French academic: Smurfs are Nazis

Even as a kid, I figured there had to be something wrong with any society that only had one female.

Yet another reason to make fun of France.

Now, a French academic who has studied the society and culture of Smurfs, the tiny blue cartoon characters who are constantly beset by the evil Gargamel, says they’ve got other problems.

They are fascists, or maybe commies. Or a little of both.

I’m not sure what that would make Gargamel. A capitalist?

In Le Nouvel Observateur, Antoine Buéno writes that he’s been surprised by the violent reaction to “Le Petit Livre Bleu” (The Little Blue Book), which blasts the cerulean society crafted by Belgian cartoonist Peyo.

Perhaps it’s because he wrote the Smurfs live in “a totalitarian utopia [akin to] Stalinism and Nazism”?

What’s Buéno’s proof?

The Worldcrunch website helps us out with an English translation.

The Smurfs are self-sufficient. Smurf society is collectivist and interventionist. Its only leader, Papa Smurf, is all-powerful. And, like Stalin, his favorite color is red.

They all eat at the canteen and are all ridiculously puritan. Racism is obvious: blood purity becomes something vital and the dark brown Smurf is referred to as “the ugly one.” In another album called “Smurfette,” Buéno notes how the Aryan blond is idealized.

The Smurfs are also united against a sworn enemy called Gargamel, a large-nosed, black-haired possibly anti-Semitic caricature, and his cat Azrael.

It doesn’t take Brainy Smurf to figure out this guy’s got way too much time on his hands.