Just in time for Global Smurfs Day and a Smurfs movie in 3D comes a little blue book from a French academic that has some fans of the sock-topped comic book characters seeing red.
Antoine Bueno, who lectures at the high-brow Paris Institute of Political Studies, thought he was just having fun when he penned his 177-page analysis of the politics of Smurfland that’s just been published in France.
“Smurfs society,” writes Bueno by way of hypothesis in his work of spoof scholarship, “is an archetype of a totalitarian utopia” bearing the hallmarks of Stalinism and Nazism.
Photo: AFP
It’s an orderly, harmonious and male-dominated world in which Smurfs eat together, work together, apparently do not own their own homes and never bicker over money because there is none.
Not only is Papa Smurf “all-powerful and omniscient,” writes Bueno, but his white beard gives him a curious resemblance to Josef Stalin or Karl Marx, with the bespectacled Brainy Smurf standing in for Leon Trotsky.
As the Smurfs’ sworn enemy, scheming sorcerer Gargamel — a hunchbacked misanthropic loner with a cat called Azrael — represents a perennial capitalist threat, in Bueno’s opinion.
“I am myself a child of the Smurfs, and I did not take it seriously when I compared Papa Smurf to Stalin,” Bueno said. “I imagined that this analysis of the little world of Smurfs as a -totalitarian utopia might amuse readers — but I never expected the strong reactions that it provoked.”
But it did.
“Idiot ... fraud ... dream-wrecker ... opportunist,” are some of the one-word broadsides hurled at Bueno on the Internet.
“It’s typical of political correctness that sees racism everywhere,” one disgruntled Smurf fan groaned, while another said: “How shameful to so gratuitously destroy the stories of our childhood.”
“These are sad times when ill is seen everywhere,” a third blogger wrote.
Bueno’s The Little Blue Book: A Critical and Political Analysis of Smurf Society comes as Smurf fans look forward to this summer’s 3D release of The Smurfs directed by Raja Gosnell, who notably did the Scooby Doo movies.
To promote the film, Sony Pictures is declaring June 25 to be Global Smurfs Day and inviting families to dress up accordingly in hopes of setting a Guinness record for “the greatest number of people dressed as Smurfs.”
In April, the 29th Smurf album in French — Les Schtroumpfs et l’arbre d’or (The Smurfs and the Golden Tree) — was published by Brussels comic book house Le Lombard.
Bueno takes pains to say that his book is by no means a personal critique of Pierre Culliford, who under the pen name Peyo created the Smurfs in the late 1950s in his native Belgium.
Culliford died in 1992 at the age of 64, and his son Thierry Culliford remembers him as apolitical.
“At election time, he’d ask my mother: ‘Who must I vote for?’” he told the French news magazine L’Express.
Bueno “can peel apart the albums, even if I do not support his interpretation ... so long as he does not attack my father,” said Culliford, who oversees the Smurfs brand worldwide.
However, as the Parisian academic says, the elder Culliford, as a teenager, did personally experience Nazi Germany’s harsh occupation of Belgium during World War II.
“A work can channel imagery that an author, in good faith, does not support,” Bueno said. “Thus the Smurfs could be more a reflection of the spirit of the times than the mind of their creator.”
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
ALLIES: Calling Putin his ‘old friend,’ Xi said Beijing stood alongside Russia ‘in the face of the international counter-current of unilateralism and hegemonic bullying’ Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday was in Moscow for a state visit ahead of the Kremlin’s grand Victory Day celebrations, as Ukraine accused Russia’s army of launching air strikes just hours into a supposed truce. More than 20 foreign leaders were in Russia to attend a vast military parade today marking 80 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, taking place three years into Russia’s offensive in Ukraine. Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022 and has marshaled the memory of Soviet victory against Nazi Germany to justify his campaign and rally society behind the offensive,
EUROPEAN FUTURE? Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama says only he could secure EU membership, but challenges remain in dealing with corruption and a brain drain Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama seeks to win an unprecedented fourth term, pledging to finally take the country into the EU and turn it into a hot tourist destination with some help from the Trump family. The artist-turned-politician has been pitching Albania as a trendy coastal destination, which has helped to drive up tourism arrivals to a record 11 million last year. US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also joined in the rush, pledging to invest US$1.4 billion to turn a largely deserted island into a luxurious getaway. Rama is expected to win another term after yesterday’s vote. The vote would
CONFLICTING REPORTS: Beijing said it was ‘not familiar with the matter’ when asked if Chinese jets were used in the conflict, after Pakistan’s foreign minister said they were The Pakistan Army yesterday said it shot down 25 Indian drones, a day after the worst violence between the nuclear-armed rivals in two decades. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed to retaliate after India launched deadly missile strikes on Wednesday morning, escalating days of gunfire along their border. At least 45 deaths were reported from both sides following Wednesday’s violence, including children. Pakistan’s military said in a statement yesterday that it had “so far shot down 25 Israeli-made Harop drones” at multiple location across the country. “Last night, India showed another act of aggression by sending drones to multiple locations,” Pakistan military spokesman Ahmed