Bojack Horseman and Bo Burnham: The Art of Acting Like You’re Acting and The Comedy of Misery

At the core of Bojack Horseman, Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s 2014 comedy, is a story about the relationship between performance and depression. the protagonist of this renowned tragicomedy is best described as a sympathetic villain; he is shown to clearly be in the wrong across various events of the show and is explicitly referred to as a bad person, but the audience is granted deep access to his personal struggles, resulting in some portions of the audience finding themselves on Bojack’s side. The duality of his character is complex but can be broken down into some core components, that all stem from the impacts of stardom and performance. The standup comedy of Bo Burnham arguably echoes this sentiment in real-time. Having been a performer from a young age, Burnham creates work that serves as a satirical commentary on the life of entertainers. he uses original songs to explore the reliance upon and resentment for his performative nature both onstage and within his personal life. Both the comedian and the Netflix show, are widely understood to be thinly veiling their critiques of the entertainment industry behind a particular brand of witty and absurd humour.

Both Bojack and Burnham’s content openly criticise their audiences and explicitly state the manufactured nature of the narrative the audience is fed. In the fifth season of Bojack Horseman, the show satirises itself by having Bojack star in a police procedural drama, parts of which are actively written by other characters to reflect events of Bojack’s life. The titular character he plays, Philbert, is the epitome of selfish male angst, and an example of what Bob-Waksberg’s show could have been; another story about a sad and angry man whose guilt supposedly makes up for the people he has hurt. According to Bojack, Philbert teaches us ‘we’re all terrible, so we’re all okay’, an interpretation that is harshly disputed by Diane: ‘that’s not the point of Philbert, for guys to watch it and feel okay. I don’t want you, or anyone else, justifying their shitty behaviour because of the show.’ This moment is a direct reaction to some of the online reception Bojack Horseman has received. Various circles of the show’s fanbase have found themselves relating to the protagonist to the point of defending his untoward behaviour, a response not intentioned by the show’s creators. This is not the only example of Bob-Waksberg’s ability to make his work self-evaluative. In season six’s exposure of Bojack and Sarah Lynn’s problematic relationship, characters question their sexual encounter from the first season. the writers use this as a way of examining their own choices, and the harmful tropes they played into when using this exploitative sexual encounter as a gag. This self-evaluative quality is what sets Bojack apart as a show that assesses the performance it participates in, much like the comedy of Bo Burnham.

Bo Burnham is known for directly addressing his audience, particularly in terms of discouraging idolisation and parasocial relationships. Some examples of this manifest as responses to hecklers rather than a planned bit in the show, for instance:

Heckler: I love you!

Bo: No you don’t

Heckler: I love the IDEA of you!

Bo: Stop participating!

He actively addresses the issues posed by being an entertainer and encourages the audience to understand and recognise that his onstage persona is just that: an exaggerated persona. Not once does Burnham claim to be fully authentic onstage, and even moments of authenticity we see in his latest special, inside, are staged. We make the assumption that having the physical setting of a stage stripped away grants us a more personal look at the entertainer’s life, but he makes it clear that even in his own home we still see the aspects he has carefully constructed rather than the full truth. Arguably though, parts of the show really are authentic; in his monologue during make happy, Bo deconstructs his own show in a way that is similar to Bojack Horseman’s later seasons, admitting that all he knows is performing and thus making a show about the more mundane and relatable aspects of life would feel ‘incredibly disingenuous.’ In his attempts to separate himself from this onstage persona he actually manages to blur the lines between what is acting and what is now part of his nature as a result of his job. This notion is echoed in Bojack Horseman as Bojack’s attention-seeking nature is attributed to his years acting in front of a camera every day.

Bo suggests that the era of social media has created a space in which children’s identities mimic that of an entertainer like himself, describing the phenomenon as ‘performer and audience melded together.’ In this observation, he criticizes the phenomenon. Bo attempts to force the audience to recognize the ways in which their lives are becoming shaped by the presence of an audience and to some extent uses his own life as a warning tale against this. He points out the way in which the ‘tortured artist trope’ means that your cries for help or roundabout attempts of addressing mature themes such as substance abuse, mental illness, and trauma become part of that on-stage persona and therefore become part of the joke. Both Bo and Bojack address these topics in more discrete manners earlier in their careers, but this eventually becomes expected, and thus they are forced to explicitly detail their struggles with these topics in order to be taken seriously. even then, portions of the audience are inclined to see it as part of the persona or as something that fuels the creator’s creativity and thus does not need to be addressed as a legitimate issue. The emphasis on creating a character or persona promotes the commodification of mental illness: any struggle must be made into a song or a joke or a bit must be turned into part of the act in order to have value. This actually serves to delegitimize these emotions and create a disconnect between the feeling and the person, as it becomes near impossible to exist without feeling as though you are acting. Even when an artist’s cries for help become blatant, they continue to go ignored because now they serve the purpose of creating content that criticises the industry they stem from. Online audiences can be seen as treating Bo Burnham and his insightful work as existing to demonstrate the negative effects entertaining can have, and because this insight is useful or thought-provoking to audiences, he is almost demanded to keep entertaining and creating. In response to this demand, his work becomes more meta and his messages become clearer, and the more obvious his messages, the more people he reaches. This increases audience demands and traps entertainers in a cycle fraught with internal conflict.

During Bojack’s second season, Bojack’s date asks him, ‘come on, do that Bojack thing where you make a big deal and everyone laughs, but at the same time we relate, because you’re saying the things polite society won’t.’ This moment exemplifies how aspects of his genuine personality have now become a part of his persona and this is demanded of him is genuine and serious situations, undermining the validity of his emotional reactions. He immediately makes a rude comment to the waitress at the restaurant they’re in and satisfies his date by performing that character he has set himself out to be. Some circles of the fan base have argued that Bojack is written as a depiction of somebody with borderline personality disorder, offering a psychoanalytical lens through which to view this notion of performance. A defining symptom of borderline personality disorder is a fluctuating sense of self; having grown up on camera, being demanded to perform to others as young as six years old, Bojack’s sense of self will have been primarily dictated by the need to act. Whether this acting is for the sake of comedy, or as a representation of masking his mental illness, when they need to act is taken away Bojack entirely loses his sense of self and relapses into his addictions: ‘I felt like a xerox of a xerox of a person.’ Burnham’s depictions of depression run along a similar vein; in his new special he poses the idea that his comedy no longer serves the same personal purpose it once did for him. He questions ‘Shit should I be joking at a time like this?’ and satirises the idea that arts have enough value to change or impact the current global issues that we are facing. Burnham’s ‘possible ending song’ to his latest special, he asks ‘Does anybody want to joke when no-one’s laughing in the background? so this is how it is.’ Implicit in this question is the idea that when the audience is taken away and there is nobody to perform his pain to, he is left alone to deal with his pain. Instead of being able to turn his musings and thoughts into a product to sell to the public, he is forced to just think about them in isolation and actually face them, an abrupt and distressing experience.

The value of performance and art is questioned by both Bojack and Burnham, particularly during the later years of their respective content. Burnham’s infamous song, art is dead, appears to be a direct response to the question ‘What is the worth of art?’ He posits that performing is the result of a need for attention (‘my drug’s attention, I am an addict, but I get paid to indulge in my habit’) and repeatedly jokes throughout his career that the entertainment industry receives more respect than it deserves (‘I’m the same as you, I’m still doing a job or a service, I’m just massively overpaid’). His revelations regarding the inherent desire for attention that runs through all entertainers is frequently satirised in Bojack Horseman. Bojack is comically, hyperbolically attention-hungry and self-obsessed, and the show has a running gag in which he uses phrases along the lines of ‘hello, why is nobody paying attention to me, the famous movie star, instead of these other boring people.’ His constant attempts to direct the focus of others towards himself result in Bojack feeling like ‘everybody loves you, but nobody likes you.’ His peers buy into his act and adore the comical, exaggerated, laughable aspects of his character, but find very little room to respond to him on a genuinely personal level because of this. Interestingly, Bojack appears to enjoy catering to his audience and the instant gratification it produces, whereas Bo Burnham becomes increasingly candid about his mixed feeling towards his audience. ‘I wanna please you, but I wanna stay true to myself, I wanna give you the night out that you deserve, but I wanna say what I think and not care what you think about it.’ He admits to catering to what audiences want from him, but resents both the audience and himself in the process as it reveals to himself which parts of his character are solely for the sake of people watching him.

Within Bojack Horseman, this concept is applicable not only to the protagonist, but to the various forms of performer demonstrated in the plot. Towards the show’s end, Sarah Lynn asks ‘What does being authentic have to do with anything?’ to which Herb Kazzaz responds, ‘When I finally stopped hiding behind a facade I could be at peace.’ This highlights the fact that because entertainers are demanded to continue the facade, they do not receive the opportunity to find ‘peace.’ This sentiment is scattered throughout the show, through a musical motif, the song ‘Don’t stop dancing.’ The song stems from a life lesson Bojack imparted to Sarah Lynn at a young age, and becomes more frequently used as the show progresses and Bojack’s situation worsens.

Sarah Lynn is also used to explore the value of entertainers; in the show’s penultimate episode, she directly compares her work as a pop icon to the charity work of herb, arguing that if she suffered in order to produce her work. It has to mean something. She lists the struggles she faced when on tour: ‘I gave my whole life…my manager leaked my nudes to get more tour dates added, my mom pointed out every carb I ate, it was hell. But it gave millions of fans a show they will never forget and that has to mean something.’ Implicit in this notion is the idea that entertainment is the epitome of self-sacrifice. There is a surplus of mentally ill individuals within the industry, largely due to the nature of the industry itself, but some may argue that the cultural grip the industry has, and the vast amounts of respect and money it generates annually, gives the suffering of these prolific individuals meaning.

The juxtaposing responses entertainers feel towards their audiences manifest as two forms of desperation: the desperation to be an individual who is held accountable, and the desperation to be loved and validated. We see both Bojack and Bo depict how they oscillate between ‘this is all a lie’ and ‘my affection for my audience is genuine’, or between ‘do not become infatuated with me I’m a character’ and ‘please fucking love my character I do not know how to be loved on a personal level.’ Bojack explicitly asks Diane to write a slam piece on him and ‘hold him accountable’, similar to Bo’s song ‘problematic’ in which the hook includes the phrase ‘isn’t anybody gonna hold me accountable?’ for his insensitive jokes as a late teenager. Their self-awareness is what enables their self-evaluative qualities, but self-awareness is its own issue. Bojack grapples with a narcissistic view of his own recognition of his behaviour before settling on a more nuanced, albeit depressing take. Originally he makes the assumption that in recognising the negative aspects of himself, he is superior to those who behave similarly: ‘but I know I'm a piece of shit. that makes me better than all the pieces of shit that don’t know they’re pieces of shit.’ Eventually, during his time at rehab, he is forced to reconcile with the fact that self-awareness does not, to put it bluntly, make you the superior asshole, it just makes you the more miserable one. The show does, however, make a point to recognise how the entertainment industry protects ‘pieces of shit’, prioritising their productive value over how much they deserve to be held accountable, demonstrated using characters like Hank Hippopoalus. The show itself obviously stems from the entertainment industry, as it is a form of media produced by Netflix, one of the most popular streaming platforms available. Bojack Horseman and Bo Burnham represent the small corner of the industry that is reflective enough to showcase the damage it inflicts. This is powerful in terms of education and awareness, and urges audiences to question their own motives and versions of performance, but the reflection alone is not powerful enough to help the artists in question. Burnham’s candid conversations surrounding his mental health continue to reveal a plethora of issues somewhat caused or sustained by the nature of his career. Within Bojack Horseman, Bojack is only able to stop hurting other characters when those characters construct a situation that forces him to face the consequence, his introspection alone is not enough. While Bojack ends on a message of hope, suggesting to the audience that reverting back to the status quo is not the only acceptable way for events to end, it leaves stinging lessons and social commentary with the audience regarding the unnatural and damaging narrative that performers live through. On a similar but markedly different note, Bo Burnham’s work and personal progression are playing out in real-time, and not in a way that is as raw and genuine as it appears. Each bit is planned, even the most vulnerable moments that appear unplanned and painful. His latest special is not entirely devoid of hope, but does translate to audiences as a somewhat exaggerated look around the era of social media and the development of performance, using himself as an example.

The absurdist humour that often acts as a vehicle for poignant statements or emotionally provocative questions is very specific to each media creator. Bob Waksberg’s use of puns, tongue twisters and entirely ridiculous circumstances served to simultaneously characterise his points as an expected part of the show’s style of humour, similar to Bojack’s emotional instability, but also to make them appear gut-punching in comparison to the humour. Burnham’s work is similar in that poignant but blunt statements are often sandwiched between absurd and exaggerated jokes, making them stand out via contrast but not giving the audience too much time to dwell upon them as they are said. Performance art is second nature to entertainers and is presented as an issue that is infiltrating the general population via social media rather than solely affecting the ‘elites’. Bojack Horseman and Bo Burnham present the duality of artists simultaneously attempting to level the playing field and increase their chances of survival in the industry, and encourage audiences to know that everyone is bluffing and you’ll never have the right cards anyway.