A raunchy cartoon with a sentimental centre
I remember a high school friend describing the morning after a party at his place. Something like seven people stayed over and they all woke up with puddles of vomit inches from their faces.
That’s the thing about growing up. It’s gross. Coming-of-age tales frequently stress the angst of puberty, but rarely feature the puke, poop, and jizz-soaked tube socks.Big Mouth is different. The new Netflix original cartoon, created by Nick Kroll, Andrew Goldberg, Mark Levin, and Jennifer Flackett, isn’t just relentlessly vulgar and scatological. It’s also a groundbreaking depiction of pubescent sexuality.
The expletives flow thick and fast as Maurice the Hormone Monster (Nick Kroll) pelts the young Andrew (John Mulaney) with pervy thoughts and urges. Andrew’s friend Jessi (Jessi Klein) meets her own uninhibited companion, Connie the Hormone Monstress (a standout performance by Maya Rudolph), as she gets her first period and discovers her own budding desires. Nick (also Kroll) hasn’t caught the hormones yet, but also has a fantastical familiar — the nutty ghost of Duke Ellington (Jordan Peele), who lives in his attic.
The show rejoices in transgressing boundaries, whether by openly addressing the viewer, switching genres willy-nilly, or refusing to pin down its internal logic.It also quite explicitly discusses 12- and 13-year-olds having sex (albeit mostly with pillows). Jessi’s vagina (voiced by none other than Kristen Wiig) even gets a decent amount of screen time. The characters themselves debate this particular transgression in a later episode: “Isn’t that basically just like child pornography?” says one of the kids.
Maybe Big Mouth should be viewed as an unexpected companion piece to Larry Clark’s Kids, the controversial 1995 film that follows a group of teenage hoodlums as they meander New York City, expose each other to HIV, and maybe kill a guy. The vision of Kids, which The Washington Post described as “disturbingly voyeuristic,” is undeniably bleak — if anything, it reinforces old ideas that desire can only lead to doom. Big Mouth, on the contrary, gives its characters the chance to deal with the fallout from their various experiences.
Yes, the kids of Big Mouth get drunk, hurt each other’s feelings, and watch way too much porn. But they also walk it off, apologize, and… try to watch less porn.The characterization of the Hormone Monsters, Maurice and Connie, illustrates the show’s sophisticated vision. As manifestations of the weird intrusive thoughts that populate horny imaginations (Andrew ejaculates to the image of a particularly plump tomato in an early episode), the monsters are the kids’ worst nightmares. They’re also their best friends. They push the kids to do and say foolhardy things, but the kids push back, and the monsters listen. As loud and scary as the monsters can be, the kids usually come out on top, like in Maurice Sendak’s classic Where the Wild Things Are.
So much about Big Mouth screams “adults only,” but it’s hard not to think that a lot of kids around the age of 12 or 13 could stand to benefit from watching it.The show’s creators have echoed this sentiment in interviews, expressing hope that perhaps parents and their children will watch the show together. Let’s hope other creators take inspiration: we need more shows like Big Mouth, where sex is scary, but also fun, weird, gross, and hilarious — in other words, where sex is real.
Photo courtesy of Hivplusmag