Hormone Monsters Are Raging: An Analysis of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Childhood in Big Mouth

• In Event: More Than/Other Than Human Educations: Mentors, Hormone Monsters, Elves, Androids, Gods, and Us

Abstract

This paper centers Netflix’s Big Mouth (2017-present), an animated television series created and written by Nick Kroll and his childhood friend, Andrew Goldberg. The show follows a racially diverse crew of 7th-grade protagonists – fictionalized versions of Nick and Andrew as well as Jessi, Missy, and Jay – growing up in Westchester County, New York. Big Mouth offers both adults and children a landscape to interrogate their sexual identities and desires through the characters of the Hormone Monsters and their relationships with the children they serve. Each child's relationship with their Hormone Monster makes visible the socio-cultural turmoil regarding race, gender, and sexuality with regard to childhoods at play in America (Buckingham, 2011; Kidd, 2018; Kinder, 1991). Interrogating the narratives that Big Mouth produces allows a place to explore differing American childhoods.

I argue that the presence or absence of the Hormone Monster becomes an apt metaphor for how certain fragments of American society envision the intersection of childhood, race, sexuality, and gender. First, I highlight the show's main plotlines and place it in dialogue with mainstream concerns regarding sexuality and gender. Next, through the lens of critical childhoods, I will then analyze the white main characters – Nick, Andrew, and Jessi – relationship with their specific monsters. Lastly, I will briefly discuss Missy and Jay's lack of attention from the Hormone Monsters, the other non-human beings that fill that absence, and the implications of the chronic absence. Through this line of reasoning, it becomes
apparent how the show’s creators reify as well as contradict popular notions and narratives of childhood through the relationships they cultivate between children and their monsters. This show opens a gateway to re-conceptualize notions about what children are capable of knowing, addressing, and internalizing. However, it is not enough to analyze the show's contents alone; I also interrogate the creative
behind-the-scenes process. Examining contexts, such as the choice of voice actors for both children and Hormone monsters, adds another dimension to the idea of the monstrous as it relates to memory and childhood. In other words, the work of a voice actor is often similar to that of Dr. Frankenstein – a gathering of bits and pieces from various others as well as a hodgepodge of memories articulated in one being. By incorporating these outside-of-screen contexts such as voice acting and table reads, I offer a
lens as to how adults creatively shape childhoods (Mitchell & Reid-Walsh, 2002; Morrison, 2019; Thorne, 1993). To this end, the article concludes on a speculative nature, with an imagining of how Big Mouth can serve as a launching pad for two different conversations. The first speculative endeavor imagines a conversation with children about gender, sexuality, and the desires and ugly feelings associated with puberty and adolescence. The other experiment imagines a conversation among adults about the interplay of memory, biases, and present understandings of the world and how adults consider and frame childhoods for future generations.

Author

• Oluwaseun Animashaun, Teachers College, Columbia University