The recent flaps over Delaware GOP candidate Christine O’Dennell’s admission to flirting with witchcraft as a teenager has brought back memories of my days at Emmanuel and the conspiracy theories many of the more Bob Jones University inclined teachers used to scare us with. For whatever reason, O’Donnell has reminded me most of the surfs are Satanic rumor my sixth grade teacher adamantly pushed on us poor, impressionable ids on a unrelenting basis.. Some background: Mrs. Radin was a gung ho, BJU fundamentalist. The woman was the type who feared her alphabet soup could one day spell out demonic incantations. Everything in the natural world had an underlying evil to it. He was more than happy to point eery bit of it out to her class, usually after bein prompted by some kids innocent remark about something her had experienced outside of clas, be it music, a movie, or something he had heard his parents say. The Devil was lurking everywhere.
She also had this fascination with describing how often and for what reasons she spanked her five children. Frequently and legion best define the terms. I thought it was disturbing then. As I got older, I figured out it was creepy because the way she described it was revealing an underlying sexual thrill in the practice. Religious inspired repression tends to do that. One of the reasons Muslims revel so much in brutalizing women is the sexual thrill of it. It is an immature and dangerous response by people who have not learned about sex properly. I digress, but it helps set the woman’ mindset up for you.
She could not teach worth a lick, either, but she was the principal’s wife, so we were stuck with her no matter how bad she was.
I do not recall what prompted her Surfs rat. Someone may have brought a lunchbox to scool or just said he liked the cartoon. Many of us, including me, had watched the show for some period of time in the six years it had been on at the time. We knew there was magic and spells and such, but any Christian who would have been bothered y that stuff was not watching anyway. We got the biggest lecture we ever received that school year over the blatant Satanism of the Smurfs. While I do not recall the specific catalyst, the lecture still sticks out in my mind twenty-two years later.
First, the show brought a curse on kids who watched it because of its magical content. The Satanism was first marked when Gargamel, the evil wizard, placed candles in the form of a pentagram on the floor of his house I some episode Radin had never seen or even knew for a fact existed. From that episode on, kids watching were affected by Satanic forces. Specifically, Radin claimed that n episode in which Smurfette‘s pet mouse Squeaky died lead to the unusual deaths of pets all around the country.
I am going to concede to Radin two points here, because it is only fair to cut slack when it can be done. One, Gargamel did famously place candles I a five point formation once in order to cat a spell. Big deal. Two, there was an episode in which Smurfette’s pet mouse died. There is nothing that ever proved a large number of viewers’ pets died simultaneously.
Two, because of the Satanic power inherent in the show, cults dressed as Smurfs I order to worship Satan. I later learned this rumor actually started in Puerto Rico after a television station began airing the Smurfs. Depending on who you believe, either devoutly Catholic parents were upset their kids were becoming obsessed with the show or a revival station was upset by its loss viewers started the rumor to knock the Smurfs off the air.
Finally, somewhere along the line, a child had a toy Smurf that was possessed. The toy compelled the child to kill himself with a knife from the kitchen. One of the first things I ever did when I discovered the internet in college was to search high and low for the source of that rumor. I just tried again before writing this post. There is nothing which sounds even in the ballpark. There is a story floating about that a child brought a Smurf toy into a Jehovah’s Witness service. The toy allegedly came to life, said something like it could not stand here and listen to such blasphemy, and walked out on its own. But seriously, there is no way any JU person would accept the word a Jehovah’s Witness.
As for me, the Smurfs was a frivolous little cartoon I enjoyed for awhile as a kid. Some BJU oriented life lessons/ did not enjoy them quite as much.
