[At a time when the desire for comfort drives viewing habits,
BoJack Horseman and A Teacher urged audiences to sit with their
discomfort over who we’re prepared to forgive and who we see as
victims.] [[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

BOJACK HORSEMAN AND A TEACHER OPENED UP A NEW CHAPTER OF #METOO
STORIES  
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Danette Chavez
December 9, 2020
AV Club
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_ At a time when the desire for comfort drives viewing habits, BoJack
Horseman and A Teacher urged audiences to sit with their discomfort
over who we’re prepared to forgive and who we see as victims. _

BoJack Horseman and Kate Mara in A Teacher , (Image: Netflix) (Photo:
Chris Large/FX) Graphic: Natalie Peeples

 

This year was marked by calls for escapism as much as a push for
greater accountability. Lockdown orders may have prompted us to share
recommendations for the best comfort watches, but even in the midst of
the pandemic, people took to the streets to protest systemic racism
and police brutality. Watch parties became a conduit for connecting
virtually, while all manner of companies were challenged on their
exclusionary hiring practices, and Tarana Burke’s #MeToo movement
continued to shine a light on sexual violence and other abuses of
power across industries
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Founded in 2006, the #MeToo movement gained new momentum in 2017
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numerous actors and artists, including Gabrielle Union and America
Ferrera
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spoke up about sexual assault and harassment. Ashley Judd and Rose
McGowan were among the dozens of women who brought forth allegations
against Harvey Weinstein. As support for survivors and victims grew,
so did the hand-wringing over whether the disclosures and discussion
about inequitable power dynamics were going “too far.” But many
proponents viewed this reckoning as just getting started.

Here, 2020 offered some catharsis—the consequences for abuse went
beyond professional ouster as Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in
jail
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and Hollywood confronted his predation and the culture that enabled it
in _The Assistant_
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But TV creators took a more holistic approach to #MeToo stories this
year. Both the final half-season of _BoJack Horseman_
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the limited series _A Teacher_
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abuse and even broached the possibility of redemption. Perhaps most
strikingly, both shows showed the aftermath of abuse, for both the
perpetrators and the survivors. At a time when the desire for comfort
drives viewing habits, _BoJack Horseman _and _A Teacher _urged
audiences to sit with their discomfort over who we’re prepared to
forgive and who we see as victims.

_BoJack_’s morose horse protagonist_ _seemed on track for a
redemption arc in the first half of season six. After months in
rehab, BoJack (Will Arnett) gained valuable insight into his
self-destructive behavior. The not-entirely-washed-up actor began to
see what’s been clear to audiences since season one: Being a
survivor of abuse doesn’t excuse his own abusive behavior, and his
celebrity status, which was his shield for so long, has actually
thwarted his development. By midseason, a sober BoJack had rebuilt his
life away from the limelight, teaching acting to Wesleyan students.
His younger sister, Hollyhock (Aparna Nancherla), was happy to see
him when he first visited Connecticut, and his relationships with
Diane Nguyen (Alison Brie), Princess Carolyn (Amy Sedaris), and Todd
Chavez (Aaron Paul), while somewhat strained, were far from over.

Given BoJack’s offenses—trying to have sex with his former
crush’s teen daughter, encouraging a recovering addict to go on a
bender with him, being high at work and strangling his co-star—it
was as close to a happy ending as he probably deserved. But “A Quick
One, While He’s Away
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proved BoJack’s comeuppance was still on its way. Series creator
Raphael Bob-Waksberg has fielded questions about how the show would
end since at least season two, but the first real hint at the
conclusion came in the fifth season. When BoJack begged Diane to once
again publicize his misdeeds, trading memoir for exposé, she
declined, because that would mean he was still putting the burden on
others. Bob-Waksberg and the rest of the _BoJack _team, including
Lisa Hanawalt, Kate Purdy, Joanna Calo, and Aaron Long, drew an
important distinction there, between being held to account and taking
responsibility.

The final leg of the series sees BoJack both assuming responsibility
and being held responsible, using its signature trenchant writing, as
well as the visual panache Hanawalt cultivated for years. The same
type of dry-erase boards that once listed fake Oscar nominees now bear
witness to BoJack’s misconduct, though the worst is saved for last.
BoJack is challenged to rethink his “fuck-ups,” as is the
Hollywoo(d) public—and the audience. The litany of offenses is
undeniable, and BoJack is exiled.

The last two installments stray from _BoJack_ storytelling form; the
penultimate episode, “The View From Halfway Down,” seems to bring
things to a conclusive end with a series of heart-stopping moments.
And it’s the series closer, “Nice While It Lasted,” that
offers the most devastating moment
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The final scene, in which BoJack and Diane stare up at the cobalt blue
sky, leaves so much unsaid between the two characters. But _BoJack
Horseman_’s final episodes delivered what few productions have dared
to do since we as a society began to reckon with predators and the
power dynamics they’ve benefitted from. Along with offering a
glimpse of what closure could look like for survivors
(the _Fireflame _billboard is a great background gag and a triumph
for Stephanie Beatriz’s Gina Cazador), _BoJack Horseman_, in the
series’ most meta-moment yet, showed what it looks like to hold
abusers—including your faves—responsible.

Hannah Fidell’s _A Teacher_, which premiered November 10 on FX on
Hulu, heads toward similar territory, though it takes a very different
path to get there. Fidell’s expanded her character study from 2013
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powerful rumination on who is viewed as a victim and who is deemed a
predator. The limited series centers on Claire (Kate Mara), an
attractive 30-something teacher painfully aware of the rut she’s in,
but too invested in her self-denial to change anything. Her life is
full of obligations, not aspirations; it always has been, Claire
thinks, as she’s had to put everyone else’s needs before her own.
So convinced of her own altruism is she that when she meets Eric (Nick
Robinson), a prepossessing high school senior, Claire almost
immediately offers to tutor him for the SATs. And because she
continues to believe she has very little control over her life, it’s
years before she’s able to see that she was already exerting undue
influence over a teenager. She tells Eric he’s smarter than his
friends; after learning he wants to be pre-med at University of Texas
at Austin, she takes him on a campus visit. Claire shares a little too
much of her own life during these encounters, sits a little too close,
encourages Eric to call her by her first name. In short, she’s
grooming him, though she believes their relationship is equitable
because the attraction is mutual.

FX on Hulu includes a disclaimer about the abuse and grooming ahead of
each episode, but for the first half of the series, Claire and
Eric’s relationship is shot dreamily, their exploits set to the kind
of swelling music found in romantic films. This manipulation of the
audience, a subversion courtesy of Fidell, mirrors the manipulation of
Eric, who initially believes he was in a relationship with someone who
happened to be older. His feelings about what happened change over the
course of _A Teacher_’s 10 episodes; when he first has sex with
Claire, he shouts, “I’m the motherfuckin’ man,” to himself.
Years later, when asked about the abuse in college, Eric downplays
what happened, even though it’s clearly taken a psychological toll
on him, because men can’t be, or aren’t supposed to be, victims.
After one last time jump, Eric recognizes he was abused, which, though
an important step, is just the first in a long journey toward healing.

Fidell’s narrative is made of up two distinct parts, including the
fallout of Claire and Eric’s relationship, because, as the director
has said, “The story doesn’t just end when the headline comes
out.” In the first several episodes, Fidell creates space, though
not exactly empathy, for Claire’s motivations. Like BoJack, Claire
also came from an abusive background, but her version of “acting
out” was to bottle everything up—her anger, her desire, her fear.
She views her behavior with Eric as a kind of latent teen rebellion,
which would be pathetic if it weren’t so destructive. Early on, the
story plays like a fantasy because it’s Claire’s fantasy, one in
which she’s in a gratifying relationship and gets to be a mentor.
Even after she’s been arrested, Claire struggles to see herself as
an abuser. For Claire, abusers are men like her father, whose own
self-destructive behavior robbed her of a childhood. Her mistake, she
says, was in allowing herself to be caught up in her own and Eric’s
feelings.

In its final episodes, which we won’t give away here in their
entirety, _A Teacher _begins to grapple with the consequences of
Claire’s actions, and who is actually bearing the brunt of them.
There’s a feint toward a happy ending, and a stirring speech: “I
have to live with this forever. And so do you.” But the four hours
of storytelling that come before the finale have plenty of narrative
heft and groundbreaking twists on their own. Like _BoJack
Horseman_, _A Teacher _contemplates redemption, but not before
reform, and certainly not before acknowledging an offense has been
committed. In focusing on the aftermath of abuse and on historically
overlooked victims, both series contribute to a new chapter of #MeToo
stories.

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