Tuesday, July 24, 2012
How is propaganda shown in Tintin and the blue lotus?
Propaganda can be seen in the comic as well as the cartoon through racial representation of characters. Mr Mitsuhirato, a Japanese double agent has been portrayed as having an animal like face with a pig nose and rabbit teeth. From a Childs perspective it is questionable whether they would see through this form of propaganda despite the fact that this image is used throughout,showing this to be what a Japanese person looks like. The face of this character is made to distinctively distinguish from any other nationality shown in the comic and his characteristics and actions show him to be evil. These actions included destroying a railway and blaming made-up Chinese rebels to create a conspiracy as well as using poison to make people go crazy.I think this was the intention of the writer, through repetition of Mr Mitsuhirato actions, as a stigma is created with a negative racial representation of the Japanese as he is the head figure of the Japanese in both comic and cartoon .
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Good comment. The reason for this can be found in the historical situation. The Japanese invasion of China was a brutal affair.
ReplyDeleteA lot of comics, cartoons, even movies etc, will have a purposely inhuman looking antagonist in order to make them more recognizable as such. This is kind of a convention of cartoons/comics etc.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying there's no racial ambiguity to it, but I think having one fictional Japanese bad guy represent all Japanese people probably says more about the person being influenced than the agenda of the writer.
I agree with James, the animal-like representation of Japanese shows racism, but it was only the writer’s point of view. I don’t think Hergé’s intentions were to create propaganda.
ReplyDeleteI'm with James too. From a modern perspective you can argue that because Herge has an evil, buck-toothed Japanese as his antagonist, that he was using Tintin and the Blue Lotus to achieve bureaucratic goals. While it's a more interesting conclusion to reach, historical relevance suggests that it's more likely he was responding to propaganda himself rather than creating it firsthand.
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