Les Schloumpf

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a typically cheerful snurf

Les Schloumpf (English: The Snurfs) is an Ariddian television series for children. It features small, humanoid, red-skinned beings called snurfs, who live a communal lifestyle in a village somewhere deep in a (presumably Ariddian) forest. The series was created by francophone Ariddian Julien Desmines, and is always broadcast in French, sometimes with English and/or Wymgani subtitles.

The series is also broadcasted in several other nations, usually dubbed into the local language(s), although in some cases the French original is aired with subtitles.

Storyline

Most of the stories are centred on the interactions between archetypal characters within the village, or occasionally with neighbouring (albeit fairly distant and equally isolated) snurf villages. Remarkably, there are rarely any "villains" in any sense of the word (see below). Some of the snurfs are quite adventurous, and keen to explore the forest around them; some even wander as far as the sea, build ships and sail to nearby islands - possibly a reference to the great Indigenous Ariddian explorers of the pre-colonial era.

Values and meaning

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Snurfs and snurfettes enjoy life, but can be serious when necessary

Village life

The snurfs have a communal lifestyle, sharing work and ressources in accordance with the Marxist doctrine "from each according to his ability to each according to his need". Les Schloumpf is widely recognised as an allegory of communism, and as a means to teach basic Ariddian values to young children. There is no money in snurf society, and all snurfs are eager to lend one another a helping hand. The snurfs also show great respect to their natural environment and to all forms of life; like Ariddians, they are vegetarians.

The series is also sometimes seen as a respectful metaphor for traditional Indigenous Ariddian (Wymgani) lifestyles, and the village is in some ways reminiscent of Wymgani traditional housing.

Antagonism

There are few if any "baddies" in Les Schloumpf, and no violence. Desmines has explained that his series

"seeks to eshew any kind of simplistic 'good versus evil' nonsense. We don't want to be feeding such propaganda to our children and warping their minds. Real life is very complex, and if we tell them it's all black and white, we're not encouraging their minds to develop and to take in that complexity. I think a lot of the problems in the world today are linked to people seeing everything in terms of good and evil, and that's just rubbish. We need to encourage children to think for themselves, and I hope watching the snurfs helps them do that."

Hence, any conflict usually occurs between the snurfs themselves, and is always resolved without violence, through appeals to reason, intelligence and compassion - fundamental snurf values. The series does show that wild animals can be dangerous if disturbed, but animals are rarely antropomorphised, and never portrayed as "evil". The only real antagonism comes from outsiders who bring with them values strongly ressembling those of capitalism, and who seek to disrupt both the snurfs' egalitarian society and the balance of the natural environment. These apparently capitalist opponents, however, appear only very rarely (most notably in the episode Les Schloumpf et l'argent-roi).

Archetypes

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Snurf Fun up to his usual pranks

Many of the snurfs are named after character traits or particular abilities. For example, Snurf Bold and Snurfette Adventurous are the most keen to explore the forest around the village; Snurf Wise is one of the most educated and most intelligent; Snurf Fun is party-loving but has a strong sense of responsability for the well-being of his fellow snurfs; Snurfette Ingenious comes up with clever ideas and strange but efficient inventions. The snurfs have no leaders, and make important decisions communally.

Broadcasters

Spin-offs

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Snurf Diver meets a snorfette in episode Les Schloumpf et l'Aventure sous la Mer

The Snorfs

When Les Schloumpf started airing in Ropa-Topia, there were complaints from the network executives (and the network sponsors) about the anti-capitalist message embedded in several of the story-lines. The series had become hugely popular however so it was decided to continue airing the series, but in order to keep the sponsors happy an attempt was made to produce a spin-off series, based on the Snorfs -- Snurf-like creatures that lived underwater, with blue scale-like skins and the tail of a fish -- which were encountered by the Snurfs in the episode Les Schloumpf et l'Aventure sous la Mer.

Even though that particular episode showed the Snorfs to have a similar lifestyle as the Snurfs, in the spin-off, the Snorf society had shifted dramatically toward capitalism and the show was filled with references to products of several major companies that were sponsors of the RTTV network.

The series was cancelled after only four episodes had been aired and received very low ratings. People simply refused to watch it, not only because of the changes imposed by the network, but also because of the simplified animation and poor voice acting. A full season of twenty 15-minute episodes had already been produced by RTTV already however, and was released on DVD soon after the series' cancellation, but the DVDs disappeared from shops only two weeks later with no copies sold at all.

In Westville News

Snurfs have, to a certain extent, come to be viewed from abroad as the embodiment of an Ariddian lifestyle. Which is probably why the West Ariddian satirical programmme Westville News makes use of redesigned snurf characters to represent alleged Ariddian viewpoints on various current affairs.