"And I spent that time trying to improve myself mentally. Daddy made you your favorite. It's not. Get up. 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. I actually felt true mutual empathy with someone for the first time, and with someone Ive never even met, its kinda funny.. 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. But look, I made you some content. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. And maybe the rest of us are ready, too. The special was nominated for six Emmy Awards in 2021, of which it won three: Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special, Outstanding Directing for a Variety Special, and Outstanding Music Direction. And part of it is sometimes he's just in despair. Comedian Bo Burnham recently a new comedy special for Netflix aptly titled Inside which was filmed entirely by himself while under lockdown during the Coronavirus Pandemic in 2020. ", He then pulls the same joke again, letting the song play after the audience's applause so it seems like a mistake. In one interpretation, maybe the smile means he's ready to be outside again. One comment stuck out to me: Theres something really powerful and painful about, hearing his actual voice singing and breaking at certain points. 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." But, of course, it tangles that right back up; this emotional post was, ultimately, still Content. ", 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. 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. Mid-song, a spotlight turns on Burnham and shows him completely naked as a voice sings: "Well, well, look who's inside again. Bo Burnham: Inside review this is a claustrophobic masterpiece. The flow chat for "Is it funny?" BURNHAM: (Singing) Could I interest you in everything all of the time, a little bit of everything all of the time? His new Netflix special Inside was directed, written and performed all inside one room. 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. begins with the question "Is it mean?" Research and analysis of parasocial relationships usually revolves around genres of performers instead of individuals. I mean, honestly, he's saying a lot right there. 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. Don't overthink this, look in my eye don't be scared, don't be shy, come on in the water's fine."). Like he's parodying white people who think that by crucifying themselves first they're somehow freed from the consequences of their actions. The special is set almost entirely in one cluttered room. A distorted voice is back again, mocking Burnham as he sits exposed on his fake stage: "Well, well, look who's inside again. That's what it is. Burnham uses vocal tuning often throughout all of his specials. Once he's decided he's done with the special, Burnham brings back all the motifs from the earlier songs into "Goodbye," his finale of this musical movie. 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. Inside is the work of a comic with artistic tools most of his peers ignore or overlook. Now get inside.". Doona! And the biggest risk Burnham takes in the show is letting his emotional side loose, but not before cracking a ton of jokes. "Problematic" is a roller coaster of self-awareness, masochism, and parody. For the album, Bo is credited as writer, performer, and producer on every song. . Please check your email to find a confirmation email, and follow the steps to confirm your humanity. Burnham's creative background began with being a theater then he transitioned to musical-comedy. A gift shop at the gun range, a mass shooting at the mall. Netflix He's self-evaluating his own visual creation in the same way people will often go back to look at their Instagram stories or posts to see how it looks after they've shared it. 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. He also revealed an official poster, a single frame from the special, and the cover art prior to its release. You can tell that he's watched a ton of livestream gamers, and picked up on their intros, the way the talk with people in the chat, the cadence of their commentary on the game, everything. Throughout the song and its accompanying visuals, Burnham is highlighting the "girlboss" aesthetic of many white women's Instagram accounts. He's the writer, director, editor, and star of this show. Get the fuck up! Burnham walks towards the camera and grabs it like hes grabbing the viewer by the throat. 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. he sings as he refers to his birth name. Its a stupid song, and, uh, it doesnt really mean anything. The video continues. 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. Tapping on a synthesizer, he sings about the challenges of isolation as he sits on a cluttered floor, two striking squares of sunlight streaming in through the windows of a dark room. He brushes his teeth, eats a bowl of cereal, and begins editing his videos. Something went wrong. 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. And it has a real feel of restlessness to it, almost like stream of consciousness. The title card appears in white, then changes to red, signaling that a camera is recording. Not in the traditional senseno music was released prior to the special other than a backing track from Content found in the trailer. Inside Bo Burnhams Inside: A Comedy Special and an Inspired Experiment, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/arts/television/bo-burnham-inside-comedy.html. Don't overthink this, look in my eye don't be scared don't be shy come on in the water's fine."). Performing "Make Happy" was mentally taxing on Burnham. But during the bridge of the song, he imagines a post from a woman dedicated to her dead mother, and the aspect ratio on the video widens. You know, as silly as that one is, some of the other ones are more sedate. But he meant to knock the water over, yeah yeah yeah, art is a lie nothing is real. I think you're getting from him, you know, the entertainment element. And so I think he's always had that stubborn insistence on holding both of those things in his head at the same time. The penultimate song "All Eyes on Me" makes for a particularly powerful moment. This is when the musical numbers (and in-between skits) become much more grim. Tell us a little bit more about that. jonnyewers 30 May 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. He is not talking about it very much. Known as "Art is a Lie, Nothing is Real," there's a bit Burnham did at the start of his 2013 special "what." "A part of me loves you, part of me hates you," he sang to the crowd. I like this song, Burnham says, before pointing out the the lack of modern songs about labor exploitation. 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. It also seems noteworthy that this is one of the only sketches in "Inside" that fades to black. WebOn a budget. Down to the second, the clock changes to midnight exactly halfway through the runtime of "Inside.". It's just Burnham, his room, the depressive-sound of his song, and us watching as his distorted voice tries to convince us to join him in that darkness. Bo Burnham That cloud scene was projected onto Burnham during the section of "Comedy" when Burnham stood up right after the God-like voice had given him his directive to "heal the world with comedy." So this is how it ends. .] Unpaid Intern isnt just about unpaid internships; when your livelihood as an artist depends on your perceived closeness with each individual fan, fetching a coffee becomes telling someone theyre valid when they vent to you like they would a friend (or a therapist). (SOUNDBITE OF COMEDY SPECIAL, "BO BURNHAM: INSIDE"). While he's laying in bed, eyes about the close, the screen shows a flash of an open door. A series of eerie events thrusts an unlikely trio (John Boyega, Jamie Foxx and Teyonah Parris) onto the trail of a nefarious government conspiracy. But Burnham doesn't put the bottle down right, and it falls off the stool. He puts himself on a cross using his projector, and the whole video is him exercising, like he's training for when he's inevitably "canceled.". 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 penultimate song "All Eyes on Me" makes for a particularly powerful moment. It's a reminder, coming almost exactly halfway through the special, of the toll that this year is taking on Burnham. 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. 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. Bo Burnham Bo Burnham Bo Burnham Web9/10. 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. Burnham skewers himself as a virtue-signaling ally with a white-savior complex, a bully and an egoist who draws a Venn diagram and locates himself in the overlap between Weird Al and Malcolm X. "Healing the world with comedy, the indescribable power of your comedy," the voice sings. He's almost claustrophobically surrounded by equipment. MARTIN: So as you can hear in that bit, he sounds something like other comedic songwriters who do these kind of parody or comedy songs, whether it's Tom Lehrer, Weird Al or whoever. That quiet simplicity doesn't feel like a relief, but it is. His 2014 song Repeat Stuff and its music video parodies how boy bands and other corporately-owned pop stars prey on young fans desire to feel loved by writing songs with lyrics vague enough anyone can feel like it was written specifically about them. Bo It's a dangerously tempting invitation to stop caring, coming from the villain of this musical comedy (depression). My heart hurts with and for him. 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. A weekly roundup of the best things from Polygon, By submitting your email, you agree to our, Bo Burnhams Inside begs for our parasocial awareness, Sign up for the 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. 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. Soering New insights from various parties come to light that raise questions about Jens Sring's conviction of the 1985 murders of his then-girlfriend's parents. 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. Bo Burnham Burnham had no idea that his song would be seen more than 10 million times,nor that it would kick start his career in a niche brand of self-aware musical comedy. That YouTube commenter might be understood by Burnham if they were to meet him. Relieved to be done? Burnham then kicks back into song, still addressing his audience, who seem unsure of whether to laugh, applaud, or sit somberly in their chairs. 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 7 on the Top 200. 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. HOLMES: It felt very true to me, not in the literal sense. Each of the songs from the first half of the special are in line with Burnham's earlier Netflix specials and comedy albums. Instead of a live performance, he's recorded himself in isolation over the course of a year. Feelings of depersonalization and derealization can be very disturbing and may feel like you're living in a dream.". Well now the shots are reversed. 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. 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. During that taping, Burnham said his favorite comic at the time was Hans Teeuwen, a "Dutch absurdist," who has a routine with a sock puppet that eats a candy bar as Teeuwen sings. In recent years, he has begun directing other comics specials, staging stand-up sets by Chris Rock and Jerrod Carmichael with his signature extreme close-ups. He slaps his leg in frustration, and eventually gives a mirthless laugh before he starts slamming objects around him. (The question is no longer, Do you want to buy Wheat Thins?, for example. our ranking of all 20 original songs from the special here. Underneath the Steve Martin-like formal trickery has always beaten the heaving heart of a flamboyantly dramatic theater kid. 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 reacts to his reaction to his reaction: Im so afraid that this criticism will be levied against me that I levy it against myself before anyone else can. The video keeps going. Bo Burnham 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. 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). "And so today I'm gonna try just getting up, sitting down, going back to work. The special is available exclusively on Netflix, while the album can be found on most streaming platforms. HOLMES: That was NPR's Linda Holmes reviewing Bo Burnham's new Netflix special "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. It's a heartbreaking chiding coming from his own distorted voice, as if he's shaming himself for sinking back into that mental state. And you know what? When we saw that projection the first time, Burnham's room was clean and orderly. 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.. So we broke down each song and sketch and analyzed their meaning and context. ", When asked about the inspiration for the song, like if people he knew thought he was gay, Burnham said, "A lot of my close friends were gay, and, you know, I wasn't certain I wasn't at that point.". He had a role in the film "Promising Young Woman."