Alright. I admit straight up that this is cheating. I wrote about this ages ago in my Deviantart journal, but I was thinking about the topic today and I wanted to do something with it on my blog, so I figured I'd just rewrite the original. The only reason I'm bringing this up is so that those who read the first one don't call shenanigans. I am quite aware that I am ripping myself off, thank you very much; I don't need to hear about it.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming:
(Cue happy music: La la la la la la!)
I grew up in the 90's, after the tv show "The Smurfs" was really popular, so I never actually saw it, but a while back I was surfing (smurfing?) Youtube, as I am wont to do, and I happened upon some old episodes, so I watched them. This show is absolutely hilarious. Not like it's actually clever or anything -- it's actually pretty bland and predictable as far as plots go -- but as I was watching it, I noted that the Smurfs all share a curious (and hilariously stupid) quirk. The quirk being that in any given sentence, the speaker will frequently replace crucial adjectives and verbs with variations of the word "smurf"
Here are a few gems that I happened upon:
"I must have smurfed some of my potion on it by mistake!"
"How about smurfing a couple of baskets with us?"
"That old thing is about to smurf apart any minute!"
"Run, my little Smurfs! We have to smurf to higher ground!"
"Oh my smurfness!"
"I never smurfed anything so sad in all my life!"
"Now you know that 'united we smirf, divided we fall'."
"Impossible! Not in a million smurfs!"
and the best:
"That's right! Papa Smurf can smurf anything he smurfs his mind to!"
There is no logical reason for them to do this, really -- it's kind of like me saying "Later today I'm going to human to the store and human up some more of those cookies. They are simply humaning." -- but yeah, it's still freaking hilarious.
Also, I realized that in many cases this can be taken as VERY dirty VERY easily, as shown in these examples which, I swear to Dionysus, I am not making up:
"Step inside, Smurfette, I'll smurf you up right."
"I smurfed her first!"
...... There is no way the writers of this show couldn't have realized what they were doing...
At any rate, I think I've stumbled onto a gold mine. Who needs "that's what she said" when you've got "smurf" ?
A few more things, just because I have the constant need to destroy all that is good and expose gaping plotholes in childrens cartoons that nobody else cares about:
First, the villain, Gargamel, appears to have no other purpose in life other than to capture and consume one or all of the Smurfs (Something about becoming a credible wizard as far as i gathered..) An admirable goal to be sure, but you have to question his methods. While they do evade him quite a bit, every so often he will manage to get his hands on a Smurf and will then cage them up whilst he prepares a soup to cook them in. This gives the other Smurfs ample time to free their comrade and cause Gargamel to fall all over himself and his cat... This has always bothered me in every cartoon of this sort. Seriously, Why doesn't he snap the Smurf's freaking neck as soon as he gets his hands on it? Then he wouldn't need to worry about it escaping (morbid, I know, but practical.)
I also had a wonder about exactly where Smurfs come from. True, there IS a Smurfette, but she was created by Gargamel to stir up discord among the other Smurfs after the series had already kicked off. It was clear that none of them had ever seen a female prior to that, but then where did they all come from? I'm not really pointing out a plot hole here, I'm just genuinely curious about how Smurfs reproduce. The writers can tell me that the Smurfs are asexual and I'll believe them, but they've gotta provide answers, or it just looks like an inconsistency. Speaking of inconsistencies: If the Smurfs ARE asexual, then why does Smurfette's presence even have an effect on the rest of them? Seems like without the need for a sex drive, they would just treat her like any of the dudes... And yet, they all trip over themselves whenever she's around. I'm serious, EVERYONE is sweet on Smurfette, including Papa Smurf, which is more than just a little disturbing considering he's like a million years old... Not even kidding; there is at least one occasion, if not more, where Papa Smurf vies for Smurfette's hand in marriage along with all the others.
This is not okay. The writers of this show need serious help.
Finally, I was shocked and horrified by the amount of animal abuse going on in this show. Not only Gargamel's cat, Azrael, who constantly gets stepped on, smooshed, kicked, and shut in doors, but also the Smurfs' own puppy, who, in the episode I saw, got hit on the head by numerous object, and yelled at far more harshly than necessary by many a Smurf. Really, now! What kind of message are we sending to our children? Don't you writers know that it's only okay to drop an anvil on an animal if it can talk? For shame.
Alright, that's pretty much all I can say about that mess. All in all, you've got to admit that as stupid as this show was/still is, the creators , whether intentionally or otherwise, hit comic gold with that adjective/verb replacement thing. Gold. Pure Gold.
And if you don't think so then you can just go smurf off and smurf by yourself in a smirfing ditch!
Naw, really, I'm just smurfing with you.
Have a smirfing day!
....SMURF!
