| abstract
| - Their clothing is either uniform white or revolutionary red. They don't use money, they all work regardless (except for Lazy), and they share everything. Their conformity may even be genetic; few are clearly physically different; they are mostly one gender and effectively sexless. Their leader is a Karl Marx lookalike; their allies are pagan nature spirits (Mother Nature, Father Time); and their enemy is a stand-in for Christian religion (Gargamel wears Franciscan friar robe and has a bald spot/tonsure) and capitalism (he wants to eat them or turn them to gold). He has a cat named after the angel Azrael and gets advice from a magic tome (The Bible). Gargamel the alchemist himself is often claimed to a Jewish stereotype, due to his features (he's got that hooked nose) and his obsession with gold.
* A milder theory is the show promotes conformity and groupthink. Individual smurfs inevitably get into trouble whenever they work contrary to the community's opinions. To make sure that groupthink is regularly promoted, one non-conformist smurf is allowed to exist and be continually humiliated.
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* Except... that theory doesn't really work at all, does it? Outside of looking alike (and the Smurfs themselves act like they all look totally different, so they're clearly able to tell each other apart even if we aren't) and dressing similarly (which seems to be a fashion thing, or maybe just that most Smurfs don't want to spend a lot of time deciding what to wear today), the Smurfs aren't particularly conformist. Outside of "working for the common good" in which each Smurf uses his particular talents for the good of the village, they're very clearly allowed to be as individualistic as they like, and individualism is celebrated rather than frowned upon. Otherwise characters like Grouchy, Lazy and especially Jokey would never have been allowed to continue the way they do, and really the only reason why Brainy gets so much beef from the other Smurfs is that he's an annoying, snotty suck-up who thinks he knows everything better than everyone else, not because he doesn't conform.
* Not only does Papa Smurf look like Karl Marx, but also Brainy (the Smurfs' killjoy) resembles Trotsky.
* The final seasons with the kid smurfs represent glasnost. Grandpa Smurf, who wore gold, symbolizes the peaceful "destruction" of the USSR.
* One problem with that theory: In early 20th-century Russia, white was generally seen by Communists as the color of the enemy, those who supported the old regime (or at least the old style of regime).
* Their hats look very much like Phrygian caps, hats that aren't necessarily Communist but have been an emblem of many radical revolutionary movements throughout history (most notably during the French Revolution).
* Actually this is true, except for it being described as a negative thing. Communism basically means we live together, work together, and share everything as a whole. Communism in practice and in small communities- like the community the smurfs live in- works; its when you reach a scale where every person won't know every other person as a matter of course that inefficiencies, tyranny, and corruption sneak in. After all most Monasteries around the world function via communism, so do the Amish. So yes the Smurfs are 100% communists, they're just not "the evil reds" the media during the Cold War made Communism out to be, at least until they expand from the "small village" scale to the "nation-state" scale, which isn't anywhere near the foreseeable future.
* Don't you see it? "SMURF" is an acronym for Soviet Men Under Red Father!
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