While I'm happy to know that a court has decided on the legal hubbub surrounding TinTin's place in its home country of Belgium (someone had filed a case against TinTin in the Congo to get it outlawed due to racist content), how the court has handled this seems a little strange.The books will not be banned, as was the complainant's desire, but the court essentially ruled that the volumes could remain widely available because it, and Herge's intent, was not inherently racist.
Had the court felt otherwise, the decision might have not been the same, so while this is not exactly a victory for free speech, it is a victory for proponents of the notion that anyone should be able to read whatever they like from the past, when "historical context" regarding what is racist and what is not was different from what it is today.
Yeah, it's a muddied situation. Read more about it here.
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