Orientalism in TinTin

Although the famous comic, TinTin was a favorite of mine growing up, it is one of the worst perpetrators of Orientalism of any comic series ever. TinTin is a young french reporter who travels from place to place reporting crimes, or any type of unusual activities. As a young child, these adventures he went on to what were mysterious, vastly misrepresented countries were some of my very favorite stories. However, in hindsight I can now realize just how awfully other cultures and places were depicted by this Eurocentric story line.

The two editions that I believe best illustrate the lack of social awareness are "TinTin in the Congo", and "The Blue Lotus". I never read the former, because even in a less progressive 1970's America, people still had the wherewithal to realize it was incredible racist and insensitive and banned the sale of it in the US. However, the second, "The Blue Lotus", was a story I used to love. The story depicted TinTin traveling to China to bust up and illegal operation being run out of an Opium den. Even while typing this I am struggling to understand how even at such a young age that the stereotypes were lost on me and I still enjoyed the Comic. Despite that, there are more issues than just Chinese stereotypes in this edition.

One of those being the idea of TinTin continually saving the day in far of  lands is in continuation with the false idea that it takes a white European male to save the day. In addition to this, is the fact that the Chinese writing used in the comic was similar situation to what happened in the Homeland episode, it was simply just "Squibbly". Overall, the comic TinTin, while a large part of my childhood, is filled with awful stereotypes and Orientalism, and should probably have many of its editions discontinued.