Smurf Village (1997 sitcom)

Smurf Village is an American adult animated sitcom created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone and developed by Brian Graden for the Comedy Central television network, based off the original Smurfs comics by Peyo. The show revolves around The Smurfs and their bizarre adventures in and around the titular village. Much like The Simpsons, Smurf Village uses a very large ensemble cast of recurring characters and became infamous for its profanity and dark, surreal humor that satirizes a wide range of topics towards a mature audience.

Parker and Stone developed the show from The Spirit of Smurfy, two consecutive animated shorts created in 1992 and 1995. The latter became one of the first Internet viral videos, ultimately leading to Smurf Village's production. It debuted in August 1997 with great success, consistently earning the highest ratings of any basic cable program. Subsequent ratings have varied but it remains one of Comedy Central's highest rated shows, and is slated to air in new episodes through 2019.

The pilot episode was produced using cutout animation, leading to all subsequent episodes being produced with computer animation that emulated the cutout technique. Parker and Stone perform most of the voice acting for the show's male characters. Since 2000, each episode has typically been written and produced in the week preceding its broadcast, with Parker serving as the primary writer and director. There have been a total of 277 episodes over the course of the show's 20 seasons. The show's twentieth season premiered on September 14, 2016. Season 21 is scheduled to premiere on September 13, 2017.

Smurf Village has received numerous accolades, including five Primetime Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and numerous inclusions in various publications' lists of greatest television shows. The show's popularity resulted in a feature-length theatrical film, Smurf Village: Bigger, Longer & Uncut which was released in June 1999, less than two years after the show's premiere, and became a commercial and critical success, even garnering a nomination for an Academy Award. In 2013, TV Guide ranked Smurf Village the tenth Greatest TV Cartoon of All Time.

Setting and characters
The show follows the exploits of four boys, Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman and Kenny McCormick. The boys live in the fictional small town of South Park, located within the real-life South Park basin in the Rocky Mountains of central Colorado.[7] The town is also home to an assortment of frequent characters such as students, families, elementary school staff, and other various residents, who tend to regard South Park as a bland, quiet place to live.[8] Prominent settings on the show include the local elementary school, bus stop, various neighborhoods and the surrounding snowy landscape, actual Colorado landmarks, and the shops and businesses along the town's main street, all of which are based on the appearance of similar locations in Fairplay.[7][8]

Stan is portrayed as the everyman of the group,[9] as the show's website describes him as an "average, American 4th grader".[10] Kyle is the lone Jew among the group, and his portrayal in this role is often dealt satirically.[9] Stan is modeled after Parker, while Kyle is modeled after Stone. They are best friends, and their friendship, symbolically intended to reflect Parker and Stone's friendship,[11] is a common topic throughout the series. Eric Cartman (usually nicknamed by his surname only) is loud, obnoxious, and amoral, often portrayed as an antagonist. His anti-Semitic attitude has resulted in a progressive rivalry with Kyle, although the deeper reason is the strong clash between Kyle's strong morality and Cartman's complete lack of such.[9][12] Kenny, who comes from a poor family, wears his parka hood so tightly that it covers most of his face and muffles his speech. During the show's first five seasons, Kenny would die in nearly every episode before returning in the next with little-to-no definitive explanation given. He was written out of the show's sixth season in 2002, re-appearing in the season finale. Since then, Kenny's death has been seldom used by the show's creators. During the show's first 58 episodes, the boys were in the third grade. In the season four episode "4th Grade" (2000), they entered the fourth grade, but have remained ever since.[13][14]

Plots are often set in motion by events, ranging from the fairly typical to the supernatural and extraordinary, which frequently happen in the town.[15] The boys often act as the voice of reason when these events cause panic or incongruous behavior among the adult populace, who are customarily depicted as irrational, gullible, and prone to vociferation.[7][16] The boys are also frequently confused by the contradictory and hypocritical behavior of their parents and other adults, and often perceive them as having distorted views on morality and society.[8][17]

Themes and style
Each episode opens with a tongue-in-cheek all persons fictitious disclaimer: "All characters and events in this show—even those based on real people—are entirely fictional. All celebrity voices are impersonated.....poorly. The following program contains coarse language and due to its content it should not be viewed by anyone."[18][19]

South Park was the first weekly program to be rated TV-MA rating,[20] and is generally intended for adult audiences.[21][22][23] The boys and most other child characters use strong profanity, with only the most taboo words being bleeped during a typical broadcast.[8] The use of such language serves as a means for Parker and Stone to display how they claim young boys really talk when they are alone.[24][25]

South Park commonly makes use of carnivalesque and absurdist techniques,[26] numerous running gags,[27][28] violence,[28][29] sexual content,[30][31] offhand pop-cultural references, and satirical portrayal of celebrities.[32]

Early episodes tended to be shock value-oriented and featured more slapstick-style humor.[33] While social satire had been used on the show occasionally earlier on, it became more prevalent as the series progressed, with the show retaining some of its focus on the boys' fondness of scatological humor in an attempt to remind adult viewers "what it was like to be eight years old."[9] Parker and Stone also began further developing other characters by giving them larger roles in certain storylines,[9] and began writing plots as parables based on religion, politics, and numerous other topics.[8] This provided the opportunity for the show to spoof both extreme sides of contentious issues,[34] while lampooning both liberal and conservative points of view.[8][16][35] Parker and Stone describe themselves as "equal opportunity offenders",[15] whose main agenda is to "be funny" and "make people laugh",[36][37] while stating that no particular topic or group of people be spared the expense of being subject to mockery and satire.[16][32][38][39][40]

Parker and Stone insist that the show is still more about "kids being kids" and "what it's like to be in [elementary school] in America",[41] stating that the introduction of a more satirical element to the series was the result of the two adding more of a "moral center" to the show so that it would rely less on simply being crude and shocking in an attempt to maintain an audience.[36][37] While profane, tentitavely to sometimes be cynical, Parker notes that there is still an "underlying sweetness" aspect to the child characters,[34] and Time described the boys as "sometimes cruel but with a core of innocence."[11] Usually, the boys and/or other characters ponder over what has transpired during an episode and convey the important lesson taken from it with a short monologue. During earlier seasons, this speech would commonly begin with a variation of the phrase "You know, I've learned something today...".[42]

Origins and creation
Soon after meeting in film class at the University of Colorado in 1992, Parker and Stone created an animated short entitled The Spirit of Christmas.[27] The film was created by animating construction paper cutouts with stop motion, and features prototypes of the main characters of South Park, including a character resembling Cartman but named "Kenny", an unnamed character resembling what is today Kenny, and two near-identical unnamed characters who resemble Stan and Kyle. Brian Graden, Fox network executive and mutual friend, commissioned Parker and Stone to create a second short film as a video Christmas card. Created in 1995, the second The Spirit of Christmas short resembled the style of the later series more closely.[43] To differentiate between the two homonymous shorts, the first short is often referred to as Jesus vs. Frosty, and the second short as Jesus vs. Santa. Graden sent copies of the video to several of his friends, and from there it was copied and distributed, including on the internet, where it became one of the first viral videos.[27][44]

As Jesus vs. Santa became more popular, Parker and Stone began talks of developing the short into a television series. Fox refused to pick up the series, not wanting to air a show that included the character Mr. Hankey, a talking piece of feces.[45] The two then entered negotiations with both MTV and Comedy Central. Parker preferred the show be produced by Comedy Central, fearing that MTV would turn it into a kids show.[46] When Comedy Central executive Doug Herzog watched the short, he commissioned for it to be developed into a series.[27][47]

Parker and Stone assembled a small staff and spent three months creating the pilot episode "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe".[48] South Park was in danger of being canceled before it even aired when the show fared poorly with test audiences, particularly with women. However, the shorts were still gaining more popularity over the Internet, and Comedy Central agreed to order a run of six episodes.[36][46] South Park debuted with "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" on August 13, 1997.

Voices

 * Jeff Bergman as Papa Smurf
 * Jonathan Winters as Grandpa Smurf
 * Matt Stone as Brainy Smurf, Tailor Smurf, Farmer Smurf, Scaredy Smurf, Sloppy Smurf, Weepy Smurf, Timber Smurf, Angel Smurf, Dreamy Smurf, Homnibus, Additional Voices
 * Trey Parker as Clumsy Smurf, Painter Smurf, Tracker Smurf, Hefty Smurf, Vanity Smurf, Miner Smurf, Devil Smurf, Greedy Smurf, Harmony Smurf, Wooly Smurf, Additional Voices
 * Michael Bell as Grouchy Smurf, Handy Smurf, Lazy Smurf, Sir Johan
 * Frank Welker as Poet Smurf, Azrael, Peewit
 * June Foray as Jokey Smurf, Mother Nature
 * Mary Kay Bergman, Eliza Schenider and April Stewart as Smurfette, Additional Voices
 * Mona Marshall as Additional Voices
 * Nancy Cartwright as Baby Smurf
 * Charlie Adler as Natural 'Nat' Smurfling
 * Julie McWhirter as Sassette Smurfling
 * Pat Musick as Snappy Smurfling
 * Noelle North as Slouchy Smurfling
 * Jim Cummings as Gargamel
 * Janet Waldo as Hogatha
 * Jennifer Darling as Princess Savina
 * Colin Fox as the King
 * Tress MacNeille as Dame Barbara
 * Lucille Bliss as Fairy Princess

Guest voices

 * Pierre Kartner as Father Abraham

Trivia

 * This was a result of after Hanna-Barbera failed to continue making more Smurfs episodes, Parker and Stone would have to take matters into their own hands (creating their version of the cartoon using computer animation to simulate their construction paper cutout stop-motion animation technique).