MONTY BENFICA | Amusements | CONTACT
A man who once prided himself on only watching SBS and attending French Film Festival each year has recently rushed to bury his Francophile past after discovering his vintage edition of “Tintin in the Congo”.
“Yeah that edition is a bit rough” Jeremy Finch (40) said with a. sense of shame in his voice.
“Especially the part where the caricatures of Congolese tribesmen are carrying him out on their back like royalty”
Tintin, a Belgian comic book series about a travelling man and his dog Snowy, is often viewed by cultured wine drinking Francophiles as being quite kitsch now.
Many of them shy away from the comic book’s colonial past, especially the edition where Tintin goes to Colonial Belgian Congo, ingratiates himself with the quirky and child-like local Tribesmen and cuts a hole into a live rhino and shoves it full of dynamite.
“I don’t know anything about that actually, that edition was given to me as a gift along with several editions and I mustn’t have noticed it” a flustered Jeremy explained while backing away slowly.
The comic book edition has been a point of great contention amongst lovers of Tintin, and while Jeremy loved the Francophile identity he had created for himself, he believes it’s probably best he just moves on.
“It was really fun feeling more cultured than everyone I knew, but surprisingly it can be hard to obsess over countries that have such a dark past when all your friends are inner city lefties.” Jeremy admitted.
