“Minx”: pornography, feminism and a magazine that sparked a revolution

In one of Minx's episodes, a group of university feminists join a Catholic group to destroy copies of the first erotic magazine for women. It's a perfect scene that sums up the intelligent and countercurrent spirit of this brilliant comedy created by Ellen Rapoport and premiered on HBO Max.

These are not easy times for series. The culture of cancellation means that every new proposal is examined with a magnifying glass. That's why Minx stands out so easily: not only is it fun and well filmed, but it brings a clever breath of fresh air. It is a comedy that does not respect dogmas and that opens, always with humor, questions about ideologies, the seventies and the present day.

The series takes place in Los Angeles during the second wave of feminism in the United States. Which is also the time of the porn rage in that city. Minx unites both things in a surprising but not implausible way, since the debate existed in real life, beyond this fiction.

Joyce (Ophelia Lovibond) is a young feminist trying to get editors for a magazine. No one is interested in the project until he crosses paths with Doug (Jake Johnson), a publisher of pornographic publications. The only one interested in Joyce's proposal proposes him to make an erotic magazine for women, an innovation for the market. And also for the original idea of feminist publication that Joyce imagined.

Both projects seem incompatible, but little by little the points that they may have in common emerge. Joyce brings with her all feminist theory and Doug lives in the concrete world of the situation of women in industry: both will learn from each other. The richest part of the series is found in the entire staff of the publishing house and in the search for sponsors, as well as in the rejection they receive when they start promoting it. The idea of a magazine in which the foldout of the center is a naked man and not a woman produces a commotion in society.

The charm of the series is that contrast in theories — in this case feminist — and reality. Joyce has the best intentions and her view on machismo is correct, but when it comes to women's freedom and her desire to be what they want, she has a lot to learn. In the middle she is awakening consciences, always with a lot and very well executed humor.

A few years ago a series appealed to the nostalgia of past decades and created a non-dogmatic feminist comedy. It was about Glow, which reached three seasons and was canceled during the pandemic. Minx remembers many of the virtues of that series and at times seems clearly inspired by it. Each episode is an evolution of what was presented at the beginning, with a lucidity that today seems a little more necessary than ever in television productions.

Everything else — a great setting, a superlative soundtrack, the hairstyles of the decade in all their glory — is of course not lacking. The series is also inevitably explicit in its exhibition of naked male bodies, which it contributes to the comedy and is still very different from everything that is known. There is talk of sex, feminism, bodies, pleasure, ideology, prejudice, morality and also machismo, which in the eyes of 2022 is more than evident.

Minx, a series to which in Latin America the phrase One for Them was added in the title, is full of very profound concepts presented as the funniest and funniest of comedies. A portrait of the period that is back in force today, a story that shows that there is room to think freely, without being enclosed by dogmas and without accepting what is wrong with a society. Without a doubt, one of the comedies of the year.

KEEP READING: