Should I Feel Judged for Choosing to Watch Minions?
My slight discomfort at going to Minions & Monsters as a 20 year old.
Having scrolled through social media clips, trailers, and adverts which made me laugh, I decided to go and see the Minions & Monsters film on a mid-week afternoon. However, temporarily at the stage of booking tickets online, and intensely when entering and leaving the cinema, I felt judged. Judged for going to see a kid’s film. Judged for not choosing something more serious. Judged for just wanting to see some little yellow characters which make me smile.
But then, why should I care what others might think? I didn’t see a single person physically looking at me with a confused expression. Indeed, I booked my tickets at home and the cinema was expectedly empty for a mid-week show, before the main school holidays.
In this article, I would like to explore, but also slightly test and challenge three potential reasons for my discomfort: 1.) age certificates, 2.) priorities in life, and 3.) embarrassment around admitting a guilty pleasure. Moreover, I will leave it up to you to ask yourself how much you do, or should feel these pressures when you next watch a kid’s film.
First, I would like to clarify that by ‘kid’s film’ I mean those marked with a U, or a PG certificate. Such films, including Minions & Monsters, are of course recognised for things like comic violence, and slightly rude humour.
Even kid’s films contain jokes only adults can understand and even if scenes like the death of Mufasa in The Lion King might be upsetting, the narratives and themes in these films are designed to be digestible to the undeveloped brain. This rationale leads one to conclude that U’s and PG’s are beneath most adults on an intellectual level as much as anything else.
So, maybe some of my discomfort at going to watch Minions & Monsters comes from common human insecurities about not being clever enough? Yet, on deeper reflection, a conflation between age rating and cleverness should not go unchallenged.
By no means are all 12s, 15s, and 18s ‘clever’ in terms of societal appropriateness for instance. Some ‘adult films’ can be incredibly depraved, inappropriate or simply lacking in thematic depth. Take for example the sexualised, unkind, and simply disrespectful depiction of women in The Wolf of Wall Street. Should I not feel as, if not more uncomfortable going to see an adult, vulgar film like this, rather than the intellectually inferior, but far less offensive Minions & Monsters film for example?
This brings me onto questions around my priorities in life when going to Minions & Monsters. I have already indicated the challenges in establishing hierarchy in terms of big screen entertainment, so maybe there is no reason for me to be overly concerned about my film choice. Nevertheless, I felt that I could, and arguably should have found something more productive to do.
By thinking this way, maybe I underestimate the value of entertainment for one’s mental health? Despite this, I do have some reservations over whether I could have been entertained and educated at the same time. Should I have looked for some sort of film based on a true story for example? On the other hand, maybe pure laughter in itself is a justifiable pursuit, far too often dismissed?
There is an infinite list of other activities which I could imagine to be more useful than watching Minions & Monsters. But at the same time, my self-criticism could potentially be a little too extreme. Arguably, there are many other worse ways in which I could have spent my time as a university student, on holiday and without summer work.
To start wrapping up what was supposed to be a short reflective piece, I must now touch upon the final topic of guilty pleasures. In the same manner as it is human nature to dislike the feeling of intellectual inferiority and question one’s priorities in life, it is only natural to suppress potentially unique interests. Standing out from the pack is often uncomfortable.
But who knows, most other adults might love Minions and no-one should feel ashamed about discussing this. Perhaps I should start talking about this and other ‘kid’s films’ as much as any other high culture, from serious art exhibitions to high-brow literature? Only by discussing things like Minions will I find out if my fear of standing out is rational here. Indeed, how many guilty pleasures don’t need to be seen as guilty at all, and are in fact shared pleasures?
Finally, is there something to be said that not sharing one’s own enjoyment of one thing with others allows individuals to build their own sensation of a unique connection to that thing?
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