“Back in the Nineties I was in a Very Famous TV Show”: Bojack Horseman and America’s Nostalgia
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Abstract
BoJack Horseman, an animated series launched in 2014 by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, achieved massive popularity for its exploration of complex issues such as addiction and mental illness through funny anthropomorphic animals and its references to 90s popular culture. Although BoJack Horseman seems to focus on how an individual attempts to reconcile with their past, a closer examination reveals that the struggle is not only personal, but also collective. This paper argues that nostalgia in BoJack Horseman reflects the crisis of American culture in the 2010s. Moreover, as a postmodern text, BoJack Horseman can be regarded as both a poison and a cure for nostalgia. In dealing with the glory of the nineties, the show surprisingly dismantles the museum-ized and invented past, and at the same time persuades audiences not to fixate on finding an authentic meaning in life, but rather to embrace the flux of the postmodern world.
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