Little Blue Pills

I like Ed's game of advertising pandering; I especially like that the key to getting an ad (so far, I've seen ads for Fast & Furious, Joss Whedon dating, and elderly singles) is to just totally trash/ridicule/demean the target ad subject. So now I've decided to take my power as co-person on this thing and use it to try to draw an ad for one of my favorite cartoons growing up: the smurfs.

In order to get the ad, though, as we know, I'll have to tear those little blue pills apart first. So here goes:

I hate smurfs. And I'll tell you why. Smurfs are racist. Smurfs are sexist. And smurfs are communists. (I hope that sentence doesn't attract any ads for communist dating websites - eCollectiveHarmony, perhaps.) Not to mention their lackadaisical treatment of the English language. To wit:

The Smurfs, as far as I can tell, is the most racist cartoon ever shown on American tv. Smurfs live in a supposed utopia where only blue-skinned beings are allowed. If you don't have blue skin, you're evil. Look at Gargamel and Azrael - white and furry, respectively. And of course there was that infamous episode where the smurfs start turning purple by biting each other. The purple smurfs are totally insane and evil, and threaten to destroy the idyllic life of the all-blue smurfs. (I looked at this online, by the way, and in the original Belgian version of that story, the evil smurfs were actually black! Hanna-Barbera changed them to purple to make it seem less overtly racist. Clearly they wanted to convey more subtle racist imagery.) The other thing the smurfs did was to listen to a lot of music by Richard Strauss and Wagner. Nazi music. Can't get racist-er than those Nazis, my friends.

Smurfs were also totally sexist. They profoundly, purposefully perpetuated the patriarchal paradigm. How many female smurfs were there? Exactly one, for most of the show's run. One girl smurf? Now there's some misogynism for you. Especially when you consider that she was created by Gargamel (evil white guy) expressly to bring about the downfall of the smurfs. Sure, she eventually was turned into a "good" smurf, but what were the outward effects of her inner change? Her hair turned from spiky and black to long and blonde. Her dress grew longer and got frillier. And she got high heels, for goodness sake! She lived in a forest!! All the male smurfs lusted after her - their previously perfect all-male village was riven with division. Strife caused by The Female. And as if the patriarchal stuff was too subtle for people, who was their leader? Papa Smurf. Now, later on, they did get a couple more girl smurfs (although the little one was also made by Gargamel, I think), but that was right about when the show jumped the smurf (or should that be smurfed the shark? (or even smurfed the smurf? See the grammar gripe, later.))

Smurfs were commies. The show was blatant communist propaganda. Smurf Village was essentially an agrarian collective, where everyone wore identical Mao-like outfits, sang ego-crushing work songs (We all work together! Together we all work!), and were led by an apparently grandfather-type figure - Papa Stalin, er, Papa Smurf - who in reality enforced a code of conformity. Intellectuals were persecuted and ridiculed (Brainy Smurf). Old smurfs, outside of Papa Smurf, are nowhere to be found (presumably banished or left to die once their useful working days were over). Gargamel, representing capitalism - he was obsessed with gold - was an evil, lurking figure, that had to be kept far away from the smurfs' unsullied commune. Azrael, representing organized religion (Azrael is an evil angel in Islam), was a tool of capitalism, used by the wealthy to subjugate the weak-minded, and, while outwardly soft and furry, always kept his claws in view as a reminder of what he would do if you let him get close enough.

Finally, the smurfs had the laziest dialect of English. Ever. The word "smurf" is essentially contentless. You can substitute "smurf" for nearly any action verb, noun, of adjective in any given sentence. "Hey! Anyone want to go smurf that smurfy smurf over by the smurf? It'll smurf a smurf!" That's nonsense. Anyone knows you can't just smurf that kind of smurf without using a smurf first. And if you think I'm just being silly, consider this: since the smurfs were on tv in the 80's, we've seen other contentless words invade the language - like (as a placefiller) and dude are classic examples - and more are on their way, abetted by the casual format of the internet. Pretty soon, no one will be able to communicate with each other. When scholars look back on the self-destruction of English, they'll see that it began with a bunch of racist, sexist, Maoist creatures called smurfs.

Alright! That was fun! Let's see how long it takes to get an ad for a smurf-collector dating site.