6 Insane (But Convincing) Theories on Children's Pop Culture
#3. The Smurfs Are Tiny Blue Nazis
In the world of reading too much into children's cartoons, it's a well-known fact that the Smurfs are secretly Communists. But Antoine Bueno, senior lecturer of sociology at Sciences Po University in Paris, decided to smurf that right in the smurf. In his The Little Blue Book (Le Petit Livre Bleu), Bueno claims that the Smurf village is actually a Nazi, totalitarian utopia full of micro-fascists. He additionally accuses the Smurfs of being anti-Semites because, hey, while he was at it ...
fanpop
KiTes. He said "kiTes."
Why It's Not That Crazy:
The creator of the Smurfs, Pierre Culliford, aka Peyo, was born in Belgium in 1928, which means that he spent his childhood under Nazi occupation and, according to Bueno, might have consequently reflected the spirit of those times in his later work, whether he was aware of it or not.
We can all agree that a person's early years can have a great influence on his or her later life. It's like how the creator of Mario allegedly based his design on his annoying landlord, except in this case Peyo drew little blue Nazis. It makes sense.
For one, the Smurfs are all united against a common enemy, the sorcerer Gargamel, whose large nose supposedly makes him look like a Jewish stereotype:
Wikipedia
This is the face of a man set to take over Hollywood.
Gargamel also has a cat named Azrael -- a name that comes from Jewish mysticism -- and is the creator of Smurfette, who becomes a vision of Aryan beauty after Papa Smurf "fixes" her with magic.
melody-evilsmurfette
Maybe if the Nazis got laid more often they wouldn't have been so uptight.
The most damning evidence, however, seems to come from a comic titled "The Black Smurfs," where the Smurfs get infected, via bites, with a mysterious disease that turns them black, mindless and aggressive, which Bueno interpreted as concerns for blood purity. The book would not have appeared in the U.S. to this day if the color of the sickness wasn't eventually changed to purple.
Daily Mail
Who'd have expected the Smurfs' first crossover to involve Al Jolson?
#2. Babar Is a Colonial Apologist
Babar the Elephant might not be as famous as other cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny, but he still achieved great success. First created in 1931 by Jean de Brunhoff, the Babar books are published today in over 17 languages with more than 8 million copies sold worldwide.
And -- if you believe experts like Herbert Kohl or Ariel Dorfman (the Donald Duck guy from before) -- that's over 8 million copies of sneaky colonial propaganda, simply because the titular Babar, an African elephant, is raised in France and later returns to his homeland to reform it using the superior power of Western civilization.
themorgan
We're not sure we'd have gone with bowler hats to symbolize cultural superiority, but hey.
Why It's Not That Crazy:
In the first book, The Story of Babar, we find out that Babar's mother was shot by a hunter, and the small elephant was taken in by an old lady in Paris, given clothes and enrolled in school, like some reverse Tarzan. Later, after the death of his father, Babar is declared king of Elephant Land because he has lived among humans and "learned much," though apparently the concept of representative democracy wasn't part of it.
He then proceeds to civilize the fuck out of his kingdom by introducing it to French culture, much to everyone's excitement.
thoughtshaker
"Yay, a palace! We'd have preferred a hospital, but still, yay!"
It isn't hard to see why someone would have issues with a story like this. In Babar, the Western culture is presented as obviously superior to the African one, with the regions of the African continent outside Babar's control being populated by spear-chucking political incorrectness.
bethhull
This is terribly inaccurate. What kind of elephant wears flowery dresses?
Even the native African elephants are originally depicted as naked and walking on four legs until the bipedal, clothed Babar and his family (who saw the light of European civilization) make them aware and ashamed of their primitive, naked ways. It's as if the books were trying to say, in an almost Biblical sort of way, that accepting Western civilization is akin to finally being human.
themotart-journal
"Instead of fostering equality, we're introducing the feudal system. Welcome to civilization!"
A lot of this stuff does make sense, especially considering that the first book came out at the height of French colonialism in Africa, but looking for religious undertones in Babar sounds like the biggest ass-pull since the 2010 Proctology Olympics. We'd definitely need to see something more convincing before we buy into it; something like ...
Quora
There it is.
#1. Thomas the Tank Engine Lives in a Totalitarian Dystopia
Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, a story about sentient trains learning about responsibility, friendship and all that noise, might possibly be the most sickeningly wholesome children's show in existence. With that in mind, it'd take some pretty massive balls to accuse said show of, say, promoting totalitarianism, fascism and racism.
Shauna Wilton, a professor of political sciences at the University of Alberta, has just such balls. She argues that the world of Thomas the Tank Engine is in reality a fascist, racist hellhole where dreams go to die and where only "useful" elements are allowed to continue to toil away in pointless misery.
Oh yeah. Stick more proles in the carriage and it would totally be 1984.
Or maybe ... maybe someone switched Wilton's Thomas DVDs with Schindler's List.
Why It's Not That Crazy:
Here's a totally hypothetical question: What if one of the trains on the show decided that he wanted to do something else with his life, like travel or star on Snakes on a Train 2: Snake Harder? He'd probably get yelled at and told to get back to work.
Trains can never really follow their own path. It's like a metaphor or something.
You see, on the island of Sodor where the show takes place, there is only room for really useful engines. That's not only the show's catch phrase, but also the basic summary of every episode in the series. That is, the engines are either trying to prove themselves or worrying that they aren't working hard enough (see "James and the Coaches," "Thomas, Percy and the Post Train," "Tender Engines" and many more).
This totalitarian obsession with usefulness is instilled in the engines by the iron fist of Sir Topham Hatt, aka the Fat Controller, who swiftly punishes all those deemed as "useless."
Look at his hands. There's no way this guy has ever contributed anything to society.
In the episode "Break Van," Hatt has two twin engines, Donald and Douglas, compete against each other to determine which one he will send back to Scotland to be destroyed. In "The Sad Story of Henry," when an engine refuses to go out of the tunnel because of the rain, Hatt actually gives orders to brick him alive in the tunnel.
"Oh man, what the fuck ...?"
You can't really defend any of this by saying that the trains are Hatt's property. They are obviously sentient beings capable of emotions ... one of which unfortunately happens to be racism. In the show, there is a clear feud going on between the steam engines like Thomas and Percy and the diesel engines, who are depicted as stubborn, lazy and shifty.
In the episode "Daisy," a diesel named Daisy arrives on Sodor and flat out refuses to do chores. In "The Diseasel," a diesel called BoCo is accused of stealing trucks. In "Thomas's Day Off," a new, lazy diesel, Dennis, tricks Thomas into doing his work. Even the closest thing the show has to a villain is a diesel fucking named DIESEL.
"BRING ME MORE VICTIMS!"
But maybe there is some perfectly reasonable, nonracist explanation for why the trains that run on clean white steam dislike the trains powered by dirty, black diesel oil. So, if you can think of one, please tell us, because we're just dying to hear it.
Cezary Jan Strusiewicz is a freelance English-Japanese-Polish translator, tour guide and writer. Contact him via email or buy this awesome book about death that he helped write.
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When I was an undergrad, a psychologist at the counseling center diagnosed me with dysthymia. She asked if I knew what that meant, and I said no, and she said "it's kind of like you're Eeyore, from Winnie the Pooh. You just have a little raincloud following you around all the time." After double checking that she did in fact have a PhD, I decided I would not get my PhD from that university and stopped seeing her. Because wow. lol.
Replyam i the only one who didn't get the "Goodbye Cruel World" joke and was stupid enough to actually look it up?
ReplyWhen people analyze these pop-culture icons or whatever else, don't they realize that maybe there taking it a little too far.
ReplyThe link in #3 says the dude who came up with the Nazi Smurf theory got DEATH THREATS from hard-core Smurf fans! Who knew there even was such a thing?
ReplyThere was a woman who committed crimes so bloody she became part of the inspiration for Dracula, but she wasn't actually executed only because she was related to the King. Aparantly Elizabeth Bathory's crimes are equal to not wanting to get wet.
ReplySo the Smurfs are Nazis and Commies at the same time? I hope Gargamel eats them all (or melts them into gold, or mashes them into a new type of ass cream, or whatever the hell he plans to do).
ReplyBecause they meant it as a euphemism for clean energy resources, not to enable people to feel entitled for the way they were born. Now, you give a reason why utilitarianism is bad in a crippling economic system that people will actually follow. Anyways: "Sodor" kind of raises an eyebrow in terms of place names, but I don't care enough about f*****g creepy-looking trains to investigate.
ReplyThe Isle of Man's diocese is for some ridiculous reason named "Diocese of Man and Sodor." There is no Isle of Sodor in reality, so the Rev. W. Awdry invented it to go along with the inexplicable diocese name. Apparently "Sodor" was a corruption of "Sudreys," referring to the southern Scottish isles now known as the Hebrides.
Can't edit my reply, so I'll just add here that "Sodor" was a corruption of "Sudreys," referring to the southern Scottish isles now called the "Hebrides," which the diocese no longer has authority over.
I'm not sure what the colonists are apologizing for by imposing their culture on others. Maybe someone should use better etymology? I also don't get what the last acid-trip picture in that section is supposed to represent. Also, consider the alternative: Cultural relativism? I'll take this moment to coin the term: "Hipsterocracy".
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesApologist doesn't mean apologize for it means defend. So in this case Babar is defending colonialism not apologizing for it.
Funny you should mention etymology. "Apologetics" is completely different from Apology, and can sometimes even be oposites.
Long story short "Apologist" comes from ancient greek lawyers. These days, "Apologists"mostly refers to those who spend allot of time defending the Bible. Not NECESARALY a synonym for creationist, but they do overlap.
The last picture in that section is straight from one of the Babar books. It's Babar's nightmare turning good when the forces of light chase away his fears.
Yeah, I was a Babar fan as a kid.
First, "Really Useful Engines" is the proper title of the above-mentioned book series which got a TV show, not just a catchphrase. The TV producers wanted the show to have a star, unlike the books in which all of the characters were equal, so they named it after Thomas since he was #1 anyway.
ReplySecondly, while I suppose the argument could be made that they're all racist against diesels, it really is meant to be taken literally. The books with diesel characters were written during the time of modernisation in Britain (1955-60's), when many steam engines were chopped up and melted down to be replaced with diesels. People who have worked with large, complicated machines (like train engineers or boat captains) often feel that said machines have personalities or quirks, and would obviously be distraught by the idea of them being sold for scrap and replaced with new technology.
Lastly, most of the stories (with the exception of the first story, Henry being bricked in the tunnel, and any stories written by the show's writers after they ran out of book stories to adapt) are based on things that actually happened to trains which various drivers and firemen wrote to the Rev. Awdry about. If it seems that the Fat Controller is acting callously to the characters, it's probably because it's based on a real-life story in which there would be no need to worry about their sentience. It should probably also be mentioned that Donald and Douglas never actually get destroyed and Henry gets let out of the tunnel.
So...basically The Cask of Amontillado in a children's show about talking trains...
ReplyDamn. Right in the childhood
STOP MAKING ME GOOGLE WORDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!111!!!!!!111!one!!!!!!!!!!!!11!
ReplyI still love Babar. If that makes me racist, so be it. :\
ReplyI have read the script for the finale of Thomas the Tank Engine. It's a three parter and it involves the steam and diesel engines putting their differences aside to overthrow Hatt. The final episode has Thomas, broken and missing an eye, cornering Hatt near the tunnel where he trapped the train in the aforementioned episode. Thomas raises a railroad spike over his head and Hatt pleads for his life, promising to change and make everyone's lives better. Thomas, wordlessly, rams the spike into Hatt's heart three times. Thomas moves away from the corpse, only for Diesel to shoot him in the head, killing him instantly. The minutes of the episode show the aftermath of the coup and how diesel trains revolutionized transportation, all going according to Diesel's plan.
ReplyAre you sure you weren't just watching an episode of Robot Chicken?
Your link to the awesome book on death at the bottom is broken. Fix it now!
Reply.......... And that just ruined 90% of my childhood.............
ReplyCould the anti-diesel thing be literally anti-diesel? A "Tree huggin' Hippie" thing?
Reply"Gargamel, whose large nose supposedly makes him look like a Jewish stereotype" -- big crooked noses are common features of bad guys, especially sorcerers and witches. This logic makes most children's stories with a villain seem racist.
ReplyAlso... whenever a franchise introduces two fictitious cultures that dislike each other, someone will say the "bad" culture represents [race] and therefore it's racist. But unless there's something actually associating a diesel train with black people in a meaningful way, this is just hypersensitivity run amok.
Really? I think the fact that you took a comedy site seriously is more indicative of hypersensitivity run amok.
Yes, big crooked noses ARE a common feature in most children's movies. However, that's because Jewish people stereotypically have noses shaped like that. Jews have been the scapegoats for so long, the racism has infiltrated our psyche.
*Snob hat on*
ReplyYou can argue, however, that there is some explanation why Thomas and his friends hate the Diesels- because in real life Diesels replaced Steam Locomotives. And before you say "Well it's a kids' show, it's not real life"- the original stories, and most of the pre-CGI episodes treated it as if it took place in the real world (For example, British Rail is referred to frequently as "The other railway"
Nobody can watch Babar and NOT think, "This is like some late 19th Century British wet dream."
ReplyOr French, but you know, whatever.
The Wizard of Oz analysis goes even deeper than that - the Tin Man is meant to represent the industrial workers who can't sympathise with their agricultural counterparts (lacking a heart, seen shortly after the Scarecrow). Only two years after it came out, there were already plenty of interpretations of its political connotations (even though the author never said definitively whether it was meant to be a political tract), and there is even a theory that Dorothy is meant to represent none other than Theodore Roosevelt (Dor-O-Thee = Thee-O-Dor).
ReplyOh, and Thomas the Tank Engine was ridiculously sexist when you consider that all the female characters were either independent/disobedient baddies (such as Daisy) or helpless passive characters (such as Annie and Clarabel). Most of the positive female characters were introduced later.