In Defence of Beatrice | Video Essay (BoJack Horseman)

nobody gives a damn what you feel you got an audience out there and they want to hear you sing now you want your mommy to love you you go out there and you do the only thing you're good for which is singing that goddamn Beatrice Horseman the most disliked character on the show budget course men in a series that promotes the context-dependent nature of morality Beatrice Rose is the villain in a pantheon of uniquely damaged characters well she's not actually the villain but most people aren't fans of hers I asked Bojack horseman discussion groups to pick their least favorite human or animal note Diane isn't on this list because I already made a video defending her Beatrice overwhelmingly got the most votes and a ton of people expressing how abusive and terrible she is I don't like the abuse of children because she reminds me too much of my own mother and that's horrible she's trash it's comforting that her character dies alone in a nursing home Beatrice represents everything big or small we can resent about our parents or the people who raised us put-downs lack of support constantly being on edge excessive and irrational anger well I also don't like her as a person slash horse I find her endlessly fascinating as a character because even though she was abusive to vote jack I don't think she was trying to be a bad person don't sit so close to the TV it'll make you cruel after watching and re watching and sitting with this show since it came out in 2014 I've come to believe that Beatrice with her horrible behavior was just doing the best that she could given her morose childhood so that's why I'm defending her even though she was a jerk and that's an understatement exploring why she is the way she is Mike well some of the visceral pent-up rage so many of us feel towards her and potentially teach us more about one of the main driving themes behind the show everyone is a product of their past and we're all just people trying to live in spite of that pain out of all the characters with the pressing backstories Beatrice is tied in first with whatever your favorite origin is the central lesson Beatrice internalized from her childhood is that if you don't hide your emotions bad things happen growing up she lived with her quintessential forties dad who was controlling morally out-of-date in today's standards and anti feelings he was a foil to Beatrice his mom who was free-spirited Tsang joked around and expressed her emotions this emotional expression was also her undoing when she went manic after the death of her son crackerjack when Beatrice's mom and mitad she was depressed and needed help instead of supporting her Beatrice's died had her lobotomized essentially her mother's love for her son and trust in her husband resulted in a horrific waking dead style ending soin Beatrice's mom made Beatrice promise to never love anyone Beatrice accepted because she had seen the damage being attached to people can bring love does things to a person terrible things Beatrice promise me you'll never love anyone as much as I loved Cracker Jack I promise I will you can't let your woman the emotions consume you you don't want to end up like your mother now do you as Beatrice grew up she internalized that lesson becoming incredibly standoffish and dried to almost everyone that is until butterscotch horseman when they first met she felt like butterscotch got her in her struggles he was new seems equally rebellious and headstrong and feigned vulnerability I was little I don't remember really but she had a diamond just like yours I saw it in a picture once encouraging her to be vulnerable and turn that's when they hooked up she got pregnant and was trapped in a life she didn't want looking into the future or the present of the show when she acted cold despondent and judgmental towards Bojack I don't think it was a sociopathic decision to hurt her child I think she was unconsciously listening to her mother's advice which was reinforced when she let her guard down with butterscotch every time Beatrice loved someone or something and led to sadness by not being affectionate with Bojack she was teaching him the virtues she had followed her entire life if you look at her comments two-word Bojack in a vacuum she seems cruel and abusive however if you look at them through the lens of her experience they're still abusive but appear less cruel they're more like lessons in avoiding hurt and expectation don't you dare cry don't you ever cry you wanted this either that or she's distancing herself from him because she sees Bojack as a symbol for what can be taken away from you when you let others in when she told beau Jack you better grow up to be something to make up for all the damage you've done it's not some random insults she's saying he was the reason she stayed with butterscotch and never lived up to her full potential it's not a great thing to burden your child with but at the same time she didn't have the emotional capacity to change or treat him differently after reading bojack's book beatrice calls Bojack to apologize for how she treated him as a child she acknowledges I just wanted to tell you I know I know you want to be happy but you won't be and I'm sorry what it's not just you you know your father and I and we well you come by and honestly the ugliness inside you to me it felt like an admission that she wasn't proud of who she was and she knew Bojack struggled because of her demons but because of what she went through she wasn't capable of raising him or being any other way she did what she could within her emotionally-stunted confines on a more relatable level for those of us who haven't raised anyone have you ever had those moments where you know you're being mean to someone who doesn't deserve it you know you shouldn't treat them so badly but you can't stop yourself you don't know how to act different beatrice is that but on a grander scale I think Beatrice really did love Bojack and if it wasn't for her trauma Beatrice might have been a good mother to him this shows through how she treated her baby doll when she had dementia a major symptom of dementia is that you forget who you are people who suffer from this disease tend to revert back to a childlike state often before major emotional damage and outside influences within that child mind people will sometimes remember important events and figures from throughout their lives to mix in with that altered persona for Beatrice those events and figures centered around beau Jack and Henrietta her old housekeeper by the way I'm not saying Beatrice fully reverted back but she had her moments of thinking she was younger and was a lot more subdued and forgiving than we knew her seasons prior seeing Beatrice with dementia gave hints that she really does care for and loved Bojack through her baby doll she shows how she would have been as a mother if she had been encouraged to value love and expression she likes to watch horsing around and mentions how comforting it is for her because you love that Bojack right well he's not much of a son but the show can be a comfort sometimes something she would have never said before they were playing your dumb show in his hospital room and when she was confused after Bojack left her in that bad nursing home she calmed down when Bojack talked to her and reassured her everything was okay your whole family is here and they're telling you that everything is gonna be all right yes that's right you get to see the comparison between her with grief and how she would have been if given the space to be herself these moments of self-expression weren't just hidden away and revealed through her deteriorating mind they have been sporadically in her life without the disease with music being the connecting thread at Beatrice's funeral Bojack recounts she's to put on these shows with her a supper club in the living room in the big finale was always a dance my mother did she had this beautiful dress that she only brought out for these parties and she did this incredible number they were so beautiful and sad and as a child who was completely terrified of both my parents I was always aware that this moment of grace it meant something my mother she knew what it's like to feel your entire life like you're drowning with the exception of these moments these very rare brief instances in which you suddenly remember you can swim she allowed herself to be free and revealed who she was through song and dance music is also something that connected her to her mother who loves singing and the piano before her lobotomy through the fog of mental illness and music we see who she really is or who she could have been not a hardened monster but a scared and rambunctious little girl looking for love and comfort that got lost in the maze of life this acknowledgment that life tore her down ties into how she responded to Henriette her housekeeper when she learnt that she too had an affair with butterscotch and got pregnant despite Henriette being bubbly and Beatrice being more stoic there are many parallels between the characters they're both ambitious they were both tricked with the same sweet line butterscotch fed them he said you reminded him of his dead mother he said she had hair like mine he's saw it in a picture once but she had a diamond just like yours I saw in a picture once and they both wanted to keep his baby the difference is Henrietta still had her life ahead of her Henrietta represented the sparkle of youth in idealism that Beatrice used to have so Beatrice used her ability to be objective and guarded to help Henrietta avoid the same mistakes she made when she was younger and she kept Bojack married butterscotch and gave up on her life they hardly knew each other but they shared a certain sensitivity and it tasted for the unknown they were living in a one-horse town so they headed west towards a town that could accommodate three horses oh yes I think I have heard this story they got a small house in San Francisco near the bookstore he got in good with squirrel and getting and his scurry he wrote his Great American Novel while his wife took care of the baby well if she had them if a beautiful creature like herself could ever love and oflike him I think she could do you think you want this but you don't not like this don't throw away your dreams for this child don't let that man poison your life the way he did mine you are going to finish your schooling and become a nurse you'll meet a man a good man and you'll have a family but please believe me you don't want this please Henrietta you have to believe me please don't do what I did she may have been stone-faced and rude in the moment but she offered to pay for Henrietta's tuition to nursing school and held her hand through the delivery something Beatrice didn't get when she was giving birth to Bojack but immediately after Henrietta had the baby Beatrice goes back to being cold-hearted as an audience member it broke my heart hearing Henrietta beg to hold her baby as Beatrice walked away without looking back I couldn't understand how she could be so cruel but again putting it in context Beatrice was being a strong person she felt she should have been in Henrietta's position additionally I argue that taking the baby away wasn't just for Henrietta I argue that by Beatrice insisting that Henry at his baby be put up for adoption she showed regret for raising Bojack the way she did remember how I said Beatrice apologized to Bojack for what she did to him emotionally while growing up well Beatrice believe that Henrietta would do the same thing to her child if she let her keep it by removing the baby she wasn't just protecting Henrietta from becoming she was protecting the baby from becoming Bojack this all seems like less of a stretch when you continue to think of what Beatrice reveals through her dementia there's a scene when Beatrice is being loving towards her baby doll Bojack gets jealous she's being better with it than she was with him so he takes the doll and throws it around Beatrice frantically tries to get the baby back while calling Bojack Henriette and saying that Henriette you're unfit to be a parent kind of like Beatrice thinks she's talking to the real Henriette about her actual baby and this isn't an isolated incident she makes allusions to Henrietta and the baby through the doll and random conversations all the time almost like she sees the doll as the baby she took or hollyhock as we come to learn Henriette orange juice no not being paid for polite conversation Oh jack maybe you should show hello it's you hollyhock I can't believe you came back who me or beau Jack you look just like him where's the girl she's gone mom oh yes I took her didn't I where did I put her turns out being a parent is impossible so I guess I can't be that mad at you mad at me this is the right thing Beatrice wanted to give hollyhock the care she deserved and a better life from the one she could give beau jack that instinct to protect Henrietta and her child explains why she drugged hollyhock with weight-loss medication a constant element through Beatrice's flashbacks is people ridiculing her for her figure and what she eats whether it was her mom telling her she couldn't have ice cream you know iced cream is for boys you can sprinkle some sugar on a lemon that's a good healthy girls neck or the girls in school calling her fat even her lungs expostulate as they struggle to expel your ample corpulence she's saying your lungs or her died saying she had problems with her weight as a child doctor says your throat is nearly swollen shut so perhaps you'll finally lose some of that weight that's given you such troubles at one point before her debutante ball she even asks for her pretty pills aka weight-loss pills like it's something she taken for a while this obsession with the scale is something she carried into dementia no ice cream for me Henrietta I'm watching my figure no one loves a fatty pad by slipping hollyhock chub be gone until she learned Beatriz was trying to prevent hollyhock from facing the same taunting sheeted also given the specificity of the tactic Beatriz used to give hollyhock the drugs it felt like she was most likely doing the same thing her father had done to her before to get her to take her pretty pills much like every character in the show Beatrice's flaws can be traced back to her past but more specifically to her dad what I find interesting about Beatriz is that she doesn't seem to resent him for what he did unlike Bojack who hates his parents with a fiery passion I win her I spark with recognition I'm gonna sit down next to her I'm gonna squeeze her hand and get real close and say [ __ ] you mom Beatriz sees her dad is a good man and will often speak highly of him do you want this painting it belong to your grandfather a man who knew what marriage meant I think the difference between how Bojack and Beatriz see their upbringing is the decisions they made at crucial stages of their lives when Beatriz was 21 ish just getting out of college she was finding herself and wanted to make a difference in the world but before she could accomplish anything she got pregnant and stayed with butterscotch a fate that she could have avoided if she ended the man her dad was pushing her towards and when butterscotch and her were penniless living in a garbage apartment her dad swooped in and gave butterscotch a job so she can retain some semblance of her old well-off life he helped her out despite her dad being a jerk he always came in when she needed him and was proven right Beatrice's dad burnt her doll to prevent her from catching scarlet fever again because they thought the doll was infected he was concerned about Beatriz dying in a car accident when her mother let her drive home during her quote-unquote hysteria because Beatrice started a family she didn't want when she was young and didn't know anyone her dad was the only person there to pick up the pieces she never had an opportunity to meet others who allowed her to grow on her own or be there for her emotionally Beatriz abused Bojack in a more overt way with less hiding behind a mask of care you think that would be more damaging but at the same age Beatrice was forced into a job as a housewife Bojack wasn't tethered he could go out meet and interact with people who propped him up and taught him he could improve if he wanted to and that there's more to than his past Beatriz never had that so she clung to the idea that what she went through was fine Beatriz was top times aro neither standstill nor reverses it merely marches forward and there's nothing you can do to change anything Bojack was exposed to people that taught him that the arrows path doesn't have to be straight you can make your own path at this point I feel compelled to note that this defense of Beatriz isn't meant to say what she did was okay the way she hurt Bojack was gross and despicable this dissection isn't meant to justify her behavior but rather explain that she might not deserve all the unadulterated fury thrown at her while discussing why she did certain things doesn't make them good it helps to make her as a character a little more sympathetic and forgivable there are horrible people in the world that are just evil but I don't think Beatriz is one of them sometimes the reason people are monsters isn't because they want to be it's because pain and brainwashing can be so strong that it can't help but trickle down through generations for me Beatrice's art shows us two things one it demonstrates how important being vulnerable is to the journey of finding happiness and yourself and two no matter what the situation were only trapped if we believe it we all have a choice to shift the arrow because while we're all influenced by the past it doesn't have to define our future Beatriz Horseman was born in 1938 and she died in 2018 and I have no idea what you wanted unless she just wanted what we all want to be seen and that is my defense of Beatrice horseman right now I want to acknowledge my patrons Matt David and Patrick thank you guys so much for your support if you guys also want to help me out you can like this video subscribe to my channel and or donate to my patreon the link is in the description below I liked you guys later bye [Music]

Channel: Ariana Alexis

Views: 1,086,294

Keywords: bojack horseman, beatrice horseman, in defence of beatrice, in defence of diane, in defense of, video essay, bojack horseman finale, the worst character, character deconstruction, i hate beatrice, film studies, you were born broken, Im punishing you for being alive, like cosmonaut variety hour, like nerdwriter, netflix original series, beatrice bojack comparison, times arrow marches forward, young child beatrice, butterscotch horseman, hollyhock, dementia, henrietta, sugarman

Id: qALWAtUe6y0

Length: 17min 36sec (1056 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 15 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/MissIscariot]

Awesome job! I think you hit the nail on the head, and that one of the primary themes of the whole show is how trauma echoes across generations unless one does something to interrupt it. Beatrice’s mother lived through it, passed it on to Beatrice, who (with the help of Butterscotch) passed it on to BoJack, who passed it on to people like Sara Lynn, Hollyhock, Penny, Todd... practically anyone he gets close to, with often disastrous results for which he constantly ducks responsibility. I think the show does a great job exploring how the past affects its characters, but also in showing that it doesn’t have to continue, and that a person’s past doesn’t absolve them of responsibility for what they do in the present. For instance, Diane had a terrible family, as did Princess Carolyn, and they had their own struggles in life, but they mostly led good lives without hurting too many people — unlike Beatrice or BoJack.

I also find it fascinating how Mr. Peanutbutter was like the opposite side of the BoJack coin. Obviously his childhood was way more positive than BoJack’s, but one can infer that it was to an excessive degree. Mr. Peanutbutter obviously has trouble listening or dealing with anything that isn’t exciting, fun, or wherein he’s the center of attention. “Nothing bad ever happens on the Labrador Peninsula” essentially means he never really had to weather hardship, which itself can be an emotionally stunting experience. He’s remarkably immature for his age, hence why he can’t sustain a relationship for very long before his partners grow frustrated and bitter, eventually leaving him. On first glance, BoJack and MPB look like completely different characters, but... they’re not, really. Both have the emotional range of a teaspoon.

I digress; point being, I think everyone (as with Beatrice) has a story, and if we heard it, we’d likely be less judgmental of them and more understanding. Not with the intention of letting them off the hook for the damage they cause, but to realize (especially for people who have been hurt by said damaged people) that we can end those cycles. We don’t have to inherit someone else’s pain and make it a part of our own story. We can choose differently.

[u/BeAmyDay]

I'm saving this for later! (it's 2 AM here, I'll watch it tomorrow :))

[u/gudmemes247]

She's a despicable person but very sympathetic at the same time. Almost all of the characters in the show had some sort of personal trauma that they endured since a young age. Some of them overcame those wounds towards the end. But many unfortunately couldn't, and their trauma warped them into deeply flawed, complicated and problematic people. Beatrice was the latter unfortunately.

It says a lot that despite many other main characters like Diane, PC and Todd falling into the first category of flawed people evantually getting "happily ever after" endings, the main titular character of the show is a perfect embodiment of the second category. I guess it could be interpreted as the showrunners trying to tell the audience through their characterization about the sad reality, which is that most people with bad upbringings tend to fall into the second category rather than the first.

[u/Thymeisdone]

This is wonderful! Great work and thank you.

[u/[deleted]]

Video is so good!!! The video really illustrates how trauma is like a ripple effect through generations and different people deal with it. I’m a glass half full thinker so I think Beatrice did the right thing and got Hollyhock away from everything

A lot of ideas here the show could have explored if not for the writers strike

[u/JJC12138]

I always sympathized with Bea. She's good with what she was given. This really made Bojack realize his life is shit because he's shit, and you can't blame anyone.

[u/TheOneNamedSprinkles]

Loved it!