Screw: How has Smeshariki remained popular for 20 years, and what do Forrest Gump and Alfred Hitchcock have to do with it?

This year there is a great anniversary of Smeshariki, for which a whole generation has grown – twenty years since the release of the first series about the inhabitants of the Romashkova Valley. But only now, people watching Smeshariki in the morning before school for breakfast (memory unlocked) suddenly began to find philosophical implications, life wisdom, and even references to Alfred Hitchcock, Jim Jarmusch, and American Beauty in short and simple passages. For example, on social networks occasionally flash quotes Kar-Karych in which he says: “You can wait for the right moment in your life and in the end you will not say anything important to each other.” In one of the episodes, what happened between Krosh and Hedgehog is analyzed in terms of psychology. By their twentieth birthday, these round charming characters are approaching cult status – they received several spin-offs, came out in 3D and were rewarded with full counters, so they can even compete with Masha and the Bear, known to almost everyone in popularity. in the world.

What is their secret? Perhaps in the universality of the plot – gentle, instructive and bright for children, and thought-provoking for adults. But for the same reason, they do not lose their relevance even today, and yesterday’s children are ready to parse the seven-minute episodes into new meanings, quotes and videos for social networks. And this, of course, is the virtue of the versatility of the characters – they are not divided into good and evil; this would be typical for a children’s cartoon, in which, as a rule, there are absolutely positive and negative characters. In this sense, Smeshariki are about real people and therefore adult audiences who can recognize themselves in them.

But even more interesting is how the authors managed to fit the classics into the children’s project in almost all their manifestations, from literature to cinema. For example, the phrase “Oh yes Barash, oh yes the son of a sheep” is a reference to lines from AS Pushkin’s letter to Pyotr Vyazemsky, the scene where Nyusha is drowning in sweets is a visual borrowing from American Beauty and the series “Marathon Runner” It was completely erased from “Forrest Gump” (Barash even has a red hat like Tom Hanks, and in a dream the Hedgehog shouts at him “Run, Barash, run!”). Another favorite of ours is the “Sandwich” reference to Alfred Hitchcock’s famous shower scene “Psycho”, the “Hedgehog in the Nebula” series, in which Yuri Norshtein’s Soviet film “Hedgehog in the Fog” is easily recreated. Andrei Tarkovsky’s explicit linking of “Making Meaning to Life” with “Stalker” is acknowledged, and even.

However, the popularity of “Smeshariki” in the media space is not added by such a large number of references as quotes from heroes and memes. For example, Kar-Karych’s phrase “Stay away from me, I’m sick of you, I hate you” is used to describe the situation, and a screenshot from a cartoon is used where a Hedgehog is holding a shovel over its head and shouting. Riot” is used at every opportunity in social networks. Also, three years ago, at the height of TikTok’s popularity, Pin’s song “From the Screw” went viral on the site, spawning three trends at once.

Artist Salavat Shaikhinurov, the first author of Smesharikov, in a comment to Kinopoisk, immediately knew that when he saw the first sketches of the characters (they were also called Slasteny at the time – the inspiration came from the process of creating characters for a board game chocolate factory), this would work. “They are fun and at the same time simple: they are easy to create, easy to make toys, even a child can draw them. And this is also important – so that the audience can draw the characters of their favorite cartoon themselves, ”said the artist. Now their “children” are preparing to change the second dozen: “Smesharikov” is broadcast in 90 countries, they are voiced in more than 60 languages, the number of episodes is already more than three hundred, and there is an Icarus award and even a Golden Eagle nomination.

In fact, Smeshariki did a lot to help relaunch Russian animation in this way – when Krosh, Nyusha, Hedgehog, Barash, Kopatych, Sovunya, Kar-Karych and Pin first appeared on screens in the early 2000s, the industry was going. through creative and production crises. And it was Smeshariki who gave the opportunity to be born to Masha and the Bear, Fixies and Three Cats – they proved that only such stories can and will be successful. At the same time, neither Smeshariki nor its authors seem to plan to stop, and they enter the new decade of their existence not only with the original project, but also with additional stories about sports, science, security and the smallest heroes. (“Malyshariki”). What are they preparing for the audience? We won’t be switching to find out for sure.