Here's an idea.
What if we are the minions?
[INAUDIBLE MINION SOUNDS]
So I want to be perfectly honest.
Having now watched several of the movies,
I am still not entirely sure what exactly a minion is.
But that doesn't really matter, since one, that kind of seems
to be the point, and two, I am sure of the fact
that they are everywhere.
Movies, flatware, toys, games, clothing,
Buzzfeed lists about the fact they are everywhere.
Minions are like the gray goo of media culture
right now, an endlessly expanding mass, rapidly growing
and replicating, filling in every gap,
consuming every resource, and converting it
to a like substance until there is
nothing that is not begoggled, pill-shaped, and yellow.
Stopping short of over dramatic predictions of fire,
brimstone, and overall end times presaged by Kevin, Stewart,
or Bob, let's agree that the minion
does occupy a particular place in the pantheon of cartoon
cinema characters.
Their existence, their very narrative purpose,
is predicated upon the purpose others have for them.
They are legion, but they are legion for-- hire?
I don't know.
That seems wrong.
---answer to an even higher authority.
There's something endemic to minion-ness,
which predisposes them to seek the service of a nefarious head
honcho.
Theirs is not work, it's need.
But it is also fraught.
Minions search for ever more powerful villains
to assist and, through wacky hijinks resulting
from that assistance, undo.
This is the bizarre duality on the minion,
to always be working almost reflexively
toward a world where the very thing required for survival
is eradicated or at the very least disempowered, which,
I mean, they're sort of doing in our world, too, right?
If we think of universal's ubiquitous marketing material
minions as minions themselves-- and, I mean, why wouldn't we?
The twofold purpose of these round, yellow dudes
remains, assuming we choose to consider major market
entertainment as some kind of villain.
On the one hand, those minions help
to accomplish the task every major motion picture
studio needs to accomplish.
Advertising, marketing, brand building.
The more ever-present the goggled horde,
the more accustomed we become to them.
The more accustomed, the more comfortable.
The more comfortable, the more likely, when given the chance,
we react positively to the suggestion
of going to see what this minion movie is all about anyway.
I don't know, it looks fun, you guys, don't you think?
Mere exposure effect in action, among many other things.
But on the other hand, we also reach a saturation point.
We reach peak minion.
When the grey minion goo has consumed all available
resources and what's left is only the irreducible super
alloy resolve of hardened internet [BLEEP] posters,
the backlash begins and spreads.
It might be small at first, relegated
to corners of the internet where nothing is sacred.
There is only the profane and the mere visibility
or even existence of something is justification
for taking it down a peg.
But as simultaneously the grey goo minion process continues
in other corners of the internet,
on our parents' and grandparents' Facebook pages,
in Instagrams posted by former coworkers or high school
friends, it's easier to recognize the utility
of a strict, acerbic cynicism, of wanting to distance
ourselves from the hordes of minion lovers by advertising
our minion intolerance far and wide.
This is the undoing effect, the disempowering minion effect.
So in Meatspace, as in the films,
the minions which have set out to expand
the empire of their questionably hostile ringleaders
ultimately construct something off a downfall by virtue
of their very nature-- bumbling, corny, ubiquitous.
But what if this is all wrong or partly wrong
and the minions are not really the minions?
Or in addition to the minions being the minions,
we also are the minions.
Hear me out.
First, it's easy to see people non-ironically
celebrating their love of minion kind
as fitting the minion mold.
But what about the flip side of the yellow coin?
Posting vicious minion hate.
That might also accomplish the same spreading
of the minion sermon.
It might even be exactly what we are supposed to do,
our purpose.
I don't mean in the grand the spiritual sense,
in that our ultimate purpose here on Earth
is to hate upon bits of popular culture likely to stand
the test of time in a manner comparable to sand
drawings made at low tide or an open bag of kibble
in the presence of an unattended toddler.
I'm asking if it is our purpose in the eyes of the producers.
The people making and selling the minions.
Are we in some way channeling the minions
by helping their grand project of making sure minions
are everywhere while we intend to hinder it
by grumbling, a kind of reverse minion reflex.
sbenthal raised a question on Twitter in response
to an Awl article titled "How Minions Destroyed
the Internet," when we talk about media
we don't like in ways which makes it super clear
that we don't like it, are we still possibly perpetuating
the theoretical hierarchies we've
discussed in recent episodes of Idea Channel?
Even reacting disparagingly, it's
possible that we are laboring for unseen
profiting producers in that we're
talking about their thing.
And what's worse, maybe we are constructing the idea
that we are in control.
Ha ha, your movie is done.
I used it as fodder for my internet humor machine.
Look how done it is.
Your movie.
So done.
When in reality, the greatest and most practical effect
is that more and more people seeing more and more minions
think, huh.
What is the deal with this whole minions thing?
This is a conundrum in two parts, I think.
First, the age old and essential question,
is there such a thing as bad publicity,
and second, whatever the publicity, can
or should we be cognizant and avoidant of reinforcing
cultural hierarchies?
Even in our joking judgment of the minions, maybe
it's important to be earnest in our condemnation,
to remind people of that power dynamic.
Minions are everywhere because Universal Pictures
has paid literally millions of dollars
to guarantee that is the case.
The goal is that you feel tyrannised by them,
that if you are not familiar, you feel like an outsider.
The foundation for their popularity
may be economically constructed, but clearly
hundreds of thousands of people have adopted it in earnest.
Can we even say it's earnest at this point?
Mere exposure effect in action, among other things.
Telling people they don't actually
like the things that they like is complicated and dangerous
business.
It sets up a whole other kind of hierarchy.
So we're going to table that talk.
Instead focus on this other question.
Can you talk smack or even just critically about something
without helping it accomplish its goals?
Without also advertising it?
This is tough, because advertising, like pornography
and a mediocre toupee, is really something you just kind of know
it when you see it.
For the advertising industry specifically,
all of the things that you and I would confidently
label as advertisement comprise advertising.
Nothing more, nothing less.
The late great ad man Winston Fletcher
described ads as paid for communication
intended to inform and/or persuade one or more people.
So in the strict and literal sense, no.
Minion hate memes and critical pop culture
analysis of minions, like this video, are not advertising.
But ads exist as a function of many things.
The coexistence of spaces and populations
which sustain and respond to them,
competing products and services which require them,
because if it's the only one or one of a kind, why advertise?
That's how Huy Fong feels about Sriracha, at least.
But most importantly, advertisements
exist because we the consumers have free time.
There are times and spaces where we are open and receptive,
sometimes passively, to advertisements.
It's better in a bacon bowl.
But as the spaces which seem appropriate to place
advertising becoming more numerous and as our free time
may or may not continually resemble structured work,
we've become hyper attuned and incredibly suspicious
of being advertised to sneakily, dishonestly, in the sense
that we are being communicated to about something
and the aims of that communication are unclear.
Insofar as we generally consider advertising something which
could potentially increase the awareness
and therefore profitability of anything,
then these things are almost certainly advertising.
Griping about the ubiquity of some bothersome thing
reinforces the idea that it is ubiquitous.
Subjecting something to the particular brand
of internet cynicism we're talking about
reinforces the idea that it is worthy of scorn.
And if it happens absent a literal,
functional reminder of the context in which such things
are capable of being made and plastered onto what sometimes
feels like literally every object in existence,
then maybe we have adopted the role of some kind of reverse
minion, a labouring mass intending to disempower these
things, to take them down a peg, while simultaneously being very
helpful?
What do you guys think?
How does minion hate and things like it
count or not count as advertising?
Let us know in the comments, and I will respond to some of them
in next week's comment response video.
In this week's comment response video,
I talk about your thoughts regarding the three
laws of the internet episode.
And man, do I have some explaining to do.
If you want to watch that, you can click right here.
This week's episode was brought you
by the hard work of these minions.
We have a Facebook, an IRC, and a subreddit.
Links in the doobly doo.
I also have a small bit of news.
If you are going to Vidcon in Anaheim next week,
I will be at Vidcon, as will a lot of the other PBS Digital
Studios crew.
PBS is actually putting together a chill lounge that
will be going on all weekend, so you can go and you can chill.
It'll be a chill sitch.
On Thursday and Friday from 2:00 to 4:00 in the chill lounge,
there's going to be some art assignment stuff going on.
So that is really exciting.
And on Saturday from 2:00 to 4:00 in the chill lounge,
there is going to be a meet up.
So if you want to come and chill with all of the chill peeps
from PBS Digital Studios, come to the chill lounge
on Saturday.
And I'm also doing a panel and a workshop,
so if you're interested in checking those things out,
we'll put a link to my schedule in the doobly doo.
I hope to see you.
Come say hey.