#Minions banana song fast tv#

Originating during the 1970s economic boom in Japan, Hello Kitty became popular in Northeast and Southeast Asia, eventually reaching the West as well. In 2015, the Hello Kitty brand was estimated to be worth over $7 billion. Their inscrutability makes Minions the ideal globalist product - they manage to be likable, relevant, and most importantly, enigmatic wherever they go.īefore the Minions roamed the Earth, there was Hello Kitty. Within this heated context, Minions serve as clumsy cultural mediators, unearthing differences and similarities from a playful standpoint. Concurrently in India, Japan, Austria, France, and the Netherlands, far-right political parties have become increasingly prominent, reflecting a sentiment that globalization has disenfranchised the working and middle classes.

#Minions banana song fast tv#

In 2015, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, followed by the United States electing a reality TV star populist whose motto is “America First” as president. While the Minions conquered global pop culture during the 2010s, in the political sphere, a growing, often xenophobic backlash against globalization has been brewing. With the release of Despicable Me 3 on June 30 and a Minions 2 set to drop in 2020, these androgynous, amorphous yellow blobs are here to stay.

And yet the Minions phenomenon appears to be gaining momentum. They are simply subservient to antiheroes and villains. Unlike SpongeBob SquarePants, Mickey Mouse, Pixar characters, and comic book superheroes, the Minions don’t have any distinctive personality traits or narrative and they are completely devoid of the heavy-handed lessons of friendship, love, and family that are essential elements for children's cartoons. Their likenesses dominate Tumblr, Pinterest, and Facebook newsfeeds alongside mundane, innocuous jokes. Not only are they a Hollywood money machine, but they have also become one of the most omnipresent internet memes. In 2016, they officially became the mascot of Universal Studios. After appearing in the 2010 computer-animated comedy Despicable Me as the henchmen of the evil Gru, they were given their own origin-story film Minions in 2015, which eventually grossed $1.59 billion worldwide. The Minions - small yellow creatures who dress in blue overalls and goggles - are an entertainment industry powerhouse. In spite of their global popularity, it turns out that the Minions are, in fact, ESL kryptonite. For the rest of class, they screamed “bachata” when I wanted them to recite the alphabet and “potato tokati” after I told them to sit down. My students instantly started mimicking the Minions’ language. “Bababaanana potatoooo, tokati, potato, bachata, bababananna, bababanana…”

My students were learning the word 'banana.' Mission accomplished.

I turned on the projector, pulled down the blinds, and took a seat.Įveryone started singing along. And so I assumed that the Minions - these yellow, squishy enigmas that were ubiquitous in Vietnam - would be a safe bet to gain their attention and trust. A week before the lesson, my students were waving Minions moon lanterns at our school’s Mid-Autumn Festival celebration. When I was teaching at an ESL center in Huế, Vietnam, in the fall of 2015, the administrators encouraged us to start off lessons with English songs as a way to engage the students.

I played a clip of the Minions covering the Beach Boys hit “Barbara Ann” and instructed my classroom of 4- and 5-year-olds to sing along.