BURNHAM: (Singing) The live-action "Lion King," the Pepsi halftime show, 20,000 years of this, seven more to go. Its a feat, the work of a gifted experimentalist whose craft has caught up to his talent. A Detailed Breakdown of How Bo Burnham Bo Burnham Depression acts like an outside force, one that is rather adept at convincing our minds to simply stay in bed, to not care, and to not try anymore. And you can roughly think about this, I think, as a series of short videos that are mostly of him singing songs and that are sewn together with a little bit of other material, whether it's shots of him lying in bed or setting up the cameras. We're a long way from the days when he filmed "Comedy" and the contrast shows how fruitless this method of healing has been. And I think that's what you're getting here. Burnham is especially aware as a creator constantly reflecting on his own life. It's a series of musical numbers and skits that are inherently about the creation of comedy itself. The song's melody is oddly soothing, and the lyrics are a sly manifestation of the way depression convinces you to stay in its abyss ("It's almost over, it's just begun. But the cultural standards of what is appropriate comedy and also the inner standards of my own mind have changed rapidly since I was 16. And notably, Burnhams work focuses on parasocial relationships not from the perspective of the audience, but the perspective of the performer.Inside depicts how being a creator can feel: you are a cult leader, you are holding your audience hostage, your audience is holding you hostage, you are your audience, your audience can never be you, you need your audience, and you need to escape your audience. He decided to stop doing live performances, and instead set out to write and direct his first feature film, the critically-acclaimed 2018 movie "Eighth Grade." Now, five years later, Burnham's new parody song is digging even deeper at the philosophical question of whether or not it's appropriate to be creating comedy during a horrifyingly raw period of tragedy like the COVID-19 pandemic and the social reckoning that followed George Floyd's murder. Mirroring the earlier scene where Burnham went to sleep, now Burnham is shown "waking up.". The hustle to be a working artist usually means delivering an unending churn of content curated specifically for the demands of an audience that can tell you directly why they are upset with you because they did not actually like the content you gave them, and then they can take away some of your revenue for it. . A harsh skepticism of digital life (a life the pandemic has only magnified) is the dominant subject of the special. Because there's also a little bit Bo Burnham the character in this almost. Might not help but still it couldn't hurt. I like this song, Burnham says, before pointing out the the lack of modern songs about labor exploitation. Bo Burnham: Inside is a devastating portrait of the actor-director-singer-comedian's dysfunctional interiority and 2020's unyielding assault on mental and social health. Most of the comments talk about how visceral it is to hear Burnhams real voice singing the upsetting lyrics. "I didn't perform for five years," he says. Not only has his musical range expanded his pastiche of styles includes bebop, synth-pop and peppy show tunes Burnham, who once published a book of poems, has also become as meticulous and creative with his visual vocabulary as his language. Or DM a girl and groom her, do a Zoomer, find a tumor in her HOLMES: And this is what the chorus of that song sounds like. Theres a nostalgic sweetness to this song, but parts of it return throughout the show, in darker forms, one of many variations on a theme. It's like Burnham's special has swallowed you whole, bringing you fully into his mind at last. Bo Burnham It's a hint at the promised future; the possibility of once again being able to go outside and feel sunlight again. He's also giving us a visual representation of the way social media feeds can jarringly swing between shallow photos and emotional posts about trauma and loss. The whole song ping pongs between Burnham's singing character describing a very surface-level, pleasant definition of the world functioning as a cohesive ecosystem and his puppet, Socko, saying that the truth is the world functions at a much darker level of power imbalance and oppression. Burnham's creative background began with being a theater then he transitioned to musical-comedy. WebBo's transcripts on Scraps From The Loft. "You say the ocean's rising, like I give a s---," he sings. Who Were We Running From? All Eyes on Me also earned Bo his first Grammy win for Best Song Written for Visual Media at the 2022 Grammys. Back in 2010, Burnham appeared on Showtime's "The Green Room," a comics round table hosted by Paul Provenza. Inside has been making waves for comedy fans, similar to the ways previous landmark comedy specials like Hannah Gadsbys Nanette or Tig Notaros Live (aka Hello, I Have Cancer) have. Its a lyrically dense song with camerawork that speeds up with its rhythm. So we broke down each song and sketch and analyzed their meaning and context. And now depression has its grips in him. Now get inside.". But when reading songs like Dont Wanna Know and All Eyes On Me between the lines, Inside can help audiences better identify that funny feeling when they start feeling like a creator is their friend. See our full breakdown of every detail and reference you might have missed in "Inside" here. Might not help, but still, it couldn't hurt.". The comedy special perfectly encapsulated the world's collective confusion, frustration, and exhaustion amid ongoing pandemic lockdowns, bringing a quirky spin to the ongoing existential terror that was the year 2020. But then the music tells the audience that "he meant to play the track again" and that "art's still a lie, nothing's still real.". WebBo Burnham has been critical of his past self for the edgy, offensive comedy he used to make. His virtuosic new special, Inside (on Netflix), pushes this trend further, so far that it feels as if he has created something entirely new and unlikely, both sweepingly cinematic and claustrophobically intimate, a Zeitgeist-chasing musical comedy made alone to an audience of no one. So we broke down each song and sketch and analyzed their meaning and context. If the answer is yes, then it's not funny. It's so good to hear your voice. Now get inside.". HOLMES: I liked a bunch of the songs in this, and a lot of them are silly songs about the things that his comedy has already been concerned with for a long time, right? Bo WebA grieving woman magically travels through time to 1998, where she meets a man with an uncanny resemblance to her late love. Bo Burnham: Inside At first it seems to be just about life in the pandemic, but it becomes a reference to his past, when he made faces and jokes from his bedroom as a teenager and put that on the internet. All Eyes on Me takes a different approach to rattling the viewer. But, like so many other plans and hopes people had in the early months of the pandemic, that goal proved unattainable. But look, I made you some content. Likewise. ", The Mayo Clinic defines depersonalization-derealization disorder as occurring "when you persistently or repeatedly have the feeling that you're observing yourself from outside your body or you have a sense that things around you aren't real, or both. Inside (2021) opens with Bo Burnham sitting alone in a room singing what will be the first of many musical comedy numbers, Content. In the song, Burnham expresses, Roberts been a little depressed ii. His hair and beard were shorter, and he was full of inspired energy. People experiencing depression often stop doing basic self-care tasks, like showering or laundry or brushing their teeth. It moves kind of all over the place. He had a role in the film "Promising Young Woman." Inside And finally today, like many of us, writer, comedian and filmmaker Bo Burnham found himself isolated for much of last year - home alone, growing a beard, trying his best to stay sane. MARTIN: This special is titled, appropriately enough, "Inside," and it is streaming on Netflix now. Well now the shots are reversed. Still terrified of that spotlight? An existential dread creeps in, but Burnham's depression-voice tells us not to worry and sink into nihilism. Feelings of depersonalization and derealization can be very disturbing and may feel like you're living in a dream.". The frame is intimate, and after such an intense special, something about that intimacy feels almost dangerous, like you should be preparing for some kind of emotional jump scare. Burnham starts spiraling in a mental health crisis, mentioning suicidal ideation after lamenting his advance into his 30s. In the song Problematic, Burnham sings about his past problematic behavior, asking the audience, Isnt anyone going to hold me accountable? The specials intermission looks like a clear view into Burnhams room, until Burnham washes a window between himself and the viewer an explicit, but invisible, boundary between creator and audience. In the worst case, depression can convince a person to end their life. But on the other hand, it is lyrically so playful. Theres always been a tension in his comedy between an ironic, smarty-pants cleverness and an often melodramatic point of view. Daddy made you your favorite. Only he knows. It's a dangerously tempting invitation to stop caring, coming from the villain of this musical comedy (depression). I'm sitting down, writing jokes, singing silly songs, I'm sorry I was gone. At the second level of the reaction video, Burnham says: "I'm being a little pretentious. Burnham watching the end of his special on a projector also brings the poioumenon full circle the artist has finished their work and is showing you the end of the process it took to create it. Instead, thanks to his ultra-self-aware style, he seems to always get ahead of criticism by holding himself accountable first. And it has a real feel of restlessness to it, almost like stream of consciousness. Open wide.. That's a really clever, fun little rhyme in this, you know, kind of heavy song. MARTIN: You know, about that, because it does move into a deeply serious place at some point. This sketch, like the "White Woman Instagram" song, shows one of Burnham's writing techniques of bringing a common Internet culture into a fictionalized bit. How how successful do you think is "Inside" at addressing, describing kind of confronting the experience that a lot of people have had over the past year? The tension between creator and audience is a prominent theme in Burnhams work, likely because he got his start on YouTube. He points it at himself as he sways, singing again: Get your fuckin hands up / Get on out of your seat / All eyes on me, all eyes on me.. Now Burnham is showing us the clutter of the room, where he's almost claustrophobically surrounded by equipment. The album peaked at #7 on the Billboard 200 chart, #1 on the Comedy Albums chart, and #18 on the Independent Albums chart. Right after the song ends, the shot of Burnham's guest house returns but this time it's filled with clutter. Performing "Make Happy" was mentally taxing on Burnham. Still, its difficult not to be lulled back into, again, this absolute banger. It feels like the ending of a show, a climax, but it's not. Thought modern humans have been around for much longer than 20,000 years, that's around how long ago people first migrated to North America. Self-awareness does not absolve anyone of anything, he says. ", From then on, the narrative of "Inside" follows Burnham returning to his standard comedic style and singing various parody songs like "FaceTime with My Mom" and "White Woman's Instagram.". At just 20 years old, Burnham was a guest alongside Judd Apatow, Marc Maron, Ray Romano, and Garry Shandling. MARTIN: So Bo Burnham has had a lot of different identities lately. Research and analysis of parasocial relationships usually revolves around genres of performers instead of individuals. Well, well, buddy you found it, now come out with your hands up we've got you surrounded.". When you're a kid and you're stuck in your room, you'll do any old s--- to get out of it.". I feel very close and intimate with him in this version. And he's done virtually no press about it. One of the most encouraging developments in comedy over the past decade has been the growing directorial ambition of stand-up specials. .] Now, hes come a long way since his previous specials titled What. and Make Happy, where his large audiences roared with laughter '", "Robert's been a little depressed, no!" You know, as silly as that one is, some of the other ones are more sedate. Its a stupid song, and, uh, it doesnt really mean anything. The video continues. But he knows how to do this. Something went wrong. . Copyright 2021 NPR. Gross asked Burnham if people "misinterpreted" the song and thought it was homophobic. I don't know exactly how it tracks his experience, Bo Burnham, the person, right? This special spoke to me closer and clearer than Ive ever felt with another person. Bo Burnham The result, a special titled "Inside," shows all of Burnham's brilliant instincts of parody and meta-commentary on the role of white, male entertainers in the world and of poisons found in internet culture that digital space that gave him a career and fostered a damaging anxiety disorder that led him to quit performing live comedy after 2015. Teeuwen's performance shows a twisted, codependent relationship between him and the puppet on his hand, something Burnham is clearly channeling in his own sock puppet routine in "Inside.". Bo Burnham: Inside review this is a claustrophobic masterpiece. Daddy made you your favorite, open wide.". WebBo Burnham's Netflix special "Inside" features 20 new original songs. The global pandemic and subsequent lockdown orders of March 2020 put a stop to these plans. and concludes that if it's mean, it's not funny. Apathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime. They Cloned Tyrone. In one interpretation, maybe the smile means he's ready to be outside again. ", And last but not least, for social media he put "sexually pranking unsuspecting women at public beaches" and "psychologically abusive parents making rube goldberg machines" alongside "white people using GIFs of Black people widening their eyes.". Bo Burnham Is he content with its content? Coined in 1956 by researchers Donald Horton and Richard Wohl, the term initially was used to analyze relationships between news anchors who spoke directly to the audience and that audience itself. The whole song sounds like you're having a religious experience with your own mental disorder, especially when new harmonies kick in. Netflix The special is hitting an emotional climax as Burnham shows us both intense anger and then immediately after, a deep and dark sadness. Partway through the song, the battery icon switches to low and starts blinking in warning as if death is imminent. Underneath the Steve Martin-like formal trickery has always beaten the heaving heart of a flamboyantly dramatic theater kid. our full breakdown of every detail and reference you might have missed in "Inside" here. He brushes his teeth, eats a bowl of cereal, and begins editing his videos. Other than Fred Rogers, Bo Burnham is one of the most cited single individual creators when discussing parasocial relationships. You know, I was not, you know, I was alone, but I was not trapped in one room. Its called INSIDE, and it will undoubtedly strike your hearts forevermore. HOLMES: Yeah. But Burnham is of course the writer, director, editor, and star of this show. As we explained in this breakdown of 31 details you might have missed in "Inside," Bo Burnham's newest special is a poioumenon a type of artistic work that tells the story of its own creation. So this is how it ends. I've been hiding from the world and I need to reenter.' And that can be a really - if you're not very good at it, that kind of thing, where there's a balance between sort of the sarcastic and ironic versus the very sincere can be really exhausting. It's a reprieve of the lyrics Burnham sang earlier in the special when he was reminiscing about being a kid stuck in his room. Initially, this seems like a pretty standard takedown of the basic bitch stereotype co-opted from Black Twitter, until the aspect ratio widens and Burnham sings a shockingly personal, emotional caption from the same feed. "Goodbye sadness, hello jokes!". And she's with us now to tell us more about it. Its horrific.". This is especially true for Patreon campaigns that give fans direct access to creators on platforms like Discord. But also, it's clear that there's a lot on his mind. It's as if Burnham knows there are valid criticisms of him that haven't really stuck in the public discourse around his work. It's a hint at the promised future; the possibility of once again being able to go outside and feel sunlight again. A series of eerie events thrusts an unlikely trio (John Boyega, Jamie Foxx and Teyonah Parris) onto the trail of a nefarious government conspiracy. And they're biting, but he's also very talented at these little catchy pop hooks. In his new Netflix special, Inside, Bo Burnham sings about trying to be funny while stuck in a room. It's a quiet, banal scene that many people coming out of a depressive episode might recognize. Burnham makes it textual, too. In the song "That Funny Feeling," Burnham mentions these two year spans without further explanation, but it seems like he's referencing the "critical window for action to prevent the effects of global warming from becoming irreversible. And we might. Burnham then kicks back into song, still addressing his audience, who seem unsure of whether to laugh, applaud, or sit somberly in their chairs. He is leaving it to speak for itself in terms of what it says about isolation and sadness. "Truly, it's like, for a 16-year-old kid in 2006, it's not bad. "If greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rate, then when the clock runs out, the average global temperature will be irreversibly on its way to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels.". I think you're getting from him, you know, the entertainment element. Bo Burnham: Inside As he shows in this new sketch, he's aware at a meta level that simply trying to get ahead of the criticism that could be tossed his way is itself a performance sometimes. / Are you having fun? The crowd directions are no longer stock pop song lyrics; now, the audience understands them as direct orders to them from Burnham. Bo Burnham: Inside "Inside" feels like the creative culmination of Bo Burnham's career over the last 15 years, starting with his first viral YouTube video in 2006. Bo Burnham: Inside One of those is the internet itself. Bo Burnhams Inside: A Comedy Special and an Inspired Experiment, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/arts/television/bo-burnham-inside-comedy.html. For all the ways Burnham had been desperate to leave the confines of his studio, now that he's able to go back out into the world (and onto a real stage), he's terrified. It is set almost entirely within one room of his Los Angeles guest house, the same one shown in the closing song of the June 2016 Make Happy special, titled Are you happy?. Its easy to see Unpaid Intern as one scene and the reaction videos as another, but in the lens of parasocial relationships, digital media, and workers rights, the song and the reactions work as an analysis for another sort of labor exploitation: content creation. Having this frame of reference may help viewers better understand the design of "Inside." In this time-jumping dramedy, a workaholic who's always in a rush now wants life to slow down when he finds himself leaping ahead a year every few hours. Toward the end, he appears completely naked behind his keyboard. Burnham's hair is shorter in those initial behind-the-scenes moments, but his future-self has a longer, unkempt beard and messy hair. Burnham's career as a young, white, male comedian has often felt distinct from his peers because of the amount of public self-reflection and acknowledgment of his own privileges that he does on stage and off screen. "Robert's been a little depressed," he sings (referring to himself by his birthname). Parasocial relationships are neutral, and how we interact with them is usually a mixed bag. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. The fun thing about this is he started writing it and recording it early on, so you get to see clips of him singing it both, you know, with the short hair and with the long hair - when he had just started this special and when he was finishing it. "You say the ocean's rising, like I give a s---, you say the whole world's ending, honey it already did, you're not gonna slow it, heaven knows you tried," he sings. Similarly, Burnham often speaks to the audience by filming himself speaking to himself in a mirror. The structured movements of the last hour and half fall away as Burnham snaps at the audience: "Get up. Thank you so much for joining us. Mid-song, a spotlight turns on Burnham and shows him completely naked as a voice sings: "Well, well, look who's inside again. Went out to look for a reason to hide again. But then the video keeps playing, and so he winds up reacting to his own reaction, and then reacting yet again to that reaction. Not putting a name on parasocial relationships makes the theme less didactic, more blurred while still being astutesuch sharp focus on the eyes, you dont notice the rest of the face fades into shades of blue. He takes a break in the song to talk about how he was having panic attacks on stage while touring the "Make Happy" special, and so he decided to stop doing live shows. Whatever it is, NPR's Linda Holmes, host of Pop Culture Happy Hour, has reviewed it, and she liked it. He's the writer, director, editor, and star of this show. Thank you, Michel. HOLMES: Thank you. But then, just as Burnham is vowing to always stay inside, and lamenting that he'll be "fully irrelevant and totally broken" in the future, the spotlight turns on him and he's completely naked. newsletter, On Parasocial Relationships and the Boundaries of Celebrity, Bo Burnham and the Trap of Parasocial Self-Awareness.. In his first Netflix special (2013's "what. While he's laying in bed, eyes about the close, the screen shows a flash of an open door. The second emotional jump scare comes when Burnham monologues about how he stopped performing live because he started having panic attacks on stage, which is not a great place to have them. The monologue increases that sense of intimacy; Burnham is letting the audience in on the state of his mental health even before the global pandemic. And while its an ominous portrait of the isolation of the pandemic, theres hope in its existence: Written, designed and shot by Burnham over the last year inside a single room, it illustrates that theres no greater inspiration than limitations. On May 30, 2022, Burnham uploaded the video Inside: The Outtakes, to his YouTube channel, marking a rare original upload, similar to how he used his YouTube channel when he was a teenager. And many of them discuss their personal connection to the show and their analysis of how Burnham must have been thinking and feeling when he made it. The lead-in is Burnham thanking a nonexistent audience for being there with him for the last year. Bo Burnham Some of this comes through in how scenes are shot and framed: its common for the special to be filmed, projected onto Burnhams wall (or, literally, himself), and then filmed again for the audience. Bo Burnham I have a lot of material from back then that I'm not proud of and I think is offensive and I think is not helpful. Viewer discretion is advised. Burnhams eyes are sharply in focus; the rest of him faded out subtly, a detail you might not even notice with how striking his eyes are. Next in his special, Burnham performs a sketch song about being an unpaid intern, and then says he's going to do a "reaction" video to the song in classic YouTube format. It's wonderful to be with you. In the song, Burnham specifically mentions looking up "derealization," a disorder that may "feel like you're living in a dream. The special is available exclusively on Netflix, while the album can be found on most streaming platforms. Throughout "Inside," there's a huge variety of light and background set-ups used, so it seems unlikely that this particular cloud-scape was just randomly chosen twice. He has one where he's just sitting on a stool with an acoustic guitar describing our modern world. Bo Burnham's Netflix Special, 'Inside And like unpaid interns, most working artists cant afford a mortgage (and yeah, probably torrent a porn). Under stand up, Burnham wrote "Middle-aged men protecting free speech by humping stools and telling stories about edibles" and "podcasts. At the end of the song, "Inside" cuts to a shot of Burnham watching his own video on a computer in the dark. It's a quiet, banal scene that many people coming out of a depressive episode might recognize. The tropes he says you may find on a white woman's Instagram page are peppered with cultural appropriation ("a dreamcatcher bought from Urban Outfitters") and ignorant political takes ("a random quote from 'Lord of the Rings' misattributed to Martin Luther King"). "A part of me loves you, part of me hates you," he sang to the crowd. "That's a good start. BURNHAM: (Singing) Start a rumor, buy a broom or send a death threat to a Boomer. Like he's parodying white people who think that by crucifying themselves first they're somehow freed from the consequences of their actions. While platforms like Patreon mean creators can make their own works independently without studio influence, they also mean that the creator is directly beholden to their audience. We're a long way from the days when he filmed "Comedy" and the contrast shows how fruitless this method of healing has been. And you know what? The label of parasocial relationship is meant to be neutral, being as natural and normal and, frankly, inescapable as familial or platonic relationships. But before that can register, Burnham's eyes have closed and the special transitions to the uncannily catchy song "S---," bopping about how he hasn't showered in nine days or done any laundry. According to the special, Bo decided he was ready to begin doing stand-up again in January 2020, after dealing with panic attacks onstage during his previous tour, the Make Happy Tour of 2015-2016. The Volcano, which touched on labor rights. An older Burnham sits at a stool in front of a clock, and he says into a microphone that he's been working on the special for six months now. WebOn a budget. Web9/10. Don't overthink this, look in my eye don't be scared don't be shy come on in the water's fine."). (The question is no longer, Do you want to buy Wheat Thins?, for example. When that future-Burnham appears, it's almost like a precursor to what he'll have shown us by the end of the special: That both he, and his audience, could never have known just how brutal the next year was about to be. WebBo Burnham: Inside is a 2021 special written, directed, filmed, edited, and performed by American comedian Bo Burnham. The scene cuts to black and we see Burnham waking up in his small pull-out couch bed, bookending the section of the special that started when him going to sleep. this breakdown of 31 details you might have missed in "Inside,". To save you the time freeze-framing, here's the complete message: "No pressure by the way at any point we can stop i just want to make sure ur comfortable all this and please dont feel obligated to send anything you dont want to just cuz i want things doesnt mean i should get them and its sometimes confusing because i think you enjoy it when i beg and express how much i want you but i dont ever want that to turn into you feeling pressured into doing something you don't want or feeling like youre disappointing me this is just meant to be fun and if at any point its not fun for you we can stop and im sorry if me saying this is killing the mood i just like ". ", Right as Burnham is straightening up, music begins blaring over the speakers and Burnham's own voice sings: "He meant to knock the water over, yeah yeah yeah, but you all thought it was an accident. The whole video is filmed like one big thirst trap as he sweats and works out. Trying to grant his dying father's wish, a son discovers an epic love story buried in his family's distant past.
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