Week 1 - 'The Blue Lotus' and its Correlation with Orientalism

An 'Orientalist', as broadly defined in its academic capacity by Edward W. Said (1978), can constitute "anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient". Therefore, the broader term of 'Orientalism' relates to the specifics of education, self-taught or institutionally-based, in the minutiae of culture and customs of the Far East. However, Said also remarks that the term 'Orientalism' has fallen out of favour with modern learning institutes because of its connotations with 19th century colonialism, which often championed the superiority of the European West to the supposed inferiority of the Oriental East (Said, 1978). Despite this, according to Said, Orientalism as a topic of study remains greatly ingrained within the annals of academia, and its influence can be felt in the "doctrines and theses" that many still conclude as relevant to the Far East (Said, 1978).

Therefore, it could be surmized that Herge's background in education in his native Belgium contributed to his perceptions of foreign cultures, if this definition of Orientalism were expanded to include other national groups. Yet the character of Tintin, himself, seems to embody the naivete of Herge in his attempts to interpret and understand the external world outside of his literary/visionary world, a means of categorizing or typifying these sometimes abstract social and cultural details in a time when media was but in its infancy. On the subject of media, as Michael Farr notes in Tintin: the Complete Companion (Farr, Michael. 1991. pg. 51) the commonly accepted stereotypes of racial groups were standard for the time in the 1920s-1930s, and this was a practice de rigeur established by many newspapers during this period of history.

As noted by Said in regards to the use of Orientalism as a force of colonial oppression, he argues that another definition for the term can be correlative with the ideas and notions that epitomize communism or the Marxist movement (Said, 1991). It is by my own estimation that Orientalism, as defined as an instrument of oppression, can work in the reverse, warping the perceptions of the perceived and the perceiver alike. This, I feel, was Herge's position; he had been conditioned by the State to overestimate the value of European culture and to underestimate the value of foreign cultures, an underlying mentality that recurred within his works despite his apparent intellectualism.

Furthermore, as noted by Michael Farr, The Adventures of Tintin: The Blue Lotus allows Herge to exercise his innate sense of Orientalism in a more positive, satirical fashion, allowing him free reign to enact a kind of character assassination against the Japanese military throughout the book (Farr, 1991). It is interesting to take note of Herge's earnest attempts to avoid the cliches of Chinese culture, yet to completely denigrate Japanese culture in the very next instance! While Herge certainly had a gift for converting some of history's most horrendous acts of destruction into clever yarns to entertain young and old, I do not feel that he was an Orientalist, just a man with an incredible imagination snatched up by the jaws of war and all of the negatives that that may entail. In times of war, governments would use propaganda as a tool to condition the populace as a means of discrediting the enemy, and Herge was but one of many who lived in such times to become seduced by the mind games played by governments.

In conclusion, while The Blue Lotus most certainly displays overt instances of Orientalism, as evinced by the overwrought stereotypes of its Japanese subjects, I believe that it should be remembered as a piece of political satire that intelligently spoofs the key components of World War II, or at the very least as a microcosm of thought within the mind of a man who, unconsciously or not, actually rebelled against his own perceptions of the Orient.