The Minions take on the culture war warriors

Most people who know me know that I love the Minions. Okay, I was late to the game – finally catching up via shorts, social media and mash-up fan art before watching the first two Despicable Me films on TV and then making 2015’s eponymous prequel my first trip to an actual cinema in 16 years. But these days, I even have the t-shirts.

Now I’m not, in general, a big fan of slapstick comedy – my father forced me and my sister to sit through short reels of Laurel & Hardy when we were children and it rather put me off. Later, I grew to appreciate Buser Keaton – though very different – I loved Steve Coogan and John C Reilley in 2018’s Stan and Ollie.

 

But once I’d seen stuff online, I got hooked on the Minions. As I said, the 2015 film tempted me back to a cinema where nothing else had, until that time, worked for a decade and a half, for various reasons.

 

We didn’t see much else that year – what we did see included Star Wars: The Force Awakens at an IMAX – but our cinema going did increase. In 2018, we made 21 cinema visits. In 2019, it was 18. In 2020 – year one of the pandemic, it was five. Last year – the second of the pandemic – 13. This year, the third of COVID, we have already managed five trips to the cinema.

 

In terms of COVID, we’ve been fortunate that our local cinema chain is within walking distance and, with 10 screens and an online booking system, it’s easy to pick times for films when it will be no difficulty to be socially distanced. In that way, it’s the one entertainment medium we currently feel comfortable using.

 

But setting all that aside, Minions: The Rise of Gru was originally slated for a 2020 release and, in my pre-release excitement, I’d had an idea for a blog to explore what I think may be an underestimated element of the Illumination studio’s Gruniverse success. Having just seen the new film, I remembered what I wanted to explore.

 

And the point is that is has an essentially transgressive nature.

 

Co-creator Pierre Coffin has noted that there are no female Minions. In 2015, indeed, he told TheWrap: “Seeing how dumb and stupid they often are, I just couldn’t imagine Minions being girls”.

 

In general, I have a problem with this – it rather reminds me of people who have commented that they struggled to believe that Margaret Thatcher was really a woman, as though women are, by their very nature, intrinsically Good and only go Bad, when influenced by men … The Patriarchy. It ain’t so.

 

But back to the Minions. And a lack of Minion females is not what you see on the screen in any of the five films to feature the little yella fellas. There are cancan dancers and maids, for instance. In the latest film, Bob becomes a female trolley dolly on a plane – who actually offers an infant a peanut. And Bob is far from being alone.

 

Within the wider iconography that includes collectibles, Stuart has appeared as a version of the Bride of Frankenstein to Bob’s Frankenstein’s monster.

 

In the era in which we live, we still have puritans (I have family links to the Plymouth Brethren, so I do know what this means) – in the US particularly, but not exclusively, and some of these are currently going full ‘snowflake’ about things like ‘drag storytime’ where … and take your time here, drag queens sit and tell children stories.

 

Heaven forfend that these far-right, reactionary twerps ever hear that British children have been being subjected to men dressed up as women and women dressed up as men for over a century in pantomimes – as essential Christmas family entertainment!

 

And let’s not even begin to engage with the broader history of cross-dressing and how it was and is used, and what it has allowed artists from Shakespeare to the present to do.

 

There is so much around at present about ‘men pretending to be women’. But there is a very long history of ‘women pretending to be men’ – hence the phrase ‘drag kings’. Those included people who successfully hid within general society to the likes of Marlene Dietrich donning male evening wear, including a bow tie and top hat.

 

And as with things like the Asterix books and much more, British pantomime would have content that children could innocently enjoy, but that also had deeper levels that their parents could find a different reason to giggle at.

 

For example, take Asterix with the Swiss. This includes a little Roman citizen in Switzerland repeatedly losing his bread in the fondue, even though the punishment if you do so is being whipped. He loses his bread deliberately.

 

The joke is quite clear – and perfect proof that Asterix is not only for children.

 

I will be 60 later this year. My attire at present (as for several summers since) is big, baggy, military-style ‘male’ shorts with loads of pockets (dear Odin how I spent decades hating ‘female’ clothing with no feckin’ pockets!), a t-shirt and a pair of Birkies.

 

Yesterday, while on Broadway Market to get a few basic fresh additions to our regular online deliveries from supermarkets, I was called “madam”. Later in the day, in the park, someone called at me: “Hello sweetheart!”. Today, I was addressed by someone as “Lady”.

 

It doesn’t matter how I dress, my fucking tits betray me every time – just as when, after I got the running bug in Lancaster in the 1980s, I’d get calls from drivers telling me: ‘Watch you don’t give yourself a black eye, love!’

 

How do you be yourself, authentically, really?

 

And can you now see, against such a background, why the Minions are, in effect, non-binary wonderful?

Oh ... and while there is nothing really new about the latest film, it’s huge fun, with enough gags and nods to other films to ensure it'll be watched more than once.