Rethinking The Smurfs

I’m always amazed when my kids are into stuff that I liked as a kid. Books like Cat in the Hat, games like Candyland, and now cartoons like Tom and Jerry, Superfriends, and The Smurfs. Compared to today’s computer generated animation, cartoons of the 70s are laughable. Just like the video games we played. Can you say Asteroids?

Many of the old cartoons, by today’s standards, are incredibly unpolitically correct. Bugs Bunny has racial and ethnic stereotypes. Tom and Jerry is too violent. Whatever, they still have something that kids find entertaining.

So when I saw the Smurfs again this week, I thought, here is something from my childhood that still looks good today. The animation is decent, and the story lines are pretty tame.

Except, I started to think about the whole premise of the Smurfs. A group of bare-chested boys communing in an isolated village in the woods, led by an older, fatherly figure who calls himself Papa. And then there’s the lone girl, Smurfette, who is worshiped by all the boys. It sounds like a cult, no? Papa Smurf has them all brainwashed to be afraid of an evil wizard, Gargamel. La la la-la la la.