‘BoJack Horseman’ : an exploration of morality and media influence in fiction

Abstract

This project will serve as an intertextual analysis of the Netflix original series BoJack Horseman. I will be analysing the show through an intertextual theoretical framework that incorporates the ideas of Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, Mikhail Bakhtin, Gerrard Genette, Jean Baudrillard, and the works of academics who have compiled and elaborated on their theories. The show serves as an excellent case study for how the dialogue between texts and context, , inform the meaning audience generates from consuming media. For this reason, the analysis will be carried out by identifying instances of explicit or implicit intertextual utterances, and scrutinizing them under the theoretical framework in order to reach a broader understanding of how and why the show connected with so many people. BoJack Horseman is a show that, implicitly and explicitly draws from predecessors and contemporaries in its medium and genre. However, the show's acute awareness of the space it occupies and shares within a wider web of interconnected texts allows it to subvert and comment on many of the expectations and formulas associated with these texts, be it for comedy, character or drama. In doing so, BoJack Horseman challenges it audience to engage in the self-reflexive criticism needed to appreciate.