Les Shadoks

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Les Shadoks was the invention of the seminal French cartoonist Jacques Rouxel (February 26, 1931 - April 25, 2004) and became a major French TV phenomenon in the 1960s.

The Shadoks were bird-like in appearance (in the tradition of cartoon birds they had beaks with teeth), were characterised by ruthlessness and stupidity and inhabited a two dimensional planet.

Another set of creatures in the Shadok canon are the Gibis, who are the opposite to the Shadoks in that they are intelligent but vulnerable and also inhabit a two-dimensional planet.

Rouxel claims that the term Shadok obtains some derivation from Captain Haddock of Hergé's The Adventures of Tintin and the Gibis (who wear Bowler hats, which unlike their heads, contain their brains) are essentially GBs (Great Britons). Another possible source for the origin of Les Shadoks, suggested by Chris Allen (London), the annotator / copy editor of Atlas Press is that the name derives from Les Chats D'Oc (The Cats of Occitan), which is a southern region of France predominantly, but also incorporates a part of north west Italy, Northern Spain and Monaco. The joke, therefore, would originate from the inhabitants of Northern and Central France and be directed at the calculating, overcautious and impassionate Brits and the ridiculous, naive Southern French. Jacques Rouxel was, after all, born in Normandy.

Pre-dating and in many ways exceeding the strangeness of the bizarre humour "pioneered" by Monty Python nearly a decade after the Shadoks first appeared, the Shadoks were also a significant literary, cultural and philosophical phenomenon in France.

Even today, the French occasionally use satirical comparisons with the Shadoks for policies and attitudes that they consider absurd. The Shadoks were noted for mottos such as:

  • "Why do simple when one can do complicated?"
  • "When one tries continuously, one ends up succeeding. Thus, the more one fails, the more one has chances that it works."
  • "If there is no solution, it is because there is no problem."
  • "In order for there to be the fewest discontent, one only has to always hit on the same ones."

The Shadoks were also noted for their seemingly useless and endless pumping — as the Shadok say: "Better to pump even if nothing happens than to risk something worse happening by not pumping".

In 1973 The Shadoks appeared on Thames Television, London's ITV company, in the early evening. Kenneth Robinson provided the narration in English.

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