Who the fuck calls french monkeys? Frogs maybe, but not a monkey. It's slightly derogatory in some cases, but not the way I think of it, and for a very good reason. (I still probably wouldn't go out of my way to call a French person a frog.)

I learned the French being referenced as frogs from Art Spiegelman’s Maus when I was a kid and it was in a positive context. The way he used animals in his books was brilliant. While the trend obviously started from cats and mice (Nazis and Jews), the use of other animals was super interesting. It kinda flipped the meaning of the terms in a very somber way.

I can't quite put my finger on it, or even put words to it, but expressing the slang as actual characters is something to take very seriously in its underlying meaning. Regardless, Spiegelman didn't pull any punches when it came to showing how nasty people could actually be.