Review of The Smurfs (2011) by Shiira — 06 Oct 2011

Hot on the trail of the Smurfs, the wizard has no time for introspection, especially in such a faraway land as New York City. He almost had them, but once again, the little blue creatures were able to outsmart their age-old enemy, escaping this time in "a mechanical wagon"(taxi), by the seat of their white pants.

For the moment, while Gargamel figures out the logistics of corralling his most hated nemeses, the wizened old necromancer can bide some time, thanks to the fortuitous hairball that Azarel coughs up. Entangled in the cat's mucus, to the wizard's chagrin, are strands of Smurfette's hair, the color of which is not what Gargamel had selected for the girl's coif the day that he created her.

In "The Smurfette", an origin story of the patriarchal village's only female member(an episode from the NBC animate series "The Smurfs"), we learn that Smurfette started out as a brunette, a Jew, just like her father, who resembles a caricature born out of German propaganda, the bogeyman that Goethke makes the Judaic people out to be, for the benefit of a roomful of terrified Hitler youths, in "Europa, Europa", by describing the Hebrew people as having a "high forehead", "shifty eyes", and an "apelike walk", characteristics that aptly describe Gargamel's somewhat grotesque figure.

In "The Smurfette", the wizard makes "exaggerated gestures", going so far as "waving his hands around in excitement" over the "Blue Bride of Gargamel," giving credence to Goethke's lies about the persecuted people whom Salomon Perel, known to his Nazi teacher and peers as "Jupp Peters", actually descends from, in the 1990 film about the arbitrary nature of identity, and survival during the Holocaust.

"Garbage Smell"(referred as such in the movie) is the imaginary Jew who "leaps at your throat", which Goethke, on bended knee, demonstrates by squeezing a student's neck, seated at his desk, the resulting consequence of what happens "the minute your back is turned".

Goethke, the master of spurious impersonations, in that moment, is a forerunner to Gargamel, a live-action cartoon figure made real through agitprop rhetoric and hateful hate. In "The Smurfs", Gargamel finds himself in a city where he wouldn't be touched by self-loathing, since back home, there's not another Jew to be found in the forest, whereas in the "Big Apple"(while creating Smurfette, he describes her as being "three apples high"), the lonely wizard, for the first time in his life, would be among his own kind, because down deep inside, he wants to be a Smurf(read: Aryan), too.

"The Smurfette" is telling. From a blue lump of clay, the Smurf alchemy that Gargamel performs is indicative of the wizard's deep inferiority complex at the hands of Papa Smurf, who has the cult of personality to rule 99, whereas his autocratic influence holds sway over a single mangy cat.

Broken down at the elemental level, Smurfette is made out of "sugar and spice(but nothing nice)", "a dram of crocodile tears", "half a packet of lies", and "the hardest stone for a heart", an ingredient list that seems to have been written out by an Aryan.

To Gargamel, the Smurfette is a sort of wish-fulfillment; he gets to live vicariously through her, because being blue is what he most wishes for. In "Europa, Europa", Goethke considers the Nordic race as the gems of the earth, championing light hair and blue eyes as being "the most glowing example of creation".

Likewise, Papa Smurf, as a result of sharing the same Nazi ideology, transforms the slightly dowdy, black-haired Smurfette into a terrifying vision of Aryan perfection, introducing the finished produced as being "new and improved", meaning that she is blonde and Nordic-looking.

Salomon, in his effort to be more Aryan-like, reattaches the foreskin to his circumcised penis. Presumed to be East Baltic, "Jupp" is barely Aryan as is, therefore, barely human, similar to how Smurfette's new family of blue Aryan youth considers her to be barely a Smurf, due to the girl's naturally dark hair.

But for survival's sake, she seduces her blue enemy by acting the part of the coquette, just like Charlotte Rampling in "The Night Porter, where the concentration camper sings a song made famous by Marlene Dietrich(star of "The Blue Angel"), while dancing topless with Nazi accouterments.

Since blue is white in the Enchanted Forest, the blue moon ad that Patrick Winslow creates and Odilie approves for her cosmetics company, becomes an accidental endorsement for Aryan superiority, or rather, blue superiority, without their knowledge.

Papa Smurf needs Gargamel; the totalitarian needs the wizard in order to keep himself in power. In all likelihood, he created the Jewish bogeyman, similar to how the elders in "The Village" invented the myth of the monster in the woods as a scare tactic against their people leaving.

Papa needs his minions. Those smurfberries aren't going to pick themselves.