True Nostalgia
I dare say, dear readers, that I might have destroyed any past blissful ignorance of obscenity around the broom cupboard. You may well have slumped into despairing nihilism. Alas, the following is of the utmost import for your tiny brainwashed minds: the Smurfs were Communists.
Not authoritarian, freedom-of-speech inhibiting Stalinists, but a civil and truly utopian vision of Communism. Never was Farmer Smurf purged out of the village by a rabid paedophile-style mob. Nor was Vanity Smurf (not the only gay in the village) castrated with hammer and sickle.
Instead, all the Smurfs co-existed quite perfectly, each performing their own role, with their common titles, in their identical mushroom huts, with identical smoking chimneys, in their little commune, if you will. Food was grown for all by Farmer Smurf (kulak), everyone's roofs repaired by Handy Smurf and there were smiles all round thanks to Jokey Smurf.
The only sense of hierarchy was the leadership of Papa Smurf, but with his white beard and red costume, he may as well have been Marx himself. Similarly the bespectacled Brainy Smurf, the only one to think against the system, represented Trotsky minus ice-pick.
Still unconvinced? Well, consider the Smurf adversary extrordinaire: Gargamel was to Smurfs what Roy Whiting was to Neighbourhood Watch. Initially, his raison d'etre was to capture Smurfs in order to turn them into gold. A regular little Wafic Saïd, eh?
Furthermore, the wizard owned his cat/sexual slave Azreal, giving him less chance of escape than Ken Bigley and the same level of freedom as Hussein and Milosevic combined.
Finally, allow me the liberty of the ultimate shock: not only were the Smurfs Commie bastards, they were also benders. Vanity Smurf and Handy Smurf engage in homoerotic banter of Graeco-Roman calibre at every possible opportunity, conforming to the Graham Norton and Mr T stereotypes respectively.
And all this in America at the height of the Cold War. Who said censorship was everywhere?
18th Nov 2004