Nimona released in June 2023 and instantly blew up within the queer community. People were praising the movie left and right and recommending it to other LGBTQ+ people. And it’s no surprise why– the movie is unapologetic in its queerness, with the main character Nimona being genderfluid and her partner-in-crime Ballister being a gay man. And beyond the literal on-screen queer characters, the general theme and message of the movie hits close to home for the community.
Nimona is a shape-shifter and is ostracized for it because no one else puts in the effort to understand. They assume that she must be dangerous, despite the fact that she just tries to be friendly. Because of how everyone treats her, Nimona becomes spiteful toward the society that treated her that way. Hateful feelings towards general society are very common for LGBTQ+ people, especially youth. Why should you have any love for a world that doesn’t love you? When I was a young trans man freshly coming to terms with my identity, I too was angry and hopeless at my position in society. Though I’ve made great steps towards finding my place and becoming more hopeful, sometimes it’s hard to feel confidence in a world that so badly wants me gone.
Ballister is similarly ostracized because the people believe he killed the queen. While Nimona rejects the society that rejects her, Ballister desperately tries to get back to where he once was. This in itself is very similar to what the transgender community was going through around 2016/2017. The community was split between people who wanted everyone to conform as strongly as they could to the binary and fit the stereotypes of their new gender, as well as dismiss non-binary people, in an attempt to please broader society and convince them we’re worthy of rights. The other side was made up of people who didn’t want conditional rights– if there are so many rules to meet to have them, then they could easily be taken away. Over the years, the community has broadly taken to the latter opinion. This ties in to Queer Performative Theory: using ourselves to critique the strict expectations set in place for people’s genders and sexualities. In reality, there is no right or wrong way to be a man or a woman, and some queer people are proving that point with their performances of their own genders.
On top of that, Ballister is a middle-aged gay man while Nimona is a genderqueer teen. He struggles to understand her and is displeased with her shapeshifting. At one point she shapeshifts into a boy to go undercover, to which Ballister exasperatedly remarks, “and now you’re a boy,” and Nimona replies with “I am today.” He represents the disconnect between older LGBTQ+ people and the younger generation, as well as the disconnect between cis LGBTQ+ people and genderqueer people. They’re part of the same community, but they’re still very different from each other. However, throughout the course of the movie, Ballister makes the attempt to understand Nimona, which no one else has done. They bridge the gap between their very separate yet similar identities and work together, of course getting their happy ending.
Nimona is a movie that inspires hope among its queer audience. Such unapologetic, on-screen queerness being in a kid’s movie is something that we couldn’t have dreamed of just 10 years ago. Now we have queer characters for kids to look up to, or at least their presences can normalize queerness for kids. In the world we live in right now, hope is incredibly important for LGBTQ+ people. It can often seem news is only negative, with people wanting our rights to be taken away. And having our kids be exposed to queerness helps ensure that future generations won’t be as hateful as people are now. So the best we can do is to create more art and media that highlights queerness, both to elevate LGBTQ+ voices and experiences, and to expose kids to queerness and help normalize it. Then we can live in a world where queer youth can truly feel confident in their experiences and the society they occupy.