Approach
The basic idea is to compare the ratio of each species from the show to that of the real world and check for variances. At first, I compared against whole-world animal populations but then decided to limit the comparison to United States’ populations, as the show is predominantly set there, in Hollywoo, LA.
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I also narrowed down the comparison to 7 species:
- Humans
- Horses
- Dogs
- Cats
- Deer
- Bears
- Sheep
Results
The analysis shows obvious disproportion between the Bojack universe and the real world.
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From this simple multi-bar chart, we can quickly see that Humans and Horses are overrepresented in the show, while Cats and Dogs are underrepresented.
I went a step further and plotted only the variances.
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With this chart, the disproportion is clearer:
- Humans are overrepresented by ~20%
- Dogs and cats are underrepresented by ~10%
- Horses, deer, bears, and sheep fall within a ±5% margin
The numbers are not super crazy, but I’d say they’re significant enough to brand this show a speciesist.
*strikes gavel*
Another interesting finding here is that although the show is eponymously about a horse, human characters dominate the show with a whopping 112 characters as opposed to only 9 horses. That’s almost 13:1!