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Author
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Topic: Reading WAY too much into this cartoon
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Shaney Smurf
Super Smurf
Member # 1345
Member Rated:
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posted 05-14-2008 02:07 PM
Stuff like this REALLY angers me. I was websmurfin' yesterday and came across this atrocious review. I can't stand people who actually take the time to get so over analytical over this cartoon. This person goes on and on and on, I think it's very silly and ridiculous. LUDICROUS!!!!! I don't know about any of you, but to me it seems like these people are just looking WAY too deep into a cartoon that is meant to be nothing more than light hearted children's entertainment. I feel it's like staring into the clouds long enough until you start to see shapes, eventually you see what you want to see after a while. Makes me so angry.
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
quote:
Those Saturday morning staples, ‘The Smurfs”, have finally made their DVD debut. Season One, Vol. 1 has the first nine episodes featuring 19 stories of the original blue man group, remastered and in their unedited versions, with the original open (not the lame one used in syndication all these years).
Upon further review, the show holds up well 26 years later. However, beneath the cheerful ‘La-La-lalalala’ surface, I’ve discovered a number of disturbing themes. This was truly a mushroom village in crisis.
Read more and watch a Smurf-a-rific clip after the jump.
First there was the rampant xenophobia.
It’s a good thing the Smurfs’ village was hidden from sight, because it hid the real ugly truth about the little blue guys. Tolerance was a huge problem.
If you stood out in the crowd in the slightest bit, you were shunned. Just ask Clumsy, Baker, Lazy, Grouchy, Painter and especially poor Vanity Smurf. It happened to each of them during the first season alone.
Vanity was practically chased out of the mushroom village in one early episode by the more ‘straightforward’ Smurfs for being ‘different.’
“All in the Family” may get all the press for having TV’s first smurfy character, but “The Smurfs” depict one of the first examples of teen homophobia in television history and no one noticed! (OK, the young Smurfs were about 100 years old, but that’s like being a teenager in their village).
Many say The Smurfs, with their sense of community, getting by with the basics of life, one ruler (‘Are we there yet, Papa Smurf?’), are a metaphor for communism. I say they’re more symbolic of a cult than an ideology.
Think about it. They were isolated from the outside world, to the point they harvested their own food (smurfberries!), they distrusted anyone who wasn’t blue and 3-apples high (‘You’re behaving just like humans!’) and individual identity was suppressed to the point of invisibility. C’mon. The village may as well have been in Idaho.
The cultish behavior became obvious to me while watching one particularly unsettling episode, “King Smurf.” Brainy Smurf incites civil war in the village when he declares himself King Smurf while Papa Smurf’s away. Soon, it’s a 3-apples-high version of ‘Lord of the Flies’ …Smurf vs. Smurf, to the death!
Good grief. How did my parents let me watch this without adult supervision??
It’s not until Papa Smurf steps in do things improve. But Papa Smurf is actually to blame for most of the village’s problems because he leaves his young Smurfs to fend for themselves, while he spends most of his day in the lab mixing frog’s hair with glowberries.
Looking at the series today, from a wiser, more adult perspective, it’s obvious the Smurfs were typical latchkey kids, and Papa Smurf was the classic absentee, inattentive parent.
At the end of practically every episode, the suck-up Brainy says something annoying and gets tossed out of the village.
But it should have been Papa Smurf who should have been bounced on his white-haired head. Dude, what in your 542-year-old life led you to believe these Smurfs could get by without adult supervision??
Then there’s the episode that marked the beginning of the end of The Smurfs – Episode #2, The Smurfette. As Donnie Darko explained to his ignorant friend, Smurfette was originally a Gargamel creation meant to betray the Smurfs. I hadn’t seen this episode since I was 10 years old, and only remembered her being relentlessly happy and always needy, in a quaint, old-fashioned way, even for 1981.
I, like many unsuspecting youngsters (and all those poor love-crazed Smurfs) was blinded by her newly-created blonde hair, her squeaky ‘who me?’ voice and charming mannerisms. But again, time has opened my eyes to her devious ways.
It’s clear now that it was all an act. Smurfette was a sleeper agent all along! She never stopped working Gargamel’s agenda. Her true mission wasn’t to lead him and Azrael to the village, it was to corrupt the village from within. By ultimately playing with the emotions (and libidos) of the female companionship-deprived Smurfs and pitting them against each other in a contest to see who could win her hand, she would chip away little by little at the ‘All for Smurf, and Smurf for all’ creed of the village. That’s how the evil wizard would get his revenge. All it would take is a little time.
Don’t believe me? Watch the DVDs and see for yourself, that things weren’t as Smurfy as they appeared in those Saturday mornings of yesteryear.
www.reeltalktv.com/2008/03/tv_on_dvd_what_the_smurf.php
Posts: 493 | From: NY, USA | Registered: Mar 2006
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Vega
Super Smurf
Member # 1321
Member Rated:
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posted 05-15-2008 09:11 AM
Heheh. I belive that The Smurfs are not alone with stuff like this. Other cartoons may propably have similiar "psychoanalisis". When i see something like this the only thing i have to say is: Huh..? I can understand you. The stuff like this is really frustraiting, i don`t know what drives pepole to do something like this.
Posts: 483 | From: Poland | Registered: Mar 2006
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Raven Child
2D&3D Artist
Member # 795
Member Rated:
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posted 05-15-2008 11:27 AM
They person that wrote this artical is funny. Defiantly a misunderstanding of what the Smurfs are really about. There were lessons and Metaphors of realtime events in almose each episode. One of my favorites was when they introduced sign language because a character was mute. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Some people enjoy the phrase 'ingnorent is bliss'. Just shake your head and ignore such dribble from this artical. People like this reproter doesn't understand, either that or likes to assume the worse in something that was just meant to be fun.
Stay Smurfy.
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"The Raven Child" website: http://www.theravenchild.com/
"Tales of Mytherwrel" facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TalesOfMytherwrel
Posts: 1276 | From: Canada | Registered: Jan 2005
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swarlock
Super Smurf
Member # 746
Member Rated:
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posted 05-29-2008 08:37 PM
I skimed through this and just from looking at the description this writer wrote down is just plain stupid.
I take the show for what it is and leave it at that.
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Every day in every way I am smurfy!
Posts: 430 | From: Kissimmee, Florida | Registered: Jan 2005
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Smurfy1For2
Blue Believer
Member # 1224
Member Rated:
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posted 05-30-2008 11:00 AM
After reading Michael Avila's article I have been emotionally tramatized! I demand one million smurfberries in damages. Who knows a good lawyer?
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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u wished u rocked as i
Posts: 1958 | From: Fairfield, VA | Registered: Nov 2005
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Shaney Smurf
Super Smurf
Member # 1345
Member Rated:
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posted 05-30-2008 02:59 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Smurfy1For2:
After reading Michael Avila's article I have been emotionally tramatized! I demand one million smurfberries in damages. Who knows a good lawyer?
Brainy Smurf?
Posts: 493 | From: NY, USA | Registered: Mar 2006
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