Week three of the month is for TV topics. Sometimes these will be deep cuts of shows that I wish more people knew about and watched, and some will be posts on other TV topics. This is one such post on the most recent season of Big Mouth (2017-present, Netflix) and its representation of asexuality.
First, some background. Big Mouth started back in the fall of 2017 in what could be considered “peak Netflix,” when Stranger Things and The Crown had recently launched and raised Netflix’s TV profile. Back then Netflix didn’t release any ratings, so it’s hard to say for sure, but it seems like Big Mouth was a hit. Each season garnered a quick renewal at one point getting a multiple-season pick-up at once (something Netflix rarely does). Season 2’s “Planned Parenthood Show” garnered particular acclaim and the show’s first major Primetime Emmy Nomination for Outstanding Animated Program.
As a fan, the first three seasons were all I could ask for. Season 4, definitely affected by COVID-19 production issues, was kind of a mess but it had its moments. Season 5, released in 2021, was an interesting one, in some ways righting the ship but in other ways seeming to try too hard to set up the spin-off show Human Resources which is perfectly fine on its own merits. On the whole, this most recent season was a strong return to something akin to the form and quality of the early years, quite exciting after the last two seasons had been so mediocre.
Now for the background on me. I’m demisexual, which is on the asexual spectrum (I’m also non-binary which won’t come up really in this post but surely will in future queer-centric articles). As such I’m well aware that asexual representation on TV, even now, has been woeful. There’s Todd from BoJack Horseman and not much else. I’m also aware that Big Mouth’s track record with queer ideas and queer characters has been decidedly mixed. Season 3 did a pretty good job with queer topics, focusing quite a bit on Jay’s bisexuality (and his peer’s skepticism of it) and Ali’s pansexuality. Season 4’s camp arc introduces the trans character Natalie and does more to deepen our understanding of Matthew, who is gay. However, by season 6, Ali plays a very small part and Natalie isn’t present at all (though she does make a few appearances in season 1 of Human Resources and plays a role in its richest storyline).
On the whole, I think Big Mouth has done fairly well with queer representation with two major shortcomings. The first is that many queer characters—like Ali or Natalie—feature prominently for a while and then fade after their story arc. Part of this is because there really are too many good characters in this show to give adequate attention to all of them, but it’s still disappointing. The other shortcoming is that the show doesn’t take the exploration of queer identity as it relates to hormones far enough. For example, Natalie has a throwaway line about puberty blockers, and we see a frustrated hypermasculine hormone monster character, but there’s no deeper exploration of the challenges and anxieties that come with gender non-conforming puberty. Though the show is largely about the kids’ relationships to their hormone monsters and monstresses, the only queer character we see interacting with a hormone being at any point in the first 5 seasons is Matthew occasionally interacting with Maury in a way that’s basically identical to the way all the hormone beings engage their kids. I get it, but it seems like a huge missed opportunity for a show that is in a really unique position to address queer identity, especially as it relates to gender identity and hormones. But I will keep my fingers crossed for the reappearance of Natalie or the arrival of other trans/non-binary characters.
With all this said, time to get to the specifics of season 6 and what Big Mouth says about asexuality. It centers on the newcomer character Elijah, a Black kid and season-long love interest for Missy. Elijah is a pretty interesting character, giving Missy a much stronger storyline than her wrathful one in season 5. Elijah is also the most vocally religious character and the first prominent Christian character of the show (Matthew comes from a Christian home and might be Christian, but his relationship to Christianity is filtered through his mother’s homophobic bigotry; similarly, Andrew is Jewish, though the religious dimension of this part of his character is secondary to the cultural/heritage part, if it’s present at all). Ali hasn’t yet had any storylines centering on her Asian identity (and it’s never specified what specific Asian identity that is), so Elijah is also the show’s most intersectional character as his Black, religious, and asexual identities all feature prominently in his character.
His asexuality only comes up in the last few episodes of the season though he is prominent throughout season 6. His big episode is 6.8, “Asexual Healing,” though because of how Netflix works, many viewers, like myself, will watch the episode without the title giving away its theme. It should also be noted that with a score of 6.2/10 (as of Nov. 13), this is the LOWEST rated Big Mouth episode on IMDB. The exact reasons for this are not clear, and IMDB rankings are certainly not a particularly great way to evaluate quality, but it must be noted that Big Mouth has a very wide range of fans and some of them are really toxic. It certainly seems to me that some review bombing, due to its Black and/or queer focus, is likely. Season 3’s “Duke,” an inventive look at the life of Duke Ellington, also ranks low and has many haters.
I want to address Elijah’s asexuality arc from the end of season 6 in terms of what I think Big Mouth did well and in terms of things that I think could have been better, warrant a bit more analysis, or leave me questioning a little bit.
Top of the list, Big Mouth is to be commended for tackling asexuality as a theme. It’s still disarmingly rare to see any media address even the existence of asexuality. I also give the show props for setting up many episodes with the character prior to focusing on his sexuality. Elijah is a presence in the Big Mouth world for half a season before he’s addressed in terms of his sexual orientation, and that’s great. I would say this is a case of Big Mouth learning from its past shortcomings (mistakes is too strong a word) with previous queer characters. Our knowledge of Natalie is solely in the context of her trans-ness; Ali is loudly pansexual and then develops into a more well-rounded character after that. Even Matthew is almost cartoonishly “gay” for the first years before he gets a lot more complex. The show did well with Jay’s bisexuality, but in terms of side characters, Elijah is certainly the most established prior to his queer-centric story themes. I also commend the fact that we see Elijah’s hormone monsters and see how they factor into his relationship with his sexuality. This was what was sorely missing from Natalie’s episodes in season 4.
Three big positives:
- Good on Big Mouth for doing an asexual storyline and centering an asexual character
- Nice job integrating Elijah into the fabric of the show to prevent defining him solely by sexual orientation
- Good job showing his hormone monsters (who some viewers will already know from Human Resources) and exploring that relationship.
Those are some big positives. Now here are the things that I’m not sure work as well or I feel warrant further analysis.
First and foremost is the connection of Elijah to Christianity. Big Mouth treads a careful line with Elijah’s Christianity throughout season 6. I think it’s a good step for the show to highlight how religion can intersect with sexuality in a way that isn’t solely centered on trauma (as is the case with Matthew and his mother). But the show, very rightly, still critiques such religious spaces. In the episode before “Asexual Healing,” Missy and Elijah and Missy’s dad are at a sort of purity dedication wedding type deal and the show rightly calls out the problems with such an event (a culture I knew well, growing up in the later stages of the Purity Ring boom of the 2000s).
It’s interesting to me that in the last three episodes of the season, those focused on Elijah’s asexuality, his religious affiliations don’t come up. I think Big Mouth thought of Elijah as a Christian character and an asexual character but not as a Christian asexual character.
This is somewhat striking as they had been prominent in the season up to this point.
This is significant because I can tell you firsthand (from experience that the Big Mouth writers’ room most likely doesn’t have given the low percentage of asexual people), growing up in the church without realizing you’re asexual is the WORST. You do sidestep the outright bigotry of homophobia, but everything feels off without any language for it. Within the church, you heard of the existence of homosexuality. But I first heard that asexuality existed…while watching Todd on BoJack Horseman. As an asexual who didn’t realize it while growing up in church, I sat through endless diatribes about the horrors of porn or the essential nature of sexual purity and thought “yeah, this doesn’t make any sense or have any relevance to my life” only to be told constantly that it does and that you are wrong.
Similarly, the church’s toxic obsession with heterosexual marriage bleeds over into cultural expectations. I had my first brief and not-at-all-serious girlfriend when I was a sophomore in college. She wanted me to kiss her and I didn’t want to (and didn’t), and then I felt like a total failure. Big Mouth taps into this feeling a bit—with Elijah trying to figure out why he doesn’t want to kiss Missy when he knows he likes her—but it massively ignores the added pressure that Christian culture tacks on to this anxiety.
Asexuality, when it’s (rarely) acknowledged, is not well understood and so is then labeled in Christian spaces as a “superpower.” How cool it is to not be tempted in this way that everyone else is. Except this isn’t cool because no one even acknowledges this orientation as a possibility, making one feel even more broken for not struggling with lust (or struggling with it in the right way) than if one does struggle in that way. (Note, of course, that my point here is not an objective one about morality but one about groupthink religious norms).
This kind of leads into my second point which is that this story plays out way too quickly. It’s a three-episode arc. I get that the mode of TV requires things to be truncated or sped up a bit, but of the few asexual people I know, I don’t know any of them that latched onto the label in a simple or easy fashion (maybe someday this can happen more). This is all the more true given the context of Christianity. It’s really hard to figure out what kind of church this is that Elijah attends, as it doesn’t seem as outwardly homophobic as the one attended by Matthew’s parents, but it’s also not “progressive” given its purity ceremony and such. It seems to me like a “hip and cool” modern evangelical church that is a lot more subtle about its repugnant ideas but still holds them on a structural level.
I make this point to say simply: there’s just no damn way Elijah accepts his asexuality in the space of a couple of days.
Even if we allow the narrative idea that hormone monsters make this figuring-out process easier. Even if he’s got an aunt who models asexuality as a thing that exists (more on this in a moment). It’s just not happening. And when you add in a church context that stressed sexual purity in the previous episode, he just simply will not shake those cultural ideas any time soon. A decade older than Elijah, with many literary and cultural theory, works at my disposal, it still took me till my late 20s to have any handle on my sexual identity (again, shout out to Todd; representation matters).
The rushed nature of this storyline is actually kind of a problem because it suggests that potential asexual viewers can, and should, realize their asexual identity quickly and certainly. You just won’t. And Big Mouth kind of knows this. It’s why Matthew, Ali, and Natalie had their realizations off-screen and before the show, and it’s why Jay’s bisexuality arc unfolded over quite a long time (in show time and a number of episodes). It’s really hard, maybe impossible, to show the arc of a kid realizing they’re queer in the course of a single season set over the span of a few weeks or months. It should be noted that on BoJack, Todd is well into his 20s, if not early 30s, when he starts to think he’s asexual, and then this storyline plays out for the next two seasons which take place over even more than 2 years of time. It’s simply silly and harmful to suggest that an understanding of oneself as asexual will come quickly and certainly in a short time frame. There are so many forces already decrying the legitimacy of asexuality; pressure to figure it out right away certainly doesn’t need to be added to the list.
My final critique is a slightly more minor one, and that concerns Elijah’s aunt. It is somewhat unrealistic that Elijah would already know someone who could help him understand asexuality, but whatever. My bigger comment is that this character is played by the fantastic Amber Ruffin. Amber is many things—a gifted host and comedian, one of the best modern comedy talents when it comes to facial expressions—but she is not, to my knowledge, asexual. Now, two things. 1. It’s not our business as the public to know that or for her to tell us. 2. I’m not actually of the opinion that straight actors can never play queer characters. HOWEVER, Big Mouth recently (two years ago) faced a very big and public scandal about having a non-Black actor voicing Missy, a Black character (no similar scandal erupted surrounding Andrew being Jewish and voiced by a non-Jewish actor, but this is a topic for another day and probably another writer).
The other queer side characters are all voiced by actors who share that queer identity. Ali Wong is pansexual. Josie Totah is trans. This is a pattern break suggesting either they couldn’t find a Black asexual actor for the part or, more likely, they didn’t think such casting was necessary. But it would be—rightly—unthinkable to suggest that Natalie be voiced by a cis actor. My point here is threefold: 1. Given the Missy voice scandal, it’s odd that they didn’t think about this; 2. It seems this is because they felt they didn’t need to think about this; 3. This discrepancy highlights one way that asexuality is still regarded as a “second-tier” queer identity as it would be unthinkable to imagine them doing this with the other queer characters who have been on the show. (Note: thinking here of characters who are definitely queer on the show from day one as opposed to Jay who doesn’t seem to be intended as bisexual until a few seasons in).
And so here is the summary of my main critiques of this storyline:
- It doesn’t adequately account for Elijah’s religious environment and culture
- The storyline is very rushed especially given his religious identity; this rushing implies a harmful value on speed and certainly when “figuring out” queer identity
- The casting of Amber Ruffin as Elijah’s asexual aunt highlights how, even when doing an asexual story and making an asexual character, it’s still easy to treat such matters as “second-tier” queer.
Like many things about this show, Elijah’s asexuality is a complex matter. I wish it were a theme explored over the course of the whole season (and maybe we’ll get more of this later but I doubt it), and I wish he weren’t also Christian. That was just a cultural ideological minefield the show was ill-equipped to handle. But now two of the signature animated Netflix shows have a prominent asexual character, and that’s still pretty cool.
