History Recap / TintinTintinInTheCongo

* JudgmentOfSolomon: Tintin settles a dispute with two Congolese over who owns a hat by cutting the hat in half and giving each half to one of the claimants.

Hergé [[OldShame would later look back at the story with embarrassment]] and cited it as "bourgeois" and "paternalistic". Attempts have been made to ban the book entirely at times in some countries. It currently tends to be sold with a [[ContentWarnings foreword informing potential readers about the controversial content and providing historical context]] (at least in Anglophone countries). It was also actually reprinted by a Congolese newspaper in the Seventies.

* BlackComedyAnimalCruelty: Apart from Snowy, almost every animal in this story is harmed or killed. Tintin shoots fourteen antelopes in the belief its just one whom he missed several times. He shoots a chimpanzee just to cut off its skin and wear it as a disguise. He beats up another chimpanzee, tries to shoot an elephant, cuts a large snake open and has it [[{{Ouroboros}} swallow its own tail]], shoots down another snake, has a leopard eat a sponge giving it digestive problems,... Snowy bites off a lion's tail. A priest shoots several crocodiles dead. There's a rhinoceros Tintin planned to shoot, but luckily, it escaped. In the original story, however, Tintin put a stick of dynamite inside its skin and blew the animal up. Danish publishers felt this was both too unrealistic and very harsh and asked Hergé to change it into the more animal friendly scene still found some translations of the story today.

* RapidFireInterrupting: In the [[ValuesDissonance original version]], Tintin attempts to teach native children about "''their'' country, Belgium" with the aid of a blackboard, but is constantly interrupted so he never gets any further than the first sentence. The revised version changes the curriculum to arithmetic.

* TimeMarchesOn:
** When Tintin shows the natives film footage of the wizard and the villain partying together, the film is silent and in black-and-white, as most films still were in 1930, when this comic strip story was drawn.
** Tintin teaches the children about "their fatherland UsefulNotes/{{Belgium}}" in the original story. (In the color version, it was changed to a simple "2+2=4" lesson.). Since 1960, Congo is no longer a Belgian colony.

Hergé [[OldShame would later look back at the story with embarrassment]] and cited it as "bourgeois" and "paternalistic". Attempts have been made to ban the book entirely at times in some countries. It currently tends to be sold with a warning label informing potential readers about the controversial content (at least in Anglophone countries). It was also actually reprinted by a Congolese newspaper in the Seventies.

* BiggerBad: UsefulNotes/AlCapone. No, really. This is carried into ''Tintin in America''.

* BlackComedy: Tintin makes a small hole in the skin of a rhinoceros, drops a stick of dynamite inside it and then blows the animal up from a distance. This is kept in most European versions, where it's seen as cartoonish humour.

* NoAnimalsWereHarmed: Errr.... Apart from Snowy, almost every animal in this story is harmed or killed. Tintin shoots fourteen antelopes in the belief its just one whom he missed several times. He shoots a chimpanzee just to cut off its skin and wear it as a disguise. He beats up another chimpanzee, tries to shoot an elephant, cuts a large snake open and has it [[{{Ouroboros}} swallow its own tail]], shoots down another snake, has a leopard eat a sponge giving it digestive problems,... Snowy bites off a lion's tail. A priest shoots several crocodiles dead. There's a rhinoceros Tintin planned to shoot, but luckily, it escaped. In the original story, however, Tintin put a stick of dynamite inside its skin and blew the animal up. Danish publishers felt this was both too unrealistic and very harsh and asked Hergé to change it into the more animal friendly scene still found some translations of the story today.

** Tintin teaches the children about "their fatherland {{Belgium}}" in the original story. (In the color version, it was changed to a simple "2+2=4" lesson.). Since 1960, Congo is no longer a Belgian colony.

Today, ''Tintin in the Congo'' is rather infamous in some countries for its racist portrayal of the Congolese natives, its pro-colonialist themes and its utter disregard for animal welfare. It is notable that Hergé himself originally had not planned the story; he had wished to send Tintin to the United States (this would eventually happen in the next story, ''[[Recap/TintinTintinInAmerica Tintin in America]]''), but Norbert Wallez, the chief-in-editor of ''Le Petit Vingtième'' in which Tintin was serialized, wanted to inspire support for the Belgian colonial administration and Christian mission in Congo, and so some ExecutiveMeddling took place and Hergé was convinced to do a story about Congo instead. Hergé [[OldShame would later look back at the story with embarrassment]] and cited it as "bourgeois" and "paternalistic". Attempts have been made to ban the book entirely at times in some countries. It currently tends to be sold with a warning label informing potential readers about the controversial content (at least in Anglophone countries). It was also actually reprinted by a Congolese newspaper in the Seventies.