasantness of their crowing over the victory, should come as no surprise. This was never, at root, about banning. Yes, Bienvenue Mbutu Mondondo was applying to the court to have Tintin in the Congo declared unacceptable under the Belgian race relations law. However, he had made clear for years that he would be satisfied if, as in Britain, the book was published with a visible warning, a reminder of the context in which it was written (maybe even of the toxic ideology enshrined within). What Mondondo wanted was an official recognition that this text was a spitting in his face. That it came down to what was always clearly a nuclear option was due to the steadfast refusal of the publishers to countenance this – and thereby take responsibility for what they publish. The Belgian establishment went to cultural war, & it did so not for free speech, but for their right not to apologise for racist slander.“

“It is clear that neither the story, nor the fact that it has been put on sale, has a goal to… create an intimidating, hostile, degrading or humiliating environment.”

(scene from Tintin Au Congo, (c) Moulinsart)

Congolese campaigner Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo has been trying to persuade the Belgian courts since 2007 that the work was racist and should be banned. As a reader and bookseller I am not terribly keen on banning books that don’t agree with me, and even if I accepted this particular book was racist (which I don’t think it was, at least that was not the intent of the creator at the time it was made, it is the interpretation by some today applied retospectively) then surely the thing to do is still publish it, let younger readers pick it up but ensure that it is explained to them that this sort of view of other cultures was once quite acceptable in Western societies and explain to them why, so they are aware that it existed and help to educate them as to why we have spent decades trying to improve race and cultural representation and equality in our socities today, then they will understand and value the notions of modern equality all the more? To ban it simply sweeps a problem under the carpet and pretends there was no problem in the past with different attitudes, which I think undermines the reasons why we strive for equality today if we do that. We need the past, warts and all to understand how we are today and where we need to try and improve ourselves further. As is almost always the case with such legal matter, however, Mondondo and his lawyers intend to appeal, so this will most likely rumble on…

As is probably well-known by now, Stephen Spielberg managed to successfully turn Tintin into a movie.  Alan Baran, an intimate friend of Hergé’s and his last private secretary, was also the man who conducted the first negotiations with Spielberg.  And he liked what he saw. UK and European audiences have already enjoyed the film and with the US release imminent we present a very special feature today courtesy of our friends at Stripgids, who have kindly allowed us to translate their original article:

December, 1982. A telephone call from our publisher, Casterman from Tournai, tells me that a request has arrived for information about the movie rights to the Tintin books.  The letter is signed by Kathleen Kennedy.  She was writing to us on behalf of Stephen Spielberg.  Tintin’s spiritual father, who was a great fan of the Spielberg who did Duel, Indiana Jones and ET, was very excited about the news.

Sadly, Hergé was not able to accept the invitation to come to Los Angeles for a first meeting with the American director.  His health does not allow a long an tiring journey.  But he asks me to take the trip in his place, to hear from Spielberg himself how he wants to bring Tintin to life on the silver screen.  Of our first meeting, I’ll always remember how he said, “Tintin, that’s Indiana Jones for children”, as well as his eagerness to find out everything about Hergé, for whom he had enormous admiration.

At the end of my stay in California I delivered a draft to Spielberg with a summary of our expectations for the project.  And a little later we received a declaration of intent which broadly sketched the particulars of the future contract.

Tuesday, February 22, 1983, at about 11 AM in the Studios Hergé in Brussels.  This would turn out to be my very last professional conversation with Hergé, and it only has one subject : Steven Spielberg’s proposal for turning Tintin into a movie.  Hergé and I discuss the letter from America at length, and in great detail.  To me one item in the proposal was quite fundamental : it stated that, in accordance with Californian laws, Hergé would have no right to veto in any case of artistic difference. In my opinion, that was unacceptable.  However, Hergé immediately had an answer, and it was clear as day : “I know I’m running the risk that I will not be able to recognize my own characters, but Spielberg is a creative artist himself, and I want to give him my confidence.”

The two men were to meet each other a couple of weeks later in Brussels.  However, Hergé’s death decided differently.  Nevertheless, the contract was signed one year later in New York, with a personal commitment from Spielberg : “I’ll do anything to make you proud of my work…”

Saturday, October 22, 2011, at about 8 PM in the UGC Cinemas in Brussels. I have just attended an advance performance of The Secret of the Unicorn.  Almost thirty years have gone by since we first spoke with Spielberg.  I feel like a child who is finally allowed to open a long-awaited present.  I feel relief when I say that Spielberg has ket all his promises : this is indeed an ‘Indiana Jones for children’, and the film testifies of the enormous respect that Spielberg felt for Hergé.  The homage to Hergé at the beginning of the movie was very moving in that respect (* possible slight spoiler warning, don’t read italics if you don’t want to know! * If you haven’t seen it yet, watch in one of the very first scenes for a street caricaturist drawing our hero in a cartoon style in a marketplace, the street artist’s face modelled after the great Hergé himself in a lovely, subtle touch – Joe) .

Die hard Tintin aficionados will probably have some difficulty with recognizing him on the silver screen, in 3D no less.  Yes, the film unmistakably bears the Spielberg brand.  Yes, the script allows itself numerous liberties vis-a-vis the books it is loosely based on.  Yes, some of the chase scenes are bound to become Hollywood classics.  And indeed, an enormous promotional machinery has been set in motion in order for the producers to earn back their investments.

And still, above all I feel immense joy.  Because Tintin has found the way to adventure again.  I have no doubt that he will be able to excite children all over the world again.  Their expectations, their demands even, have changed over the years, and Spielberg really gets that.  He succeeds in overwhelming them with all the magic of the world of Tintin, to which he adds a new dimension.

Hergé, an artistic genius from the twentieth century who did not want Tintin to survive him in new adventures, knew damn well what he was doing when he put his trust in Spielberg, an artistic genius of the twenty-first century.  Tintin is still alive and kicking, and he divides his time these days between his fatherland, Belgium, and Hollywood : two worlds that are different in so many ways, but also both are the birthplace of modern visual culture.

Long live Hergé’s Tintin books !

Long live Steven Spielberg’s Tintin movies !

Originally published in Stripgids – reproduced with kind permission.  With thanks to Stripgids’ Toon Horsten and special thanks to Marcel Wilmet.

But Hipp’s site is a source of so much great art… including a few Tintin mashups I can’t recall seeing oreviously …..

Tintin and the Iron Secret:

I Shot First:

Clue To The Grid:

Escape From The Magical Kingdom:

Holmes And The Mask Of The Rodent:

Quick reminder: Toronto Draws Tintin is a month long gallery exhibition at Steamwhistle Gallery from 2nd-27th November, featuring art from many comic artists and all tied into the release of the “The Adventures Of Herge” by Stanislas. The final day of the exhibition will feature a silent auction of the exhibition pieces in support of The Comic Legends Legal Defense Fund. On with the art…..

Maurice Vellekoop:

Brian Evinou:

Benjamin Rivers (Via How To Carve Roast Unicorn, but part of the Toronto Draws Tintin as well)

Okay, just a touch late on this (thanks to Tom Spurgeon for the link via Twitter) – Toronto Draws Tintin is a month long gallery exhibition at Steamwhistle Gallery from 2nd-27th November, featuring art from many comic artists and all tied into the release of the “The Adventures Of Herge” by Stanislas.

The final day of the exhibition will feature a silent auction of the exhibition pieces in support of The Comic Legends Legal Defense Fund. Here’s just a few of the pieces in the exhibition…

Chester Brown

Faith Erin Hicks

Zach Worton

If you are tired of waiting for The Secret of the Unicorn to finally hit your local multiplex this weekend, or if you prefer the quaint, rather old-fashioned Tintin to the Indiana Jones in Plus-fours that Spielberg seems to have turned him into, this might be something for you.

In 1947, a long time before the animated series that was broadcasted on TV stations across the globe, and a long time even before the very camp and very funny Tintin films starring Jean-Pierre Talbot, a first attempt was made at translating the Tintin stories to the silver screen.  La Crab Aux Pinces D’Or (The Crab With The Golden Claws) was made by the Productions Cinématographiques Wilfried Bouchery et Compagnie from Keerbergen, Belgium, and is a very charming and endearing example of what you can do with just a bunch of puppets, a number of cardboard sets and all the inventiveness that stop-motion animation brings along.

Digital copies of the film had been doing the rounds for a while now, but the Spanish comics blog, La Carcel de Papel, also discovered a copy on YouTube, in four parts.  They are in French, and sometimes quite hard to understand, but very enjoyable nevertheless.  More info here.

On Tuesday, the day before the official premiere (but still a couple days after the grand opening with Spielberg and the entire cast), I had the chance of seeing the new Tintin movie, The Secret of the Unicorn, and it was one of the best comics adaptations I have ever seen.  There, I said it.

On paper, this movie had everything to be a big disaster : a big-ass American director has a go at a venerable European cultural icon, transfers it to 3D digital animation and mixes up bits and pieces to a new, almost Frankenstein-like monstrosity.  Thankfully, though, that’s not the case.  It’s a very funny, exciting movie that very respectfully upgrades Hergé’s creations to a new generation, without losing touch with their original selves.

The story of the film is a broad retelling of the comic with the same name, but with bits and pieces from other books thrown in at good measure (a little like Besson’s Adele Blanc-Sec film).  More particularly, scenes from the Crab With The Golden Claws are used to set and develop the relation between Tintin and Captain Haddock, and instead of spinning out the yarn to capture the whole story (the original comic was split into two books, with Red Rackham’s Treasure as the second one), the writers have opted to bring it to closure a bit sooner, leaving open the possibility of a sequel.

To these original elements, new and quite exciting rollercoaster-like scenes are added, the most spectacular one being Tintin’s chase for the three parchments (hey, read the book) on a fastly disintegrating motorbike.  Even though Hergé did use the odd helter skelter scene in his books, these are the scenes that feel most remote from the Tintin we have come to know and love, and are more like your average lets-show-off-our-3D-prowess filler that riddles today’s animation.

Much is saved by the characters though.  The translation from the page to the 3D screen (which is lovingly recapped in the opening scene, with a certain street artist making Tintin’s portrait in a certain style) is a big success, and the whole cast seems to be born to play these parts.  Jamie Bell’s Tintin is cocky, Andy Serkis’ Haddock is a thundering Scotsman with a big heart (hmm – reminds me of someone).  The toast of the film, however, are Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as Thompson and Thomson : their slapstick hits the original almost exactly.  My only quibles are with some of the supporting cast : Mrs. Finch is totally unbelievable, and La Castafiore is just way too skinny.

Even though much has been speculated about the use of 3D technology to translate the Ligne Claire to the silver screen, the whole look of the film was very authentic, and very Hergé-like.  The master may not have liked shadows or shifting tints, but these are quite necessary to make the film enjoyable.  And the result is quite lush – it’s quite ironic that this top-of-the-line technology was used to painstakingly (re) create an old and battered, but very nostalgic, Europe of some decades ago, with beautiful cars, planes, radios and typewriters.

For comics and film buffs, the movie is riddled with little winks and in-jokes – just check out the brand on the crate of tins that gets tossed on the bad guys, or the name of the newspaper.  Even Spielberg’s own movies get a hat-tip, with Tintin’s quiff splitting through the water like a shark’s fin.

The Secret of the Unicorn is not a movie version of a Tintin comic.  It’s more of a palimpsest, a new story written on an existing piece of vellum.  But Spielberg and his team treat their material with such care and respect that you cannot but forgive the small transgressions they make.  I for one can’t wait for the next one.

French daily Le Figaro has discovered that, in an attempt to finally get the US hooked on Tintin in the wake of the movie, american publisher Little Brown has desecrated the holiest of holies : the covers of the Tintin books, which have remained the same for almost half a century.  In order to make closer ties to the storyline in the film, the publisher wanted covers that were more dynamic, easily recognisable and that focused on characters from the film.  They had only three criteria to live up to : the scene had to be dynamic, Tintin had to be the central character and they had to choose the artwork from the books themselves.  Oh well, if it helps selling more than the meagre 5 million copies the Tintin books have done in the past 50 years, why not ?

A new movie might just as well spawn a whole new deluge of merchandise and derived products.  Strangely enough, none of the books or toys that have been presented bear the characteristic orange-and-blue design that the official Moulinsart-backed products have.  Could it be that Les Héritiers had to settle for a rather smaller portion of the cake ? Whatever the reason, Nick Rodwell’s organisation recently clamped down on a restaurant in Brussels which for twenty years had been decorated with a large number of Tintin memorabilia, from books to statuettes to sketches by other artists.  All of a sudden, this does not fit in the plan that Rodwell has for his property.

(AFP/File, Georges Gobet)

And finally, let’s not forget a lawsuit was still going on against the alledged racist undertones of the seminal Tintin Au Congo. Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo, a Congolese citizen living in Belgium, wants the book off the shelves, or at least sold with a clear disclaimer, since it is a “justification of colonisation and of white supremacy”.  In a final hearing last week, publisher Casterman maintained that the book was merely a reflection of its time, not so much racist and supremacist, as “paternalistic”.  A ruling is expected for February, 2012.

This, from The Guardian, set the alarm bells ringing….

“Coming out of the new Tintin film directed by Steven Spielberg, I found myself, for a few seconds, too stunned and sickened to speak; for I had been obliged to watch two hours of literally senseless violence being perpetrated on something I loved dearly.”

And then Nicholas Lezard goes on to make an analogy to a violation, a rape. He tempers it by putting it in the context of the South Park / Indiana Jones reference. But it’s still a nasty, unecessary way to use the phrase. Especially when it’s talking about a bloody comic, no matter how fondly remembered from childhood. It may stomp all over your nostalgic memories, it may be awful. But look at the Tintin volumes on your shelf…. does it affect their brilliance at all? No, it doesn’t. Stop getting so worked up about it. It’s just a film. It’s just a comic.

Will it be that bad? I’m pretty certain I’m going to see it no matter what the reviews say… it’s one of those I can’t really avoid. Molly’s rather excited about it anyway, although she’s never been that big a fan of the books.

And I’m resigned to seeing a spectacular action adventure that manages to lose all sense of subtlty and wonder that the Tintin books gave me, ditched in favour of yet another set-piece CGI / motion capture extravaganza. But yes, I’ll be going…. here’s a trailer. What do you say? Will you venture forth?