Were complicated. Open wide.. Now Burnham is showing us the clutter of the room, where he's almost claustrophobically surrounded by equipment. Hes bedraggled, increasingly unshaven, growing a Rasputin-like beard. With menacing horror movie sound effects and hectic, dreamy camerawork, what becomes clear is Burnhams title has a double meaning: referring to being inside not just a room, but also his head. He's showing us how terrifying it can be to present something you've made to the world, or to hear laughter from an audience when what you were hoping for was a genuine connection. Relieved to be done? Under the movies section, there's a bubble that says "sequel to classic comedy that everyone watches and then pretends never happened" and "Thor's comebacks.". It's as if Burnham is showing how wholesale judgments about the way people choose to use social media can gloss over earnest, genuine expressions of love and grief being shared online. Daddy made you your favorite. And many people will probably remember his 2018 movie, "Eighth Grade." The whole song sounds like you're having a religious experience with your own mental disorder, especially when new harmonies kick in. Burnham reacts to his reaction to his reaction to his reaction, focusing so intently on his body and image that he panics, stops the videoand then smiles at his audience, thanking them for watching. One of those is the internet itself. It's a hint at the promised future; the possibility of once again being able to go outside and feel sunlight again. Each of the songs from the first half of the special are in line with Burnham's earlier Netflix specials and comedy albums. But Burnham is of course the writer, director, editor, and star of this show. ", 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. Linda Holmes, welcome. "Oh Jesus, sorry," Burnham says, hurrying over to pick it up. He grabs the camera and swings it around in a circle as the song enters another chorus, and a fake audience cheers in the background. Now, the term is applied to how viewers devote time, energy, and emotion to celebrities and content creators like YouTubers, podcasters, and Twitch streamers people who do not know they exist. The battery is full, but no numbers are moving. The piece also highlights Bos anxieties with becoming older and his legacy as a comedian. It's an emergence from the darkness. But Burnham doesn't put the bottle down right, and it falls off the stool. With electro-pop social commentary, bleak humour and sock-puppet debates, the comics lockdown creation is astonishing. WebA Girl and an Astronaut. "The quiet comprehending of the ending of it all," is another of Burnham's lyrics in this song that seems to speak to the idea that civilization is nearing collapse, and also touches on suicidal ideation. He, for example, it starts off with him rhyming carpool karaoke, which is a segment on James Corden's show, with Steve Aoki, who's a DJ. The vocal key used in "All Eyes On Me" could be meant to represent depression, an outside force that is rather adept at convincing our minds to simply stay in bed, to not care, and to not try anymore. When we see it again towards the end of the special, it's from a new camera angle. Under the TV section, he has "adults playing twister" (something he referenced in "Make Happy" when he said that celebrity lip-syncing battles were the "end of culture") and "9 season love letter to corporate labor" (which is likely referencing "The Office"). This plays almost like a glitch and goes unexplained until later in the special when a sketch plays out with Burnham as a Twitch streamer who is testing out a game called "INSIDE" (in which the player has to have a Bo Burnham video game character do things like cry, play the piano, and find a flashlight in order to complete their day). But it doesn't. Released on May 30, 2021, Bo Burnham wrote, recorded, directed, and produced Inside while in lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Hiding a mysterious past, a mother lives like a nameless fugitive with her daughter as they make hotels their home and see everyone else as a threat. Went out to look for a reason to hide again. For the song "Comedy," Burnham adopts a persona adjacent to his real life self a white male comedian who is driven to try and help make the world a better place. Today We'll Talk About That Day 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. 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. Self-awareness does not absolve anyone of anything, he says. 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. The clearest inspiration is Merle Traviss 16 Tons, a song about the unethical working conditions of coal miners also used in weird Tom Hanks film Joe vs. In Inside, Burnham confronts parasocial relationships in his most direct way yet. ", He then pulls the same joke again, letting the song play after the audience's applause so it seems like a mistake. You know, I was not, you know, I was alone, but I was not trapped in one room. LINDA HOLMES, BYLINE: Thank you, Michel. But he's largely been given a pass by his fans, who praise his self-awareness and new approach. Here's a little bit of that. At the forefront of this shift has been Bo Burnham, one of YouTubes earliest stars, who went on to make his own innovative specials with satirical songs backed by theatrical lighting and disembodied voices. He says his goal had been to complete filming before his 30th birthday. On the other two sides of that question ("no" and "not sure") the flowchart asks if it could be "interpreted" as mean (if so, then it's "not funny") or if it "punches down.". Relieved to be done? Finally doing basic care tasks for yourself like eating breakfast and starting work in the morning. He brushes his teeth, eats a bowl of cereal, and begins editing his videos. At the start of the special, Burnham sings "Content," setting the stage for his musical-comedy. That's what it is. "I'm so worried that criticism will be levied against me that I levy it against myself before anyone else can. And it has a lot of very clever and very quick wordplay about the specific things you can get on the internet. The clean, tidy interior that first connected "Inside" with "Make Happy" is gone in its place is a mess-riddled space. And the biggest risk Burnham takes in the show is letting his emotional side loose, but not before cracking a ton of jokes. Some of the narrative of the show can be indulgently overheated, playing into clichs about the process of the brooding artist, but Burnham has anticipated this and other criticisms, and integrated them into the special, including the idea that drawing attention to potential flaws fixes them. "That's a good start. Disclosure: Mathias Dpfner, CEO of Business Insider's parent company, Axel Springer, is a Netflix board member. Known as "Art is a Lie, Nothing is Real," there's a bit Burnham did at the start of his 2013 special "what." "And I spent that time trying to improve myself mentally. I don't think it's perfectly morally defendable.". Bo Burnham's new Netflix comedy special "Inside" is jam-packed with references to his previous work. So for our own little slice of the world, Burnham's two time spans seem to be referencing the start and end of an era in our civilization. Accuracy and availability may vary. 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?. 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. BURNHAM: (Singing) Could I interest you in everything all of the time, a little bit of everything all of the time? WebBo Burnham is more than a comedian he's a writer-director-actor who first went viral in 2006. Bo Burnham: INSIDE | Trailer - YouTube 0:00 / 2:09 The following content may contain suicide or self-harm topics. 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. (The question is no longer, Do you want to buy Wheat Thins?, for example. Many of his songs begin seriously, then shift into the joke, but this one doesnt. WebBo Burnham: Inside (2021) Exploring mental health decline over 2020, the constant challenges our world faces, and the struggles of life itself, Bo Burnham creates a. wonderful masterpiece to explain each of these, both from general view and personal experience. 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. 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. Tell us a little bit more about that. During the last 15 minutes of "Make Happy," Burnham turns the comedy switch down a bit and begins talking to the audience about how his comedy is almost always about performing itself because he thinks people are, at all times, doing a "performance" for one another. His new Netflix special Inside was directed, written and performed all inside one room. Other artists have made works on the wavelength of Repeat Stuff, but few creators with a platform as large as Burnhams return to the topic over and over, touching on it in almost all of their works. I think this is something we've all been thinking about. jonnyewers 30 May 2021. HOLMES: So, as you'll hear there, on the one hand, there's a lot of sadness in what he's talking about there. Burnham's hair is shorter in those initial behind-the-scenes moments, but his future-self has a longer, unkempt beard and messy hair. Also, Burnham's air conditioner is set to precisely 69 degrees throughout this whole faux music video. Its an uncanny, dystopian view of Burnham as an instrument in the soulless game of social media. Feelings of depersonalization and derealization can be very disturbing and may feel like you're living in a dream.". Parasocial relationships can be positive too, as outlined in culture critic Stitchs essay On Parasocial Relationships and the Boundaries of Celebrity for Teen Vogue. 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." They Cloned Tyrone. TikTok creator @TheWoodMother made a video about how Burnham's "Inside" is its own poioumenon thanks to the meta scenes of Burnham setting up lights and cameras, not to mention the musical numbers like "Content" and "Comedy" that all help to tell the story of Burnham making this new special. In the worst case, depression can convince a person to end their life. The picturesque view of sun-soaked clouds was featured in "Comedy," during the section of the song when Burnham stood up and decided that the only thing he (or his character in the song) could do was "heal the world with comedy.". While he's laying in bed, eyes about the close, the screen shows a flash of an open door. The arrogance is taught or it was cultivated. Then, of course, the aspect ratio shrinks again as the white woman goes back to posting typical content. The song untangles the way we view peoples social media output as the complete vision of who they are, when really, we cannot know the full extent of someones inner world, especially not just through social media. A college student navigates life and school while dealing with a unique predicament he's living with a beautiful former K-pop sensation. 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. Netflix did, however, post Facetime with My Mom (Tonight) on YouTube. But what is it exactly - a concert, a comedy special? Thank you, Michel. He's freely admitting that self-awareness isn't enough while also clearly unable to move away from that self-aware comedic space he so brilliantly holds. It's conscious of self. At the second level of the reaction video, Burnham says: "I'm being a little pretentious. That his special is an indictment of the internet by an artist whose career was born and flourished there is the ultimate joke. In White Womans Instagram, the comedian assumes the role of a white woman and sings a list of common white lady Instagram posts (Latte foam art / Tiny pumpkins / Fuzzy, comfy socks) while acting out even more cliched photos in the video with wild accuracy. Burnham is especially aware as a creator constantly reflecting on his own life. And its easier to relax when the video focuses on a separate take of Burnham singing from farther away, the frame now showing the entire room. 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? Fifteen years later, Burnham found himself sheltering in place during the COVID-19 pandemic and decided to sit back down at his piano and see if he could once again entertain the world from the claustrophobic confines of a single room. Oops. WebA biotech genius tries to bounce back from the depths of grief with help from his son, who works to escape his dads shadow and save the family business. MARTIN: And I understand you were saying that it moves between genres. Bo Burnham also uploaded Welcome to the Internet and White Womans Instagram on his YouTube channel. I think you're getting from him, you know, the entertainment element. Bo Burnhams latest Netflix special, Inside, is a solo venture about the comedian and filmmakers difficult experience in quarantine thats earned enthusiastic critical acclaim. The global pandemic and subsequent lockdown orders of March 2020 put a stop to these plans. It chronicles Burnhams life during the pandemic and his journey creating the special. Mid-song, a spotlight turns on Burnham and shows him completely naked as a voice sings: "Well, well, look who's inside again. It's wonderful to be with you. At the beginning of "Inside," Burnham is not only coming back to that same room, but he's wearing a very similar outfit: jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers picking up right back where he left off. Some of the things he mentions that give him "that funny feeling" include discount Etsy agitprop (aka communist-themed merchandise) and the Pepsi halftime show. I feel very close and intimate with him in this version. this breakdown of 31 details you might have missed in "Inside,". And it portends and casts doubt on a later scene when his mental health frays and Burnham cries in earnest. This is a heartbreaking chiding coming from Burnham's own distorted voice, as if he's shaming himself for sinking back into that mental state. He was alone. At the end of the song, "Inside" cuts to a shot of Burnham watching his own video on a computer in the dark. 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? (For example, the song "Straight, White, Male" from the "Make Happy" special). Burnham spoofs a PewDiePie-like figure a YouTuber who narrates his playing of a video game with a dead-eyed smugness, as shown in an image at the bottom-right corner of the screen. WebBo Burnham's Netflix special "Inside" features 20 new original songs. ", 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.". In the same way that earlier vocal distortion represented God, the effect on his voice in "All Eyes on Me" seems to signal some omniscient force outside of Burnham. Apathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime. While this special is the product of evolution, Burnham is pointing out its also a regression. Burnham says he had quit live comedy several years ago because of panic attacks and returned in January 2020 before, as he puts it in typical perverse irony, the funniest thing happened. 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. Self-awareness does not absolve anybody of anything.". Under stand up, Burnham wrote "Middle-aged men protecting free speech by humping stools and telling stories about edibles" and "podcasts. The special is set almost entirely in one cluttered room. I mean, honestly, he's saying a lot right there. "I don't know that it's not," he said. Burnham may also be trying to parody the hollow, PR-scripted apologies that celebrities will trot out before they've possibly had the time to self-reflect and really understand what people are trying to hold them accountable for. . MARTIN: So Bo Burnham has had a lot of different identities lately. That quiet simplicity doesn't feel like a relief, but it is. So when you get to the end of a song, it often just kind of cuts to something else. Burnham starts spiraling in a mental health crisis, mentioning suicidal ideation after lamenting his advance into his 30s. The title card appears in white, then changes to red, signaling that a camera is recording. The reason he started making this special, he explains in the show, is to distract himself from shooting himself in the head, the first of several mentions of suicide (including one in which he tells viewers to just dont). This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. People experiencing depression often stop doing basic self-care tasks, like showering or laundry or brushing their teeth. HOLMES: Yeah. HOLMES: Right. Only he knows. He has one where he's just sitting on a stool with an acoustic guitar describing our modern world. Bo Burnhams Inside begs for our parasocial awareness The comedians lifetime online explains the heart of most of his new songs By Wil Williams @wilw_writes Jun 28, 2021, 11:01am EDT And I think that, 'Oh if I'm self-aware about being a douchebag it'll somehow make me less of a douchebag.' Likewise, the finale of Burnhams next special, Make Happy (2016) closes in a song called Handle This (Kanye Rant). The song starts as him venting his hyperbolically small problems, until the tone shifts, and he starts directly addressing the audience, singing: The truth is, my biggest problem is you / [. His career evolved through YouTube, MTV, Vine, his movie "Eighth Grade," and now Netflix's "Inside." They may still be comical, but they have a different feel. 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. Inside, a new Netflix special written, performed, directed, shot, and edited by comedian Bo Burnham, invokes and plays with many forms. A part of me loves you, part of me hates you / Part of me needs you, part of me fears you / [. Exploring mental health decline over 2020, the constant challenges our world faces, and the struggles of life itself, Bo Burnham creates a wonderful masterpiece to explain each of these, both from general view and personal experience. It's a heartbreaking chiding coming from his own distorted voice, as if he's shaming himself for sinking back into that mental state. 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. It also seems noteworthy that this is one of the only sketches in "Inside" that fades to black. He takes it, and Burnham cries robotically as a tinny version of the song about being stuck in the room plays. MARTIN: And it's deep, too. I cant say how Burnham thinks or feels with any authority, but as text and form-driven comedy, Inside urges the audience to reflect on how they interact with creators. Partway through the song, the battery icon switches to low and starts blinking in warning as if death is imminent. 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. And I think that's what you're getting here. 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. 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. HOLMES: So before he was this celebrated filmmaker, Bo Burnham was himself a YouTube star. "Any Day Now" The ending credits. Theres always been a tension in his comedy between an ironic, smarty-pants cleverness and an often melodramatic point of view. BURNHAM: (Singing) Start a rumor, buy a broom or send a death threat to a Boomer. We're a long way from the days when he filmed "Comedy" and the contrast shows how fruitless this method of healing has been. Like he's parodying white people who think that by crucifying themselves first they're somehow freed from the consequences of their actions. I've been hiding from the world and I need to reenter.' I actually felt true mutual empathy with someone for the first time, and with someone Ive never even met, its kinda funny.. Still terrified of that spotlight? The comedians lifetime online explains the heart of most of his new songs, I made you some content, comedian Bo Burnham sings in the opening moments of his new Netflix special, Inside. Bo Burnham: Inside, was written, edited, and directed by the talent himself and the entire show is shot in one room. After more sung repetitions of get your fuckin hands up, Burnham says, Get up. 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. The song brings with it an existential dread, but Burnham's depression-voice tells us not to worry and sink into nihilism. Netflix 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. Viewer discretion is advised. Come and watch the skinny kid with a / Steadily declining mental health, and laugh as he attempts / To give you what he cannot give himself. Like Struccis Fake Friends documentary, this song is highlighted in Anuska Dhars video essay, Bo Burnham and the Trap of Parasocial Self-Awareness. Burnhams work consistently addresses his relationship with his audience, the ways he navigates those parasocial relationships, and how easy they can be to exploit. newsletter, On Parasocial Relationships and the Boundaries of Celebrity, Bo Burnham and the Trap of Parasocial Self-Awareness.. The songs from the special were released on streaming platforms on June 10, 2021. You can stream "Inside" on Netflix now, and see our ranking of all 20 original songs from the special here. On June 9, Burnham released the music from the special in an album titled Inside (The Songs), which hit No. 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. After about 35 minutes of candy-colored, slickly designed sketch comedy, the tone shifts with Burnhams first completely earnest song, a lovely indie-rock tune with an ear worm of a hook about trying to be funny and stuck in a room. This is the shows hinge. Remember how Burnham's older, more-bearded self popped up at the beginning of "Inside" when we were watching footage of him setting up the cameras and lighting? Burnham wrote out: "Does it target those who have been disenfranchised in a historical, political, social, economic and/or psychological context?". Now, hes come a long way since his previous specials titled What. and Make Happy, where his large audiences roared with laughter 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. 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. And it's important to remember, you know, this is a piece of theater. "Robert's been a little depressed," he sings (referring to himself by his birthname). "Problematic" is a roller coaster of self-awareness, masochism, and parody.

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