Caterpillar Catastrophe

Caterpillar catastrophe

Camila García

Time to open the can of worms. It's no news that plenty of children's shows have elements that only adults can get. Cheeky remarks or jokes that you don't get until you're an adult. It is also common for shows to include disgusting actions such as farting and burping and violence merely for entertainment. But at what point do we step over the line of what is appropriate for children's shows? There’s one show that can help us identify a limit since it does not only step over the line but completely jumps over it. That show is the popular Korean cartoon Larva.

Larva is an animated show created by TUBA Entertainment (Seoul, South Korea) in 2011. The cartoon consists of short episodes following the adventures of the two main characters, Red and Yellow, both of them larvae-caterpillars. This children’s show is nowadays streamed worldwide on Netflix with each episode including mini-episodes of 90-second each. Larva is under the category Kids' Animated Movies. It would be interesting to see why the creators of the show and the employees of Netflix believe it to be a kid's show since Larva is not, or at least it shouldn’t be, a children’s show

The TV show is heavy on toilet humour. It is not necessary to watch it for too long to see such humour displayed. The very first episode on Netflix includes a mini-episode called “Straw”, in which Yellow burps and then kills Red with his fart. In the very same episode, there’s another mini-episode called “Snoring” where Yellow is farting in his sleep and Red is so tired that he puts a piece of paper on Yellow’s butt as a plug. However, Yellow becomes so bloated because of his intestinal gases that he ends up breaking the wind so strongly that he, once again, kills Red. If I were to name all the examples, then this article would be endless. Finding an episode where the characters don’t fart or burp is as hard as getting the golden ticket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

One would think that, given the main characters’ relationship dynamic, they would be enemies or at least rivals, but no, Larva portrays them as friends. Take, for example, the episode called “New Friend”. Yellow wants to play with Red but he keeps rejecting him. Since he feels neglected, Yellow decides to look for a new friend in a teddy bear and ignores Red. The latter ends up accidentally ripping a leg from the Teddy Bear and losing it in the sewer. Feeling remorseful, he goes inside the sewer and tries to find it but he gets in trouble. Yellow saves him by sacrificing his teddy bear and they apologize to each other. As wholesome as this episode might be, “New Friend” is the first episode in the whole series in which the main theme is the character’s friendship, even though the episode belongs to the 3rd Season.

Most episodes show the other side of the main character’s friendship, their abusive nature. Red and Yellow fight each other all the time and even sacrifice the other for their own good, as it can be seen in the episode “Mosquito”. Both larvae are being chased by a mosquito. The mosquito manages to suck the blood out of Red, but instead of saving his friend, Red points at Yellow’s hiding spot so that the insect can suck his blood as well. Is this the representation of friendship we want to show children? One for one and none for all?

Surprisingly, the toilet humour and the messed up friendship are the least controversial issues the show has. Larva seems to follow Tom and Jerry’s footsteps in their use of physical violence as humour. Red and Yellow are fighting, slapping, punching, throwing objects, among other “funny” things in nearly all episodes. The third season even steps it up by adding that type of humour to the title sequence, showing a beetle throwing Red and Yellow against each other as if they were toys, and also showing Yellow eating a doughnut while sitting on top of Red, as he is screaming. The violence-comedy is an issue that many children’s shows appear to suffer from. Reports from both the American Academy of Paediatrics (AAP) and the National Television Violence Study indicate that shows targeted to children have more violence than other types of shows. If you start thinking of shows you watched during your childhood or were mentioned to you at some point, it won’t be too difficult to find an example of such a type of comedy. Look at the Powerpuff Girls, Dragon Ball Z, Ben 10, The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy and the biggest example of all, Tom and Jerry. All these shows contain some form of brutality. Nevertheless, they still restrain themselves over the amount of violence they show. Larva does not. Apart from the constant punching and fighting, Red and Yellow die or are on the brink of death in lots of episodes of the first season. In the first episode of the show, “Ice Cream”, Red and Yellow are eaten by a purple slug. In some episodes, they even cause each other’s death, as can be seen in the episode called “Glove”, where Yellow accidentally sets Red on fire.

There has been a great amount of research on how violence on TV affects children. Many researchers and professionals such as Douglas Gentile or Tumaini R Coker have different views, but there is a common ground: exposure to violence can be one of the many factors that contribute to aggressive behavior in children.

Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it can. Larva is full of sexual innuendos. Butts are a recurrent motif of the show. The characters are either licking, slapping, sucking or punching someone’s butt. In “Aquarium”, Yellow and Red find a water bag with fish inside. The water starts to leak from a hole and, to save the fish, Red puts his mouth on the hole to stop the leaking. His body gets so full of water that water starts to come out of his bottom. In order to help, Yellow starts to suck the water that is coming out of Red’s butt.

Larvae move by crawling. Caterpillars move by squeezing their muscles in a wave motion. They do not have arms to grab objects or people. The creators of Larva seemed to discard this real-life fact while creating the show and found a rather unnecessary and unpleasant way to make the insects move and touch by having them use their tongues. The larvae touch each other with their tongues, slap each other’s butt with them and even dance together by twirling their tongues together, as it’s seen in the episode “Double Eyelids 1”. Such sexual references are one of the biggest arguments that Larva haters make. Parents advise others not to show their kids this show since even though they are too young to get the references, it is still not appropriate to expose them to such behaviours.

How can a show with such a content be considered for children? It is something that really bugs me, yet I cannot find an answer. If it’s merely for the lack of human blood shown, then it’s truly a weak reason, since by all means Larva should be considered an adult’s show. To put it into perspective, animated cartoons with similar humour are rated for adults. Happy Tree Friends is an adult animated show in which all episodes include animal characters suffering pain and being killed. Sounds familiar? Other shows such as Big Mouth or Rick and Morty have plenty of sexual references and are classified as adult animation. So why should Larva be the exception?

Next time your children look for entertainment, just let them read The Very Hungry Caterpillar instead. It will certainly be less harmful for them.

DMU Timestamp: July 09, 2023 23:44

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