Friday, July 11, 2025

Smurfette and the Eternal Gender Gap (Now with Rihanna!)


A more simpaticx queer smurf

Back in 1959, Belgian comic artist Peyo gave the world the Smurfs—those little blue communitarians who all looked the same but had one defining personality trait. One was Clumsy, one was Grouchy, one was Lazy, and so on. 

Then in 1967, Peyo had a real lightbulb moment. He introduced… Smurfette. What was her defining trait, you ask? Was she Witty Smurf? Scientific Smurf? Existentialist Smurf? Nope. She was Female. That’s it. Her entire personality boiled down to: Girl Smurf. Revolutionary.

Man, de Beauvoir says, is the norm whose superiority is normal as expected, and even required; woman, on the other hand, is the        Other, excluded from the site reserved only for the norm by being obliged into occupying the usually negative place of non-normality.

Smurfette’s existence in an otherwise all-male Smurf village perfectly illustrates this: male is neutral, female is the anomaly.

Flash forward to 2025. Surely we've progressed, right? There’s a new Smurfs movie on the horizon. Smurfette is still the one and only gal in the gang, voiced by Rihanna, which is cool, but still—doesn’t fix the fact that she’s the only female blueprint in a whole sea of blue dudes.

And still no Queer Smurf. No Trans Smurf. No Nonbinary Smurf. Just one lonely Smurfette, holding down the gender fort since LBJ was in office.

So maybe think twice before taking your kids to see a movie that’s recycling gender stereotypes thriving since the Cold War. It might be animated, but the messaging isn’t exactly… groundbreaking.

La Schtroumpfette et l’éternel fossé des genres (Maintenant avec Rihanna !)

En 1959, le dessinateur belge Peyo a offert au monde les Schtroumpfs — ces petits communistes bleus qui se ressemblaient tous, à un trait de personnalité près. Il y avait le Schtroumpf Maladroit, le Schtroumpf Grognon, le Schtroumpf Paresseux, et ainsi de suite. Puis, en 1967, Peyo a eu une vraie illumination. Il a créé… la Schtroumpfette. Quelle était sa caractéristique principale, vous demandez-vous ? Était-elle la Schtroumpf Spirituelle ? La Schtroumpf Scientifique ? La Schtroumpf Existentielle ? Non. Elle était... une femme. C’est tout. Toute sa personnalité se résumait à : Schtroumpf Fille. Révolutionnaire, non ? L’homme, dit Simone de Beauvoir, est la norme dont la supériorité est normale, attendue, voire exigée ; la femme, en revanche, est l’Autre, exclue de l’espace réservé à la norme, contrainte à occuper la place (généralement négative) de la non-normalité. L’existence de la Schtroumpfette dans un village de Schtroumpfs exclusivement masculin illustre cela à la perfection : le masculin est neutre, le féminin est l’anomalie. Avançons jusqu’en 2025. On aura sûrement fait des progrès, non ? Il y a un nouveau film des Schtroumpfs à l’horizon. Et vous ne devinerez jamais : la Schtroumpfette est toujours la seule fille du groupe. Elle sera peut-être doublée par Rihanna — ce qui est cool, mais bon, ça ne change rien au fait qu’elle reste l’unique être féminin parmi une mer de mecs bleus. Et toujours aucun Schtroumpf Queer. Aucun Schtroumpf Trans. Aucun Schtroumpf Non-Binaire. Juste une pauvre Schtroumpfette isolée, gardienne du genre depuis que Charles de Gaulle était président. Alors réfléchissez à deux fois avant d’emmener vos enfants voir un film qui recycle tristement des stéréotypes de genre qui ont survécu à la guerre froide. Le film est peut-être animé, mais son message ne l’est pas vraiment.

Wednesday, February 26, 2025

 


Safe House at St. Ann’s Warehouse: A Safe House that turns into a Doll House

Walking into Safe House at St. Ann’s Warehouse, I didn’t know what to expect, but within minutes, I was completely drawn in. The young performer on stage was electrifying, Kate Gilmore—her presence crackled with emotion, switching between despair, vulnerability, and outright provocation with astonishing rhythm and volatility. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

As someone who lived in London in the early ‘90s, the raw authenticity of it all immediately struck a chord. It felt like an echo of a past I had experienced—gritty, beautiful, unsettling. And for a while, I was completely on board.

But then, something shifted. Or maybe it didn’t, and that was the problem.

The show’s musicality was striking—contemporary opera meets raw performance art—but I struggled to decipher the lyrics, which made it hard to grasp the protagonist’s journey. From what I could gather, she was an Irish woman haunted by childhood dreams of being a princess, still wearing that imagined crown into adulthood. A dangerous aspiration in a world filled with imperfect men. This seemed reinforced by fragmented video projections behind her—disjointed, evocative, but hard to piece together.

She was obviously struggling. Financially, emotionally. At one point, she found a decaying sandwich in a box, drank wine from another. There were hints of a mother, but no clear father figure. Maybe she grew up in a home for children? Birthday parties flashed by, but they weren’t exactly joyful. I kept searching for a clear story arc, a sense of who she was and where she was going, but it remained elusive.

Then, near the end, she turned to the audience. A confrontation. Were we responsible for her suffering? Were we complicit in her circumstances? It started to feel like the creators of the play were playing with a doll:

"Hey, maybe, she could take her clothes off."

"And then, she could have blood dripping from her face."

"She could open a fridge, and the barking of a dog would come out." What was that dog anyway, Cerberus?

"She could lie down in a coffin like Snow White."

"She could return to a childhood bedroom, a stage-set recreation of something lost."

These striking images were powerful, but without understanding the lyrics, they felt more like symbols floating without a clear anchor. The music was strident, the singing amplified—some audience members left, others dozed off.

Visually, the video projections were aesthetically effective, but I struggled to connect them to the protagonist’s unraveling. Was it chaos by design? A dreamscape of trauma and longing? Or was I just missing a crucial piece of the puzzle?

Safe House was a visceral experience—one I admired but couldn’t fully grasp.

Until March 2, 2025

https://stannswarehouse.org/show/safe-house/