love is a battle

“Antoine Buéno, a lecturer at Sciences Po university in Paris, makes the claims in his new book Le Petit Livre Bleu: Analyse critique et politique de la société des Schtroumpfs, in which he points out that the Smurfs live in a world where private initiative is rarely rewarded, where meals are all taken together in a communal room, where there is one leader and where the Smurfs rarely leave their small country.”

It’s bizarre how this Smurf article comes up this week.

While on a visit last week, I had to go off and do some translation while my two other colleagues were waiting for us to be done. The office had a TV, and there was an episode of the Smurfs playing, so they watched it. 

When we got back, we had a discussion on the way back to KL about how the cartoons we watched had underlying tones of real “adult” themes, and how as a child you never really notice these things. The episode of “Pitufo” (as Benjamin calls it in Spanish) that they watched had like a terrorist Smurf, a flood, and a flood relief team, police Smurfs, you name it. 

So seeing this article, it’s somewhat weird. Especially, the over-dramatic analysis of the Smurfs being racist, and anti-Semitic! 

Though, I have to say, watched old episodes of Tom & Jerry with my nieces, it appeared that the maid in all the episodes, who the audience never saw, was always indicated by a big black hand (!)

Anyway, my main concern growing up was how there were so many boy Smurfs, and only one little Smurfette! Yeah, I’ve seen some terrible explanations for this in the dark underbelly of the Internet. I won’t go into it, but it involved Smurfette being bent over a lot. 

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