Bojack Horseman media analysisfrom @glass__museum

Transcript

It seem like everybody famous is evil? Whenever there's new drama about some celebrity or another that gets exposed for being a criminal or an abuser or worse, people will always make witty jokes about how we make the worst people famous. But I feel like what this joke gets wrong isn't just that bad people happen to get famous, but rather that fame and success almost always require values to be compromised. I'm rewatching Bojack Horseman right now and even though the show's been out for over ten years, I'm still gonna talk about it because IDGAF is one of the best shows ever made. And something I noticed this time around that I didn't notice the first time I watched it is the significance of the role that setting plays. I feel like setting is often an overlooked part of a story with things like character and plot overshadowing it. But in Bojack, setting might be one of the most integral factors of its story. Yes, I'm about to do a materialist analysis of Bojack Horseman. The setting isn't just an afterthought. It is central to the plot and it is what creates Bojack Horseman as we know him. And more broadly speaking, it's a structure that systematically creates assholes like Bojack. We see this most obviously in season one episode eight. So far throughout the show, we know that Bojack is a horrible, selfish, maladaptive individual. But in this episode for the first time, we see how this horrible individual, it doesn't exist in a vacuum, but rather how he is created by a system that incentivizes selfishness and callousness. BoJack often uses his childhood trauma as an excuse for his bad behavior. But in these flashback scenes from before he's famous, we see explicitly how it's not the trauma that made him a shitty person, but rather Hollywood and fame that did. BoJack's fatal flaw is that he's a coward, as is called out by Charlotte when he doesn't ask her out. But in the setting of everyday life, his sin of cowardice just results in him not getting the girl. But in the setting of Hollywood where the stakes are much higher and he's forced to either choose between betraying his best friend or risking his career, his cowardice is then manifested in a much more intense way with much more intense consequences. The network executive, Angela Diaz, is the personification of this Hollywood greed, as she pressures him into this selfishness, using his up and coming career as an incentive for this choice. And when he ultimately does pick his career over his relationship with Herb, it's his cowardice in picking the selfish option that sends him into a self sabotaging spiral of guilt, shame, depression, and addiction that continues to reinforce itself throughout the rest of the series. Angela Diaz represents all the ways that the Hollywood machine exploits people's desperation for success, as greed, selfishness, and competition are rewarded within the system. In Hollywood, to stand by one's morals is to sacrifice one's shot at making it. That's the environment that Bojack's operating in, and that's what ultimately turns him into this horrible person. Throughout the entire show, you as the audience member are made to see Bojack as this extraordinarily horrible and selfish person. But the most horrific yet enlightening part of rewatching Bojack through this lens is realizing that Bojack isn't an outlier, he is a product of the Hollywood system. I used to never understand when people would say that LA changed them when YouTubers would get big and move to LA, but I realize now that this is exactly how it happens. Even if you yourself aren't doing anything explicitly harmful, to get to the top means schmoozing with abusers and turning a blind eye to people who do do harm. To desire success in a system run by evil people is to be okay with sacrificing your values to achieve that success at any worst. Because it takes courage to stand up for your morals and a lot of people won't.