BoJack Horseman and a Contemplative Consumption Diet

It’s shocking to see a horse’s head on a human body, uncomfortable even—especially when it starts speaking with a pink cat, a yellow dog, a loveable human rascal, and a proud but confused journalist. But such is the disconcerting animated world of Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s BoJack Horseman, which ran on Netflix from 2014 to 2020 and received largely positive reviews from critics.

The show follows BoJack, a washed-up actor with a traumatic past who starred in a Full House-like sitcom in the ‘90s and who also happens to be half-horse, half-man. Over its six seasons, BoJack (voiced by Will Arnett) and the other members of the starring entourage wrestle with questions of meaning, addiction, pain, trauma, and forgiveness. They explore what it looks like to redeem their broken lives, and the writing works in a way that forces the viewer to do the same. As a result, it works as both a case study for the dangers of consumerism and a possible solution.

BoJack Horseman is one of those rare shows that, like Twin Peaks, Atlanta, and Breaking Bad, pushes you towards contemplation. These shows are hardly easy to watch because they don’t give you the option to simply or passively consume. They are, instead, jarring and difficult. And in a moment when easy consumerism reigns, they’re exactly what we need.

Consumerism’s Empty Calories

Words like consumption and consumerism have become falsely synonymous with observation and participation. We use phrases like “consuming media” when we simply mean we’re watching something. We might critique the “consumerist culture” in which we live, but our arguments largely revolve around spending habits and materialism. While these issues are certainly part of the problem, they don’t quite get at the true danger of consumerism or adequately portray the risk of being a consumer.

A quick search reveals that the word consumption means “the using up of a resource.” Secondly, it is “the eating, drinking, or ingesting of something.” These definitions carry a bit more weight when we consider the problem, especially with regards to media. For starters, we never actually use up media resources. Of making many books (or shows, or podcasts, or films, or video games, etc.) there is no end. The next best piece of content will always be around the corner and easy to access.

The second definition, however, is tricky because we aren’t ingesting a physical thing when we consume media and thus, have no immediate physical reaction to our overconsumption. As a result, this consumption hides in plain sight, and we often don’t realize what’s happening to us as we consume.

Even worse, consumerism often masks itself as comfort, as an easy way to escape the troubles we face. BoJack demonstrates this himself throughout the series with varying degrees of seriousness. In the season two episode “Yes And,” viewers find BoJack commiserating with his friend and former ghostwriter Diane, who recently returned from a traumatic experience as an overseas journalist. BoJack, likewise, has reasons to be upset as he recently had a (self-inflicted) falling out with a director who is now making his job extra difficult.

The two handle their pain by ignoring it. Surrounded by beer cans, bongs, and pizza boxes, they binge old episodes of Horsin’ Around, the show that made BoJack famous. When his girlfriend asks if he plans on going to work that day, BoJack cynically responds by saying “I was gonna, but then I remembered that everything is garbage, so why bother doing anything?” The easiest response to conflict is avoidance, and BoJack continuously takes the easy way out throughout the series, despite that never helping his actual problems. In fact, it often makes them worse.

Most of us employ some level of avoidance on a daily basis. In moments of writer’s block or stress (even while writing this article), I find myself caught in what one might call a “Twitter web.” Like its cousin the “YouTube rabbit hole,” this happens when we go for a quick visit to social media only to end up scrolling and clicking endlessly. If you’ve experienced this, then you know that after a certain point, you stop ingesting the information you supposedly went there to find. There’s no ongoing nutrition. I couldn’t tell you a single thing I read in my five minutes of scrolling. Instead, the time I spent scrolling took away from the actual work I had in front of me, leaving me more stressed out in the end. It’s like the donuts served in my church’s lobby on Sunday morning: attractive and momentarily fulfilling but ultimately unsuccessful at satisfying my needs. When I’m done, I still crave more.

Tech platforms recognize this craving and constantly put more empty calories in front of their users. If I scroll down far enough on my Twitter feed to arrive at content I’ve already seen, a little notification appears at the top of my screen that says “15 New Tweets Above”—which is fascinating because I only follow 25 people. Are they constantly posting new, fresh content? Of course not. To keep my attention, Twitter provides me with people I might like to follow—people who talk about topics I’ve engaged with previously.

I can critique such algorithms all I want, but like those Sunday morning donuts, they work on me. They work on all of us. As it turns out, we actually like the empty calories. We assume they’re harmless and in the process, ignore how they’ve made gluttons of us all.

Consumerism is Cannibalism

Many of us understand how these technologies work at this point. We’ve seen The Social Dilemma and read The Tech-Wise Family. We’ve skimmed any number of articles critiquing Big Tech and social media. Nevertheless, consumerism still continues to grab hold of our hearts.

We know Netflix reads our minds to suggest new shows based on our biases, but we actually kind of like how easy that makes things for us. A small part of us appreciates the platform’s ability to curate more content that’s safely in our wheelhouse without us having to do anything.

After all, it takes effort to develop taste, and effort is often the enemy of the modern world. Taste-making requires you to sift through things you don’t like. You’ve got to listen. Engage. Work. Netflix (or insert any other consumer platform of your choice) lifts that great burden off our shoulders, and to that, we say “Thank you.” Empty-calorie consumerism promises to make life easier by eliminating the work, but that exchange still costs us something.

In recent years, authors like James K. A. Smith and Tish Harrison Warren have helped reunite Western evangelical readers with the power of liturgies, showing how our daily actions, practices, and habits shape who we are. As Smith puts it in Desiring the Kingdom, “every liturgy constitutes a pedagogy that teaches us, in all sorts of precognitive ways, to be a certain kind of person.”

In other words, what we do does something back to us.

This creates a particular cycle when it comes to consuming media. The more I participate in a “liturgy” of consumption, the more I’m consumed by the thing I think I’m consuming. I visit Twitter to consume its content—to eat Tweets, if you will—but in the end, its algorithm has swallowed me whole.

We feel this internally. That little voice in our head or feeling in our heart tells us that we don’t truly enjoy what we’re participating in, but we’re drawn in by its charm, anyway. After all, it promises to solve a problem many of us feel nearly every day, namely that we’re just so dang busy.

Had a long day? Binge a TV show. You don’t have to think about the selection or even click on the next episode. The platform does it all for you, allowing you to relax and forget about the heavy world around you and instead, embrace a momentary release from your overwhelming schedule.

We can even apply this same attitude to church, as well. Had a long week? Attend virtually. Isn’t it much nicer to enjoy the music and sermon in the comfort of your sweatpants? Wouldn’t you prefer to receive the benefits of a Sunday service without having to go through all the trouble of finding parking or passing the peace or sitting next to that mother with the crying baby? Isn’t this just easier?

This is a prominent theme throughout BoJack Horseman: there are always more vices vying for our consumption. Some, like pounding beers and watching old TV episodes, are seemingly innocent; others, like heroin and alcoholism, are obviously dangerous. In any case, the root remains the same: our desire for distraction and consumerism’s ability to feed that desire.

This “liturgy” obviously doesn’t fulfill its promises. It allows us to zone out but doesn’t give us rest because, as Andy Crouch puts it, “real rest is the fruitful contemplation of fruitful work.” Easy consumerism is, therefore, the avoidance of contemplation. It avoids thought and effort and slowly eats away at us while we feed it more of our attention. Worst of all, this happens without us knowing. We’ve been tricked into thinking that we consume it without revealing how it consumes us.

Contemplation Is a Dietary Choice

When I think about this too much, I start coming up with quick fixes. I’ll simply remove easy consumption from my life. Cut the sin off at the source and all that. I’m lured in by the poems and essays of Wendell Berry and think the agrarian life is the life for me, free of technology and consumerism’s cannibalistic ways.

But this wouldn’t truly rid me of the problem. Consumerism didn’t begin with 21st-century technology. New devices, social platforms, and streaming services give us unprecedented options for consumption, but they’re not the problem themselves. We’ll always find something to consume because we are naturally consumptive creatures.

BoJack never realizes the truth: simply avoiding vices does not cure us from the power they have over us. BoJack tries to quit his habits cold turkey. He tries to be better, even going to rehab. However, he never replaces those habits with more meaningful ones. He continuously seeks quick fixes like fad diets instead of looking directly at the difficult things and dealing with them as they are. What he needs is what we all need: a new approach to consumption that promotes and practices contemplation.

Consumption is sweeter on the tongue but worse on the heart. Contemplation is the meat and veggies to consumption’s empty calories. Consumption helps us tune out and take a nap. Contemplation empowers us to stay awake and allows us to engage with the world we inherit.

Here’s how Thomas Merton defines contemplation in his work New Seeds of Contemplation:

“Contemplation is the highest expression of man’s intellectual and spiritual life… It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that source.”

Such awareness requires a high level of effort and attunement to the world around us. We must look and see. We must pay attention.

Author Michelle Dean notes how this goes against our very nature. To pay attention is to rebel against our wiring, and it only gets harder in the midst of countless tragedies and unpredictable moments. As she puts it, “the desire to abdicate, to give up… is primal” because “every day brings fresh fear and fresh outrage.”

We’re constantly reminded of how bad things are: sickness, racism, division, anger, hate, anxiety, mass shootings, suicide, opioids, and the list goes on. It’s easier to embrace our “flight response,” but when we do so, we end up submitting to the power calling us to give up and give in, that voice that charms us with the call “come and consume; let us take care of you.” For Dean, “paying attention is the only thing that guarantees insight. It is the only real weapon we have against power.”

Paying attention is the first step of contemplation. To live in that “spontaneous awe” Merton talks about, we have to first look at it, note what makes it sacred, and find how it leads to “the reality of the source.” The world’s consumerist powers ask us to abdicate these efforts, and they’re so good at it that we have to retrain ourselves to take it back.

This’s the power of the spiritual disciplines. They offer a type of reorientation that reminds us to pay attention. When you pray on your knees with your hands lifted, you’re telling your body you’re doing something different. When your knees hurt from the hard ground, you’re reminding yourself of your weakness in a world that pretends to give you power through limitless algorithms and curated content.

Disciplines like prayer, scripture reading, and fasting create space for us to reject the easier choice. They force us to pay attention by removing the very thing we naturally consume, but that level of intentionality is not limited to the spiritual realm. It’s the same impulse that prompts many people to dress nicely for remote jobs. Sweatpants and slippers may be easier and more comfortable, but as it turns out, they’re often less good for us. As one psychologist puts it, “Dressing pulled together helps us feel pulled together.”

Like any discipline, this kind of rebellion against the easy way becomes more natural as time goes on. Just as prayer becomes a habit and a way of life, so, too, can contemplation. But we must first start by challenging our consumeristic habits, and we can do this through the media we choose to engage with.

BoJack Horseman as a Conduit for Contemplation

Consumerism gets its power by promising ease, but the easy option rarely leads to the best returns.

I learned this from BoJack Horseman. The show attracted me with its silliness and sophisticated adult-cartoon humor in the style of The Simpsons, Bob’s Burgers, and Rick and Morty. From the beginning, its satirical and self-aware voice was strong. It mocked American culture’s obsession with Hollywood (or Hollywoo; IYKYK) culture. By episode two, BoJack finds himself on national news, arguing with a Navy Seal (who is an actual seal voiced by Patton Oswalt) about who had “dibs” on a box of muffins in a grocery store. It nailed the ridiculous and absurd humor that plays well for millennials like me.

This was fine and funny, but the show’s true voice came out in its seventh episode, “Say Anything.” At the time of its release, The AV Club’s Les Chappel wrote that the episode “completes the show’s initial exploration of the main cast, and they’ve saved the best for last.” The most shocking point comes at the very end, when Princess Carolyn—a highly prominent character played brilliantly by Amy Sedaris—sits alone in her office after a long day of solving other people’s problems. She’s borderline abused throughout the episode, and right before the credits roll, she receives a notification on her phone wishing her a happy 40th birthday.

Fade to black.

There’s no joke or comedic relief. It’s unexpected and uncomfortable, setting the tone for the rest of the series. As Chappel puts it: “All the episodes to date have ended on darkly comic punchlines or moments of foreshadowing. This? There’s nothing funny about this.”

BoJack Horseman would continue to toe that line between comedy and drama. Somehow it never lost its funny even as it explored subjects like miscarriage, celebrity abuse, addiction, depression, and so many other topics that haunt our culture. The show grew increasingly uncomfortable. It challenged its viewers. It left you frustrated and made you laugh but it never allowed you to sit back.

A reviewer for The Guardian implied that “the cartoon about a talking horse actor and other anthropomorphized animals coexisting with humans in Hollywood” shouldn’t “have anything more to say than one hoof stamp yes, two no.” And yet, it became a hit due to its profound humor and exploration of heavy topics. One critic put it simply: “As BoJack Horseman progressed through its six seasons, the show’s most obvious punchline didn’t get funnier; it got scarier… [W]hen [the show] concluded with its final eight episodes, it wasn’t interested in a laugh so much as a reckoning.”

There are no empty calories in BoJack Horseman, no matter how many boxes of sugary muffins the titular character eats. Every episode pushes the viewer to think and contemplate the ideas presented in the show, and it warns its audience of the dangers that come when we refuse to pay attention.

BoJack himself rarely looks around. He actually lives a life of easy consumption, and he pays for it in the end with his “reckoning.” The things he recklessly takes advantage of—drugs, alcohol, fame, people—all leave him dry in the end. The other characters only escape the vicious cycle because of their ability to look at the world around them and consider the effects of their actions. They begin to pay attention to their habits even as the show pushes its audience to do the same.

It takes the danger of the easy way out to the extreme, showing how terrible a poorly-planned consumptive diet can be. BoJack gets eaten alive by the drugs and drinks he consumes. He eats other people alive in the process, which sends him back to drugs and drinks, perpetuating the cycle.

It’d be easy to stop watching, to turn away and consume something easier that avoids the topics secretly tormenting all of us. You could switch to something else at any point in the series, but many of us don’t because we start to see the benefits of getting to the other side of contemplation. At that point, our desires begin to change, and we actually want to do the good, hard work of digging deeper into the things that scare us.

We discover that’s what we’re meant to do.

Resisting Easy Consumption

We were created to contemplate, not to avoid. Empty-calorie consumption, in all its forms, gives us a way out and allows us to never truly reckon with ourselves or the world around us. We’re entranced by its promises of zoned-out peace and never-ending leisure, but we end up chewed up and swallowed by its endless demand for more of our attention and affection. Like BoJack, we end up destroyed by the thing that promises peace.

The answer is not to shield ourselves from all content forever. Escapism is just another form of easy consumerism, exchanging one avoidance for another. No, our path forward looks less extreme than that. It is to simply look at and pay attention to the things we consume.

Shows like BoJack Horseman make that easy because they make it nearly impossible to simply consume. They force you to think, to stare into that scary mirror we often want to avoid despite knowing that we’re meant to look. Contemplation is the antidote to consumerism and the only way to stop ourselves from getting consumed by our habits. But we have to put ourselves in positions to resist the empty calories; we have to make better dietary choices. Otherwise we’ll get eaten alive.