Once you get over the shock that “the first adults-only episode of the ‘The Smurfs’” actually exists (we thought Donnie Darko torpedoed that myth!), there is a second, more profound shock: The idea of looking at the bodies of dead Smurfs. The film, produced by UNICEF, opens with happy Smurfs, singing and dancing. Then,
without warning, bombs begin to rain from the sky. The Smurfs scatter and run in vain from the whistling bombs, before being felled by blast waves and fiery explosions. The final scene shows a scorched and tattered Baby Smurf sobbing inconsolably, surrounded by prone Smurfs.
The agency asked permission of the cartoon’s licenser to show “something that was real war — Smurfs losing arms, or a Smurf losing a head, but they said no.” Wow. Straight to Smurf snuff, without any porn in between.
The point of the smurfing the Smurfs, says the agency, was in fact “to shock, after concluding that traditional images of suffering in Third World war zones had lost their power to move television viewers.” Whatever. All available evidence at the time said those little blue fucks had weapons of mass destruction.
UNICEF ad drops bomb on Smurfs [WT]
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