The Smurfs: Beautiful memories woven from misunderstandings and longings

 

   
After watch­ing the film ver­sion of The Smurfs with my daugh­ter, I was both amused and sur­prised. While we laughed from begin­ning to end, I could­n’t help but feel like this was­n’t the Smurfs I remem­bered from my child­hood! I under­stand the shift in focus when the film’s set­ting shifts from a mys­te­ri­ous vil­lage to the metrop­o­lis of New York, but the shift is quite dra­mat­ic.
 
   
Come to think of it, per­haps what I am most uncom­fort­able with is not being able to hear the famil­iar “Song of the Smurfs”: “On the oth­er side of the mountain/on the oth­er side of the sea/there is a group of Smurfs/They are live­ly and smart/They are naughty and agile/They live freely in the big green for­est…” — This song left such a deep impres­sion. It almost per­fect­ly inter­prets the joy and yearn­ing that those cute blue elves brought to our gen­er­a­tion. 
 
   
Here’s a fun­ny sto­ry. When the Hong­ni­ba Vil­lage web­site was first launched in 2000, every­one urged Inspec­tor Car­rot to write a vil­lage song. He woke up in the morn­ing, not even brush­ing his teeth, and scrib­bled away, “Beyond the mountains/Beyond the clouds/There’s a green field/There’s a small village/In that small village/In that fairy­tale paradise/There are gold­en roofs/There are glow­ing red walls/And me and my close friends…” Clear­ly, this vil­lage song was heav­i­ly influ­enced by the Chi­nese cul­ture, but it also reflects the shared dream of the young peo­ple who found­ed Hong­ni­ba Vil­lage.Red Mud Vil­lage Song Web­site»>)
 
   
But I soon dis­cov­ered the rea­son I did­n’t hear that song in the film: inter­est­ing­ly enough, “The Smurfs’ Song” was orig­i­nal­ly com­posed by a Chi­nese artist! It’s said that when the Smurfs car­toons were import­ed into Hong Kong, they com­mis­sioned a Chi­nese song­writer to cre­ate the theme song, fol­low­ing Hong Kong’s cus­tom­ary prac­tice. No won­der I ini­tial­ly found the song so relat­able! With that in mind, the film’s strong “Amer­i­can” fla­vor seems unsur­pris­ing. 
 

 

    
So my daugh­ter and I rem­i­nisced about our fond child­hood mem­o­ries of watch­ing The Smurfs: the Smurf vil­lage, the entrance of which out­siders could nev­er find, the all-pow­er­ful Papa Smurf, the adorable Smur­fette, the play­ful Lele, the quirky Yen…and, of course, the most amus­ing char­ac­ters: the ever-unlucky Gargamel, and the per­pet­u­al­ly bul­lied Azrael (by the way, we had a class­mate nick­named Azrael)… Our con­ver­sa­tion ram­bled on until my daugh­ter sud­den­ly asked, “When did you watch this car­toon as a kid?” “Yes, when exact­ly did you watch it?” I asked myself the same ques­tion, only to find a strange gap in my mem­o­ry. I sim­ply could­n’t remem­ber. I searched online for the ori­gins of The Smurfs and dis­cov­ered that the pop­u­lar Amer­i­can ver­sion debuted in 1981, while main­land Chi­na did­n’t intro­duce it until 1986. In oth­er words, I was near­ing high school grad­u­a­tion when I first encoun­tered the Smurfs, an age when old­er kids were fas­ci­nat­ed by youth lit­er­a­ture and Twi­light. Yet, I kept telling my daugh­ter, “This is the car­toon I watched as a kid!” 
 
   
Some­times mem­o­ry is real­ly unre­li­able. A series of mis­un­der­stand­ings made me extreme­ly curi­ous about the ori­gin of the Smurfs. I start­ed search­ing for rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion every­where and was even lucky enough to get an Eng­lish ver­sion of the Smurfs com­ic book “The Mag­ic Flute”.
Smurfs and the Mag­ic
Flute, which is like­ly the com­ic book sto­ry that first gave rise to the Smurfs. The orig­i­nal sto­ry was a French ver­sion pub­lished in Bel­gium in 1958, called “The Six-Hole Flute”. It is actu­al­ly a very long sto­ry, a 64-page com­ic nov­el, sim­i­lar in length and dif­fi­cul­ty to “The Adven­tures of Tintin”, but set in the medieval cas­tle age when witch­craft was preva­lent. The pro­tag­o­nists of that sto­ry are actu­al­ly a pair of human clowns: Johan and Pee-wee.
&
Pee­wit), the Smurfs only show up briefly on page 24, and they don’t make their grand entrance until page 40. 

Johan and Pee-wee
 

    
The sto­ry of Johan and Pee­wee is a com­ic series that Bel­gian car­toon­ist Pee­wee has been work­ing on since 1952. Its slight­ly mag­i­cal yet hilar­i­ous adven­ture sto­ries have cap­ti­vat­ed read­ers and have been quite suc­cess­ful. The idea of the Smurfs orig­i­nal­ly came from a slip of the tongue by Pee­wee and his friends while on vaca­tion. They thought it was fun­ny, so they used the word they acci­den­tal­ly said (French: schtroumpf; lat­er trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish: smurf) to cre­ate a fun­ny lan­guage, using the gram­mat­i­cal rules unique to alpha­bet­ic writ­ing: for exam­ple, smurf is used as a noun and a verb, to
“Smurf” and “smurf­ing” denote actions, while “smurfy” is an adjec­tive. The most inter­est­ing thing about “smurf” is that its mean­ing is not fixed and can be used to express any­thing, depend­ing on the con­text and the empha­sis of the pro­nun­ci­a­tion. There­fore, using this unique smurf lan­guage often leads to a series of mis­un­der­stand­ings, which is also what makes it so fun­ny. 
 

http://landaishu.zhongwenlink.com/home/upload20083/201182405310800.jpg
Fun Smurfs lan­guage!
 
   
For this inad­ver­tent joke, Peyo cre­at­ed a very sim­ple image sys­tem: a group of blue elves, only three apples in size, liv­ing in a mag­i­cal elf vil­lage. All the elves are male (Smur­fette was born many years lat­er), and they all look the same on the sur­face, with the excep­tion of Papa Smurf, who looks a bit like a lit­tle San­ta Claus. And these lit­tle guys speak to each oth­er in the Smurf lan­guage, which seems child­ish and ridicu­lous to out­siders.
 

 
   
The appear­ance of these blue elves actu­al­ly made Peyo a huge suc­cess. Read­ers loved these sup­port­ing char­ac­ters and want­ed to know more about them. How­ev­er, this also made the duo, who were orig­i­nal­ly the pro­tag­o­nists, lose their lus­ter. Peyo even had no time to con­tin­ue their sto­ry for a long time because greedy read­ers kept ask­ing Peyo for sto­ries about the Smurfs. 
 
   
How many com­ic books are there in the Smurfs series? I haven’t been able to find any infor­ma­tion on this. How­ev­er, there is a rough esti­mate of the Smurfs car­toons, which began in 1981. It’s said there are 420 episodes, mean­ing there are over 400 sep­a­rate Smurf sto­ries, both long and short. Peyo lat­er had to assem­ble a team to com­plete this incred­i­ble under­tak­ing. How­ev­er, for a long time, only the Smurfs car­toons were avail­able in Chi­na, and most peo­ple were unaware of the exis­tence of the Smurfs comics. 
 
http://www.hongniba.com.cn/bookclub/images/books/book_10005616_b.gif
Chi­nese ver­sion of the Smurfs com­ic sto­ry
 
   
Relay Press has been pub­lish­ing The Smurfs comics since 2008, and to date, at least 32 vol­umes have been released in Chi­nese. Recent­ly, with the release of the film, they’ve re-edit­ed the series into a 16-vol­ume “The Smurfs Clas­sic Comics Series.” This new, more refined, small­er-for­mat edi­tion includes some of the most clas­sic Smurf sto­ries. 
 
   
It’s worth not­ing that while Euro­pean-style comics are par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar with chil­dren, they’re not exclu­sive­ly for them. Judg­ing by their con­tent and engag­ing sto­ry­telling, they’re essen­tial­ly relax­ing read­ing mate­r­i­al for the home, suit­able for all ages. Like “The Adven­tures of Tintin” and “Lit­tle Naughty Nico­la,” “The Smurfs” is also suit­able for adults who have a non­judg­men­tal view of comics. Some sto­ries, such as “The Gold Coins of Elf Vil­lage,” offer a degree of satire on the mate­ri­al­is­tic world of adult­hood. Per­haps because of this, some crit­ics have crit­i­cized the Smurfs from a polit­i­cal per­spec­tive, argu­ing that their world is utopi­an, left-wing, or tinged with sex­ism or racism. While more sta­ble read­ers can eas­i­ly dis­miss such crit­i­cisms (and chil­dren, nat­u­ral­ly, are even less like­ly to take them seri­ous­ly), this also demon­strates the poten­tial for diverse inter­pre­ta­tions of the Smurfs’ sto­ry. 
 
   
In fact, peo­ple around the world share a uni­ver­sal love for these strange lit­tle elves. Every year, June 25th (Pey­ote’s birth­day) is des­ig­nat­ed “World Smurfs Day,” and Smurf fans every­where express their admi­ra­tion in var­i­ous ways. Dif­fer­ent cul­tures, aspi­ra­tions, and taboos exist, but this does­n’t hin­der the Smurfs. The Chi­nese have com­posed their own unique­ly inno­cent “Smurf Song,” while Amer­i­cans have giv­en the Smurfs a wild, rock-and-roll spin in their films. A book titled “Black Smurf” was nev­er pub­lished in Eng­lish because it might touch on sen­si­tive top­ics of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion. Final­ly, a clever ani­ma­tion direc­tor and book edi­tor replaced the black with pur­ple, renam­ing it “Pur­ple Smurf,” and every­one was hap­py. 
 

Dark Elf


Pur­ple Elf
 
   
Think­ing of this, I’ve com­plete­ly let go of all the “mis­un­der­stand­ings” I once had about the Smurfs. I still deeply love the Smurf car­toons and songs I watched and sang as a child. I also adore the Smurf comics my daugh­ter is cur­rent­ly devour­ing, and I’m equal­ly drawn to the Smurfs in today’s Amer­i­can block­busters. I think I’ll even devel­op a fond­ness for all my fel­low Smurf-lov­ing friends. Our love may dif­fer, but our long­ing for inno­cence is so sim­i­lar. All of this is thanks to the cre­ator of the Smurf world—Peyo! 
 
    The smurf
is so smurf­ing. I real­ly smurf it!
(Smurf lan­guage, rough­ly mean­ing “This world is so beau­ti­ful, I real­ly love it!”) 
 
Bei­jing, August 2011