We see Burnham moving around in the daylight, a welcome contrast to the dark setting of "All Eyes on Me." ", 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.". For the album, Bo is credited as writer, performer, and producer on every song. At the start of the special, Burnham sings "Content," setting the stage for his musical-comedy. 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. 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 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. While talking to the audience during the opening section, Burnham takes a sip out of a water bottle. I feel very close and intimate with him in this version. 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. Instead, thanks to his ultra-self-aware style, he seems to always get ahead of criticism by holding himself accountable first. 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. An astronaut's return after a 30-year disappearance rekindles a lost love and sparks interest from a corporation determined to learn why he hasn't aged. 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? Perform everything to each other, all the time for no reason. "Got it? Netflix did, however, post Facetime with My Mom (Tonight) on YouTube. One of the most encouraging developments in comedy over the past decade has been the growing directorial ambition of stand-up specials. But by the end of the tune, his narrative changes into irreverence. 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. The special is set almost entirely in one cluttered room. "Oh Jesus, sorry," Burnham says, hurrying over to pick it up. That YouTube commenter might be understood by Burnham if they were to meet him. 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. For those who are unaware, Bos real name is Robert Burnham. Please check your email to find a confirmation email, and follow the steps to confirm your humanity. As energetic as the song "S---" is, it's really just another clear message about the mental disorder that has its grips in Burnham (or at least the version of him we're seeing in this special). Burnham was just 16 years old when he wrote a parody song ("My Whole Family") and filmed himself performing it in his bedroom. You know, as silly as that one is, some of the other ones are more sedate. In the song, Burnham specifically mentions looking up "derealization," a disorder that may "feel like you're living in a dream. Most creator-made content online is available for free, meaning creators usually have to rely on their fans for income via crowdfunding like Patreon. But unlike many of us, Burnham was also hard at work on a one-man show directed, written and performed all by himself. 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). Its an uncanny, dystopian view of Burnham as an instrument in the soulless game of social media. Transcript Comedian and filmmaker Bo Burnham used his time alone during the pandemic to create a one-man show. Other than Fred Rogers, Bo Burnham is one of the most cited single individual creators when discussing parasocial relationships. 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 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. 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. Inside is the work of a comic with artistic tools most of his peers ignore or overlook. 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. He was alone. 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. 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. If we continue to look at it from the lens of a musical narrative, this is the point at which our protagonist realizes he's failed at his mission. He is leaving it to speak for itself in terms of what it says about isolation and sadness. LINDA HOLMES, BYLINE: Thank you, Michel. 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. The penultimate song "All Eyes on Me" makes for a particularly powerful moment. Each of the songs from the first half of the special are in line with Burnham's earlier Netflix specials and comedy albums. And we might. But in recent years, theres been enough awareness of online behavior to see how parasocial relationships can have negative impacts on both the creator and the audience if left uninterrogated by both parties. 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.". And you know what? Photograph: Netflix Its a measure of the quality of Inside 1.0 that this stuff could end up on the cutting-room floor. WebBo Burnham: Inside is a 2021 special written, directed, filmed, edited, and performed by American comedian Bo Burnham. Get up. Got it? He also revealed an official poster, a single frame from the special, and the cover art prior to its release. (The question is no longer, Do you want to buy Wheat Thins?, for example. MARTIN: Well, that being said, Lynda, like, what song do you want to go out on? I think this is something we've all been thinking about. Went out to look for a reason to hide again. But usually there is one particular voice that acts as a disembodied narrator character, some omniscient force that needles Burnham in the middle of his stand up (like the voice in "Make Happy" that interrupts Burnham's set to call him the f-slur). 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. 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 There's no more time left to add to the camera's clock. 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. Burnham makes it textual, too. But he knows how to do this. 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. He also costarred in the Oscar-winning movie "Promising Young Woman," filmed in 2019. Released on May 30, 2021, Bo Burnham wrote, recorded, directed, and produced Inside while in lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Using cinematic tools other comics overlook, the star (who is also the director, editor and cameraman) trains a glaring spotlight on internet life mid-pandemic. 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. Now Burnham is showing us the clutter of the room, where he's almost claustrophobically surrounded by equipment. 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. "I'm criticizing my initial reaction for being pretentious, which is honestly a defense mechanism," he says. Its a visual that signifies a man exposing himself, until you realize hes in a spotlight. Oops. 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. 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. When Burnham's character decides he doesn't want to actually hear criticism from Socko, he threatens to remove him, prompting Socko's subservience once again, because "that's how the world works.". Maybe we'll call it isolation theater. "Goodbye sadness, hello jokes!". So when you get to the end of a song, it often just kind of cuts to something else. With electro-pop social commentary, bleak humour and sock-puppet debates, the comics lockdown creation is astonishing. It has extended versions of songs, cut songs, and alternate versions of songs that were eventually deleted; but is mainly comprised of outtakes. HOLMES: Right. It moves kind of all over the place. It's like Burnham's special has swallowed you whole, bringing you fully into his mind at last. And it has a real feel of restlessness to it, almost like stream of consciousness. I did! 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. And like those specials, Inside implores fans to think about deeper themes as well as how we think about comedy as a genre. 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. "I was in a full body sweat, so I didn't hear most of that," Burnham said after the clip played. this breakdown of 31 details you might have missed in "Inside,". 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. WebBo Burnham's Netflix special "Inside" features 20 new original songs. 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. Poioumenon (from the Greek word for "product") is a term created by author Alastair Fowler and usually used to refer to a kind of metafiction. Instead of working his muscles at open mics or in improv, Burnham uploaded joke songs to the platform in 2006. The Volcano, which touched on labor rights. Good. It's a heartbreaking chiding coming from his own distorted voice, as if he's shaming himself for sinking back into that mental state. The song made such a splash in its insight that it earned its own episode in Shannon Struccis seminal Fake Friends documentary series, which broke down what parasocial relationships are and how they work. I got better. Its an instinct I have for all my work to have some deeper meaning or something. WebOn a budget. Carpool Karaoke, Steve Aoki, Logan Paul. "I don't know that it's not," he said. In this case, it's likely some combination of depression/anxiety/any other mental disorder. 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. BURNHAM: (Singing) Start a rumor, buy a broom or send a death threat to a Boomer. He takes it, and Burnham cries robotically as a tinny version of the song about being stuck in the room plays. "Any Day Now" The ending credits. 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. HOLMES: Yeah. The song, written in 2006, is about how his whole family thinks he's gay, and the various conversations they're having trying to figure it out. Down to the second, the clock changes to midnight exactly halfway through the runtime of "Inside.". ", 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.". They may still be comical, but they have a different feel. 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. 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. 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. 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. The voices of the characters eventually blend together to tell the live Burnham on stage, We think we know you.. Released on May 30, 2021, Bo Burnham wrote, recorded, directed, and produced Inside while in lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Burnhams online success and an awareness of what kind of his audiences perceived closeness made the comedian key to one of the most prominent discussions in a creator- and influencer-driven era of media: the idea of parasocial relationships. I actually felt true mutual empathy with someone for the first time, and with someone Ive never even met, its kinda funny.. HOLMES: So, as you'll hear there, on the one hand, there's a lot of sadness in what he's talking about there. @TheWoodMother made a video about how Burnham's "Inside" is its own poioumenon, which led to his first viral video on YouTube, written in 2006, is about how his whole family thinks he's gay, defines depersonalization-derealization disorder, "critical window for action to prevent the effects of global warming from becoming irreversible.". Here's a little bit of that. Sitting in the meeting room, not making a sound becomes the perceived 24/7 access fans have to DM you, reply to you, ask you questions. Or was it an elaborate callback to his earlier work, planted for fans seeking evidence that art is lie? The song is a pitched-down Charli XCX-styled banger of a ballad has minimal lyrics that are mostly just standard crowd instructions: put your hands up, get on your feet. "Healing the world with comedy, the indescribable power of your comedy," the voice sings. 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.". "And I spent that time trying to improve myself mentally. Not only is this whiteboard a play on the classic comedy rule that "tragedy plus time equals comedy," but it's a callback to Burnham's older work. Bo Burnham's new Netflix comedy special "Inside" is jam-packed with references to his previous work. 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. 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.". 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. 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"). I'm sitting down, writing jokes, singing silly songs, I'm sorry I was gone. Its folly to duplicate the feel of a live set, so why not fully adjust to the screen and try to make something as visually ambitious as a feature? We're a long way from the days when he filmed "Comedy" and the contrast shows how fruitless this method of healing has been. Theyre complicated. The tension between creator and audience is a prominent theme in Burnhams work, likely because he got his start on YouTube. . 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. That's when the younger Burnham, the one from the beginning of his special-filming days, appears. 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. 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. 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. Hes been addressing us the entire time. 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. Social media; it's just the market's answer to a generation that demanded to perform so the market said, here, perform. Burnham slaps his leg in frustration and eventually gives a mirthless laugh before he starts slamming objects around him. Similarly, Burnham often speaks to the audience by filming himself speaking to himself in a mirror. Burnham uses vocal tuning often throughout all of his specials. Burnham spent his teen years doing theater and songwriting, which led to his first viral video on YouTube a song he now likely categorizes as "offensive.". Were complicated. 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've been singing that song for about a week NOW. Like he's parodying white people who think that by crucifying themselves first they're somehow freed from the consequences of their actions. He's the writer, director, editor, and star of this show. At various points, the gamer is given the option to make the character cry. Hes bedraggled, increasingly unshaven, growing a Rasputin-like beard. "They say it's like the 'me' generation. It's an emergence from the darkness. "The poioumenon is calculated to offer opportunities to explore the boundaries of fiction and reality the limits of narrative truth," Fowler wrote in his book "A History of English Literature.". Mid-song, a spotlight turns on Burnham and shows him completely naked as a voice sings: "Well, well, look who's inside again. 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. Web9/10. We're a long way from the days when he filmed "Comedy" and the contrast shows how fruitless this method of healing has been. While he's laying in bed, eyes about the close, the screen shows a flash of an open door. The first half is dominated by sharp, silly satires of the moment, like a visually precise and hilarious song about social media vanity, White Womans Instagram, and a commercial for a woke brand consultant. He slaps his leg in frustration, and eventually gives a mirthless laugh before he starts slamming objects around him. "You say the ocean's rising, like I give a s---," he sings. Finally doing basic care tasks for yourself like eating breakfast and starting work in the morning. MARTIN: So a lot of us, you know, artists, journalists have been trying to describe what this period has been like, what has it meant, what's been going on with us.