the paintings in bojack horseman are always worth a second (and third, and fourth, etc) look. right off the bat, what i can give you is that the painting in sarah lynn’s room–above her princess-y, almost childlike canopy bed–is a reworking of ophelia by john everett millais (1852) (bottom image).
the following contains major SPOILERS for season three. and, uh, i guess hamlet. dip now if you haven’t finished through s3e12: that went well.
the above painting illustrates ophelia’s death in hamlet. the audience isn’t meant to witness her death, though! in the play, ophelia dies offstage, and gertrude relays the story. (or a story, i guess. i’ve read hamlet in a couple of classes and all i know for sure about it at this point is that you can’t trust what any of the characters have to say.) by grutrude’s account, ophelia fell from a willow tree into a brook. the water carried her off and she drowned. she died singing, apparently uninterested in the danger of her situation.
ophelia’s clothing, so it goes, first “bore her up,” but then “heavy with their drink/pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay/to muddy death.” the primary visual signifier of her class and blood status first elevated her before becoming her undoing.
needless to say, this is all very sarah lynn. she was a pop singer and a flashy dresser, but both of those things dragged her down. in her own words: “i don’t like anything about me.” and, shortly thereafter, “the only reason i wear this shirt is because some company paid me $8,000 to wear it… and i don’t even need the money. i just liked that someone still wanted me to wear their shirt.” (s3e11: that’s too much, man!)
sarah lynn was alternately insensate to the dangers of the world around her, and acutely aware of them– “am i doomed? are you doomed? are we all doomed?” regardless, the world around her really showed her no mercy. to bojack, she was fodder for self-pity and self-reflection. she was (and presumably will continue to be) an object of both his familial and sexual desires, as ophelia was for hamlet. sarah lynn, like ophelia, was ambiguously suicidal, and unquestionably self-destructive. and like ophelia’s life, sarah lynn’s life–the bulk of it, anyway–occurred off-screen. it’s relayed to us through character’s anecdotes and other character’s points of view. we understand her only as much as others understand her. (in other words, she’s less of a todd and more of a herb.) (… an herb?)
which, of course, puts bojack in hamlet’s place. talk about lengthy and unsavory implications, right? and makes todd the horatio! unless he and mr. peanutbutter make up rosercrantz and guildenstern. and… i guess herb is yorick? this is a digression, sorry.
fair warning: this next bit is probably pure coincidence, but in my opinion, the widespread cultural insistence on a ~death of the author~ approach to art exonerates me from any its_not_that_deep.jpg accusations. (i mean. not really. totally go for it. but i’m gonna go for it, too.)
the model for millais’ ophelia was a woman named elizabeth siddal. she had a hard life, which isn’t shocking given that she was a model in the mid-19th century. some googling turned up this incredibly comprehensive site, which is run by someone who just… really likes elizabeth siddal. gotta respect that dedication.
anyway, assuming sarah lynn modeled for this painting at some point, we can say that she didn’t just put herself in ophelia’s position. she also put herself in siddal’s position.
siddal’s adult life was characterized by serious struggles with addiction, mistreatment by the men whose creative work she appeared in and uplifted, and a lack of artistic recognition. sarah lynn was an addict. she was absolutely treated poorly by bojack, and presumably by the other men around her. (quick example: the two paps who stalked her. it’s difficult to find men who interacted with sarah lynn who didn’t in some way exploit her, though.) and her chart-topping success was dismissed–written off as shallow, ridiculous, gross.
just as siddal’s death ultimately contributed to millais’ reputation for romantic artistry, sarah lynn’s death becomes fodder for bojack’s art and bojack’s pain.
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