by Smurfs, a new CGI spepicacl from Paramount Pictures directed by Chris Miller, has received a round of critical vibration and stalled at the box office. But it reminds a useful job that reminds the spectators of the complete strangeness of the three-apple characters, which were originally designed in 1958 by the Belgian comic artist Pierre “Peyo” Culliford.
In the film, James Corden does not make a name Smurf, who experiences existential fear because, in contrast to the other residents of the Smurf village – Brainy, must, strongly, etc. – does not have “his own thing”, an ability or characteristic that highlight him. This special feature is finally identified as “magic” and no name is pushed by a serenading that is pushed with Rihanna voice to recognize his inner USP and “do not ever let anyone say that they are not” and accept that “you were born”.
An identity crisis could be a relatively novel experience for the Motormouthed British actor, but it is certainly a premiere in the 67-year history of Peyo’s blue cosmos. In fact, it can be a contradiction: A good smurf was in the protochaommunistic vision of the original comics not to raise their own personality above the collective.
According to the French sociologist and smurfologen Antoine Buéno, the original 100 inhabitants of the Smurf Village were: “About 90% were completely not distinguished. They all looked the same, they were all dressed immediately.” While some smurfs were identified by name, it is usually due to an ability that is related to how he (all original smurfs were male) is useful for the community. “The worse society is an archetypal corporate society, which means that every identified smurf represents a social function.”
In Miller’s newest restart of the franchise, it is shown as the key to overcoming a problem – in Peyo’s original book it is the root of all evil. “In the comics, every time a smurf tries to be an individual, a catastrophe manages,” says Buéno.
For example, the residents of the village in the second book of the original series, Le Schtroumpfise (King Schlumpf) from 1965, in the absence of Papa Smurf, have a coordination for an interim guide, but democracy does not become them. A nameless smurf realizes that he can play the system by promising that he cannot hold and wins all of his potential voters. Once chosen, he rules as a autocrate, installs a oppressive regime that was prohibited by strong smurf and forces the other smurfs to build a palace. The book was translated into Dutch as de Smurfoter.
“Everything bad comes from individuality that is also associated with private property,” says Buéno. “Every time private property is claimed in the village, it ruins the entire balance of society.”
The 2011 book in which Buéno analyze the hidden ideological foundations of Peyos Fictive World, Le Petit Livre Bleu: analyze the criticism and the politique de la Société des Schtroumpf, triggered a bitter consideration from true blue fans, and it is not so polemically. The revolutionary connotations of the Phrygian caps (red for dad, white for the rest) are plausible, the identification of bearded dad Schlumpf than Marx and Brainy as Trotsky may be less.
The search for messages that are hidden in the books may even have been distracted from how really an original practice was when telling the smurfs on the surface: a number of stories with 100 protagonists, most of whom look exactly the same where heroism is in collective action.
Related: SMUrfs Review-Rihanna is Star curve of the new generation of Floppy-Hut-Blue-Elfen
Buéno speaks more than a decade after the publication of his little blue book and sounds more balanced in his assessment. “My theory was always that Peyo was not interested in politics at all,” he says. “But his genius was to create a utopia that supported our common political history and developed pictures that with all languages.”
The use of Smurf Village as an example of the work of socialism not only died with the new restart, it was also washed out of the smurf after Peyo sold the rights to his creation in the 1970s. “For me, what we saw in the smurf is a perfect demonstration by Guy Debord’s analysis of capitalism,” says Buéno. “The strength of capitalism is to never destroy its enemies head -on, but to absorb them and digest them.”
