Smurfs To Become Less of a Smurfsage-Fest
When it was announced over a year ago that The Smurfs, would be adapted into a trilogy of feature films, it seemed inevitable that everyone's favorite blue misogynists would be facing an unwarranted update. But what? More three-dimensionally creepy? Backwards hats? References to SmurfTube? A sassy, midnight blue Smurf? Or could it just be, as this article claims, a less gender-biased society...
They will mark 50 years with a series of new comic adventures, statuettes, an exhibition at Brussels' cartoon museum, a set of commemorative stamps and, in a reflection of changing times, more females in their mushroom cottage village.
If studios are really set on recreating my childhood Saturday mornings, they need to at least start recognizing what concepts made it entertaining. Take The Flintstones. While seeing how a pelican or a mammoth could possibly be used in prehistoric household chores gave the show a fair share of its appeal, the blatantly-stolen Honeymooners dynamic is what gave it life. Update Fred to the politically correct, non-wife-abusing standards of today and you've lost your audience.
Similarly, what made The Smurfs stand out as anything other than a pack of small, shirtless mutants was their peculiar society: a living communist manifesto with one woman and precious few members reaching old age. I mean, did you realize Smurfette was originally created by Gargamel to disrupt the natural utopia created by their all-male society? (Shocking but true!) If anything, take this chauvinist idea and run with it--expose its flaws (reproduction issues, for one). But don't correct them. It's not that I don't want an equal society; I just don't want the Smurfs to have one. That's what makes them so smurfy.