One of the things I really love about BoJack Horseman is the brutal honesty with which the show portrays people. There are many themes that I really enjoy in the show, the one I want to talk about now is means and ends, good intentions and how they lead you nowhere most of the time.
Diane Nguyen vs Sebastian St. Clair.
Warning: spoilers for Seasons 1 and 2.
When Diane first appeared on the show, I was expecting a strawman feminist, a joke, a parody or a pandering unrealistic ideal. Instead I quickly saw we’ve got something raw and genuine on our hands - an actually well-rounded realistically flawed person who cares about social issues and women’s issues in particular.
The show does a good job of showing us that at the core Diane is a good person with a strong feeling of empathy and justice. Nonetheless, every now and then she closes her eyes on obvious injustices and problems, just like any real person would. These little hypocrisies make her very human, but they never take her too far off course (like they do for Joelle Clarke, who refuses to be there for young and vulnerable Sarah Lynn because she’s got other important ‘feminist’ things to do, this way completely discrediting herself).
Being into social justice as she is, Diane really wants to write a book about Sebastian St. Clair, a rich American celebrity who is leading an effort of easing a refugee crisis. St Clair contacts her, inviting her to come watch him in action and tell the world about his effort, and she gets really passionate about it, but only goes to him after a while.
In the meantime we get many shots of St. Clair being only semi-helpful, as he keeps talking to Diane on the phone. He helps several people, hurts one accidentally, shows no remorse and keeps going.
In the end Diane manages to make it to him and sees the horrors of war first-hand. She also sees the man she came to write about is an extremely self-centered unemphatic egotist. He doesn’t care about the suffering of the people even as he helps them (with various degrees of success). Diane, meanwhile, cares a lot. When a local child she met dies, she completely loses it and has to return home, which significantly undermines her image of herself. Ruthless and effective St. Clair brushes off yet another death he’d witnessed in the conflict and continues to build hospitals and monuments to himself.
Diane goes through a long depression and in the end never returns to the war-torn region, while she still tries to act against injustice and towards liberal causes without getting involved in anything quite as gruesome as war.
I think St. Clair’s role is more than just to be a parody of all the people who do benevolent things only to look good in the public eye, I think there’s more to him.
Both him and Diane want to help the refugees (for their respective reasons). Diane is clearly the kinder, more empathetic and genuine one. And yet she is also the one who gives up and runs away after mere weeks (or days), while St. Clair has been helping the refugees for months. I think this illustrates a very important point: empathy is not always what you need to help people.
In her short time in the war-torn region, Diane does almost nothing to actually help the people except writing the book about St. Clair, who does help, even if not perfectly. He is effective, and he is persistent. He feels nothing for those people, and that’s why he can stick around and help even as they die all around him, despite his efforts. An empathetic person like Diane couldn’t last long in such a situation, and she doesn’t.
That’s why there are very many psychopaths in medicine, law and political jobs. To be able to endure the pressure and the responsibility without breaking you either have to start out rather low on empathy or quickly grow a very thick skin. Being good and kind isn’t always what’s needed to help people. Sometimes you need to be a cold-blooded asshole or robot.
And this brings me to another point, a view I hold to some extent: means justify the ends. Yes, in that order.
St. Clair wants to have a legacy, he wants to do something significant to feed his ego, improve his public image and for other reasons. And what does he do to achieve those things - goes out to help refugees and tries to draw media attention to the crisis. His goal is nothing noble, but his actions (for the most part) are quite positive, by far better than doing nothing.
Meanwhile Diane has the best of intentions. But does she ever achieve anything? Does she really help anyone? Not really. It’s made very poignant in one scene late in Season 3 where she rants about saving water.
I think that’s a big reason St. Clair was introduced. He’s the corporation who gives money to research aiming to cure cancer, he’s the shady politician who builds a kids’ hospital, he’s the pop star who gives a charity concert. He is the churning wheel of progress and profit, who doesn’t care, but gets shit done nonetheless.
Diane is the average well-meaning prosocial person who usually doesn’t have the strength of character or passion to significantly improve the world, her few steps in the right direction are either fruitless (the scandal with that hippo celebrity) or accidental (the pro-choice advocacy). She doesn’t always get things right or understand other people (despite her empathetic nature), she ignores issues that are too intimidating for her to tackle (the whole situation with the chickens that she mostly ignores), she likes her cushy lifestyle and wants to keep it, but she is at the same time rather self-aware. All of this really makes her likable, but also deeply flawed. And I think it’s beautiful.
The show does an fantastic job of creating these complex archetypal characters and introducing their foils. And St. Clair is an amazing foil for Diane.