If you haven’t yet watched the trailer for Nick Kroll’s Netflix original animated series Big Mouth, you should take a peek. But be warned, it is highly NSFW. And you should probably watch it with headphones.
Here’s the filthiest official trailer for a show about kids masturbating & getting their periods that u will watch today. #BigMouth #sept29 pic.twitter.com/D1pMaNQCVO
— nick kroll (@nickkroll) September 12, 2017
The show portrays the ups and downs of life’s most awkward stages, and as Variety describes it,
“All genders are treated equally in the glorious nightmare of puberty.”
If you watched the trailer, you can obviously tell that the show is slated to be very raunchy and taboo. I mean, a cartoon of a teen girl’s talking vagina isn’t going to be well-received by everyone. But some critics are taking it too far, calling for a boycott of Netflix for allowing what they describe as animated child porn that promotes pedophilia.
From my understanding, the point of the show is to de-stigmatize sexuality, masturbation, and all of the lovely (awkward) feelings, behaviors, and questions that come along with puberty. Yes, it depicts it in an explicit way that may not be for everyone. But I think some critics are missing the mark on some of there critiques.
For example, blogger Activist Mommy slams the show and asks, “Do we really need deviant sexual behavior to be normalized?”
So, masturbation is “deviant sexual behavior?” No wonder Gina Rodriguez used to feel guilty for masturbating!
Others criticize that the show is too explicit for young viewers (to which I can agree), but is unsuitable for older viewers as it depicts sexual activity in kids. But again, the point is to make older viewers laugh as they mentally go back in time and relate to their own awkward pubescent years.
There is no denying that the show isn’t for everyone. The nature of the content and its depiction is explicit. But by condemning the feelings and behaviors themselves circles us right back to why the show was made in the first place, to de-stigmatize this kind of attitude.
The show premieres on Netflix tomorrow, September 29. The presentation may not be for everyone, I can agree to that. But I think interested viewers and more neutral critics should give it a chance before we automatically condemn sexual impulses in teens as “offensive.”
