\n<\/p>\n
S<\/span>murfs, a new Paramount Pictures CGI-spectacle directed by Chris Miller, has received an all-round critical panning and faltered at the box office. But it does a serviceable job reminding viewers of the utter strangeness of the three-apples-tall characters originally conceived of by Belgian comic artist Pierre \u201cPeyo\u201d Culliford in 1958.<\/p>\n In the film, James Corden voices No Name Smurf, who experiences existential angst because unlike the other inhabitants of Smurf Village \u2013 Brainy, Grouchy, Hefty etc <\/strong>\u2013 he does not \u201chave his own thing\u201d, a skill or character trait that makes him stand out. This special trait is eventually identified as \u201cmagic\u201d and No Name is pressed \u2013 by a serenading Rihanna-voiced Smurfette \u2013 to realise his inner USP and \u201cdon\u2019t let anyone ever say you are not anyone\u201d and accept that \u201cyou were born great\u201d.<\/p>\n An identity crisis might be a relatively novel experience for the motormouthed British actor, but it is certainly a first in the 67-year history of Peyo\u2019s blue cosmos. In fact, it may be a contradiction in terms: to be a good Smurf, in the proto-communist vision of the original comics, was to never elevate your own personality above the collective.<\/p>\n Of Smurf Village\u2019s original 100 inhabitants, says French sociologist and Smurfologist Antoine Bu\u00e9no, \u201cAbout 90% were totally indistinguishable. They all looked the same, they were all dressed the same.\u201d While some Smurfs were identified by name, he says, this was usually through a skill that is related to how he (all of the original Smurfs were male) is useful to the community. \u201cThe Smurfian society is an archetypal corporatist society, meaning that each Smurf that is identified represents a social function.\u201d<\/p>\n In Miller\u2019s latest reboot of the franchise, unleashing your true inner self is presented as the key to overcoming a problem \u2013 in Peyo\u2019s original book, it is the root of all evil. \u201cIn the comics, each time a Smurf tries to be an individual, it creates a catastrophe,\u201d Bu\u00e9no says.<\/p>\n <\/span>Hidden ideological underpinnings? Papa Smurf and No Name in Smurfs. <\/span> Photograph: Paramount Animation\/PA<\/p>\n For instance, in the second book of the original series, 1965\u2019s Le Schtroumpfissime (King Smurf), the inhabitants of the village hold a vote for an interim leader in the absence of Papa Smurf, but democracy does not become them. One nameless Smurf realises he can play the system by making promises he can\u2019t keep to each of his potential voters, and wins. But once elected, he rules as an autocrat, installing an oppressive regime marshalled by Hefty Smurf and forcing the other Smurfs to build him a palace. The book was translated into Dutch as De Smurf\u00fchrer.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cAll bad comes from individuality, which is also linked with private property\u201d, says Bu\u00e9no. \u201cEach time private property is claimed in the village, it ruins the whole balance of the society.\u201d<\/p>\n The 2011 book in which Bu\u00e9no explored the hidden ideological underpinnings of Peyo\u2019s fictional world, Le Petit Livre Bleu: Analyse Critique et Politique de la Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 des Schtroumpfs, triggered a bitter backlash from true blue fans, and is wilfully polemical in the way it spells out political allusions that the comics never make explicit. The revolutionary connotations of the Phrygian caps (red for Papa, white for all the rest) are plausible, the identification of bearded Papa Smurf as Marx and bespectacled Brainy as Trotsky perhaps less so.<\/p>\n The search for messages hidden in the books may even have distracted from how genuinely original an exercise in storytelling the Smurfs were on the surface: a series of tales with 100 protagonists, of whom most look exactly the same, in which heroism lies in collective action.<\/p>\n Speaking more than a decade after the publication of his Little Blue Book, Bu\u00e9no sounds more balanced in his assessment. \u201cMy theory was always that Peyo was not into politics at all\u201d, he says. \u201cBut his genius was in creating a utopia that drew from our joint political history and coming up with images that spoke to everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n Using Smurf Village as an example of working socialism did not just die with the new reboot, it was washed out of the Smurfverse after Peyo sold the rights to his creation in the 1970s. \u201cFor me, what we witnessed in the Smurfs is a perfect demonstration of Guy Debord\u2019s analysis of capitalism\u201d, says Bu\u00e9no. \u201cCapitalism\u2019s strength lies in never frontally destroying its enemies, but taking them in and digesting them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Smurfs, a new Paramount Pictures CGI-spectacle directed by Chris Miller, has received an all-round critical panning and faltered at the box office. But it does a serviceable job reminding viewers of the utter strangeness of the three-apples-tall characters originally conceived of by Belgian comic artist Pierre \u201cPeyo\u201d Culliford in 1958. In the film, James Corden<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[6073,6071,6070,830,763,1394,6074,6072],"class_list":{"0":"post-12466","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-communist","9":"tag-distorted","10":"tag-dressed","11":"tag-hollywood","12":"tag-looked","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-roots","15":"tag-smurfs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}