An unusual occurrence in children’s literature, a comic book album is set to be destroyed after accusations of racist representation. A subsidiary of the Média Participations group, the Franco-Belgian publishing house Dupuis decided, Thursday October 31, to withdraw from all of its points of sale an adventure by Spirou, Spirou and the Blue Gorgonwritten by Yann and drawn by Dany, following a wave of indignation on social networks. Published in September 2023, the story shows black people with ape-like and stereotypical features (oversized lips, prognathic jaws, etc.), according to detractors of this work dealing with ecology through the themes of greenwashing or eco-terrorism .
Dupuis accompanied his decision with a message of apology, published on X: “We are deeply sorry if this album could shock and hurt. This album is part of a caricature style of representation inherited from another era. More aware than ever of our moral duty and the importance of comics as a publisher and more broadly of books in the evolution of societies, today we take full responsibility for this error of assessment. » Log Pillar Spirouin the pages of which he notably created the character of Olivier Rameau at the end of the 1960s, Dany (Daniel Henrotin) defended himself from any racist intention, pleading the caricature.
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In an interview given to Paris Match a year ago, the Belgian cartoonist explained that he had to take back, at the request of his publisher, black women “because we [lui] said they had big lips ». Grievances of hypersexualized representation of women were also made against him on social networks, recalling those who, two years ago, had accompanied the controversy surrounding Bastien Vivès, accused of advocating pedophilia on the sidelines of the exhibition that the Angoulême International Comics Festival was to devote to it. The fact that Dany, 81, is one of Bastien Vivès’ favorite designers is perhaps not unrelated to the outbreak of this affair.
This, however, is not the first concerning the graphic representation of black people. In 2019, two signatories of a column published in L’Obs had requested that a fresco by the painter Hervé Di Rosa commemorating the abolition of slavery on which two figures with big red lips appear be removed from the walls of the Palais-Bourbon in Paris. The artist had refuted any lawsuit in “trivialization of racism”explaining that the mouths of all his characters had the same characteristics, regardless of their skin color. The National Assembly then simply removed the photo of the painting from its website.
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