August 09, 2004

Remember the cartoon Smurfs? They were communists, according to this article. It makes sense, in an odd way.
posted by Fabala 20 years ago
  • The smurfs have nothing to smurf but their smurfs. They have a smurf to smurf. SMURFING SMURFS OF THE SMURF, SMURF!
  • (the above was from Marx's Smurfesto)
  • political themes in 'toons are few and far between. Or, that was the sad case until the late 1970's. For, in those heady days a bold Belgian cartoonist by the name of Pierre Culliford first concocted some small blue creatures standing three apples high, which he called Smurfs I am guessing this person doesn't know that the first Smurfs (Les Schtroumpfs) album came out in 1963.
  • Smurfs are blue, not red.
  • Papa smurf has red pants. As you ought to know, Mr. Knickerbocker. And how was Asterix not political? I guess we can forgive him missing Tintin's politics, since Herge's enthusiasm for the Nazis has been excised...
  • Ah, the good old Schlumpfs.
  • I do agree with this guy that the smurfs wre commies, but he totally missed the point of the episode were everyone switched jobs. The moral wasn't "stick to your assigned job." The moral was "respect the work of other people, it's harder than you think." The tone of the article is odd. He freely confesses that the Smurfs lived in a utopia, spoiled only by Gargamel. Then he goes onto show how the Smurfs were commies, and Gargamel was a selfish capitolist. Then he suggests all of us should boycott the cartoon, or something. The only things that make the Smurfs commies are the same things that made the Smurfs utopia. If the creators weren't trying so hard to make the Smurfs live in utopia, then they wouldn't have ended up in a commune.
  • How evil of them to spread "DISTENTION" with their cartoons. The author's points, meanwhile, are pretty entertaining, if obvious. All your smurf are belong to smurf!
  • Mark Dion has made a very peculiar movie called 'Mark Dion Explicates the Smurfonomics of the Smurfs'. Can't find much about it online.
  • Wait, here!
  • "...and Scooby Doo (another Hanna-Barbera creation) had long outlived its usefulness as a tool of totalitarian social control." As a kid, I was fully indoctrinated into the cult of Scooby. Or, I rhould ray, re cult of Rooby. "Land wasn't all the Smufrs shared." Uh, yeah. It didn't really occur to me as a kid watching it, but Smurfette may be the most disturbingly communal aspect of that cartoon. (See Socio-Political Themes in The Smurfs for more on her and Marxism in The Smurfs.) "In the tradition of pure Marxism, the Smurf Village is atheist. There is no god, and there is no Priest Smurf."
  • Don't forget, Papa Smurf's beard! All great revolutionary leaders must have facial hair!
  • ...Smurfette may be the most disturbingly communal aspect of that cartoon. "First of all, Papa Smurf didn't create Smurfette. Gargamel did. She was sent in as Gargamel's evil spy with the intention of destroying the Smurf village, but the overwhelming goodness of the Smurf way of life transformed her. And as for the whole gang-bang scenario, it just couldn't happen. Smurfs are asexual. They don't even have reproductive organs under those little white pants. That's what's so illogical, you know, about being a Smurf. What's the point of living if you don't have a dick?" And so we see both the transition from false consciousness to true class consciousness in Smurfette, a refutation of the concept of exploitation in a smurfo-socialist society, but ultimately a damning indictment of utopian ideals as a process which, in rounding off the sharp edges of humanity (smurfity), has the effect of emasculating that which makes us truly human/smurf.
  • Just like Mario and probably Little Red Riding. The wolf as a metaphor for capitalistic materialism, consuming and tricking the poor proletariat, on it's way to grandma, the communist utopia.
  • False consciousness! Bad faith! Non-engag
  • Not every problem someone has with his girlfriend is necessarily due to the capitalist mode of production. Herbert Marcuse, The Listener
  • Can it be a coincidence, the fact that the word Smurf is so linguistically similar to the word Serf? CAN IT? HMMMM?
  • I always thought the show was preparing us for the coming of Krishna.
  • la la la lala la, la la lalala. Are we there yet papa smurf?
  • Not much further, little smurfs...
  • We're on the road to smurfdom.
  • Must... not... post... Smurfs "Lost Episode" flash... willpower weakening...
  • ow! blue type on black! my eyes!
  • Yes, the little white pants and dress were bulge-free. They may have been asexual, but they didn't lack smurfsuality. "Lastly, I believe the characters of Hefty, Handy and Vanity are gay archetypes. Vanity is the kind of gay archetype commonly presented by the straight entertainment industry, for example in the UK sitcom Are You Being Served? while Hefty and Handy are gay archetypes in the same vein as the Village People, with their extremely iconic masculinity, exaggerated to the point of camp. Meanwhile, I believe Clumsy and Brainy represent an stereotypical gay couple."
  • Monkeyfilter: We Smurf the Internet
  • Oh, and the word he is looking for at the beginning of the article is "Marxism".