Select a fictional book, comic, film, television programme, animation or computer game and discuss the ways that stereotyping is used to represent a specific 'type' of person. What are the positives and challenges associated with stereotyping?

Why: Interested in controversy of Hergé's work as well as the issues surrounding stereotypes How: intro to cultures/sub-cultures  leading to stereotypes  using 2 different examples  evidence supporting argument  conclusion What: Stereotypes can be misleading and considered politically incorrect, though they can give an insight on society and their views in different points of history. Demonstrates how we should read and think more critically as well as take into consideration the context. Who: Psychologists, journalists, tintinologists, philosophers and historians Where: Articles, science journals, books, websites, magazines….

Introduction cultures and subcultures  Stereotypes: insulting caricatures or useful generalisations? - Penelope Mendonça, practice-based PhD, CSM

Illustration and visually representing a group-  Stereotypes

The controversy surrounding Hergé's work in modern day society  his comics portraying ethnic groups in a racist, or rather colonialist way. The discussion surrounding Tintin’s colonial legacy has been on going within the Francophone and Anglo-Saxon world for a long time, take Tintin in Congo as an example since it wasn’t published till the 90’s due to many issues regarding racist stereotypical imagery. (Palme, 2012)

Tintin in Congo

Tintin in the Congo has “imagery and words of hideous racist prejudice, where the ‘savage natives’ look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles.” -Commission for Racial Equality UK; 2007 “Hergé wasn't racist: he simply reflected the image the Western world had of the Congo and of Africa” – Roger Bongos (Congolese journalist living in Paris.)

The Blue Lotus

He wrote ‘The Blue Lotus’ as a medium of information to enlighten European society about the circumstances taking place in China at the time; the persecution and subjugation that the Chinese were enduring by colonial rule, whilst trying to communicate profound message about the misconception of how they perceived and created cultural stereotypes. (Hergé, Lonsdale- Cooper and Turner, 1984)

Conclusion Hoping to dispel that Hergé was especially racist, that his work was a construct of his time. Stereotypes aren’t always offensive, they can be used as a for of identification as well as a source of information