And then the funniest thing happened.". 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. For those who are unaware, Bos real name is Robert Burnham. 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?. Toward the end, he appears completely naked behind his keyboard. 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. A college student navigates life and school while dealing with a unique predicament he's living with a beautiful former K-pop sensation. "And so today I'm gonna try just getting up, sitting down, going back to work. 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. In Unpaid Intern, Burnham sings about how deeply unethical the position is to the workers in a pastiche of other labor-focused blues. The penultimate song "All Eyes on Me" makes for a particularly powerful moment. Inside takes topics discussed academically, analytically, and delivers them to a new audience through the form of a comedy special by a widely beloved performer. Similarly, Burnham often speaks to the audience by filming himself speaking to himself in a mirror. I'm sitting down, writing jokes, singing silly songs, I'm sorry I was gone. Got it? 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 / [. All Eyes on Me takes a different approach to rattling the viewer. It's self-conscious. 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. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. "Part of me needs you, part of me fears you. But Burnham doesn't put the bottle down right, and it falls off the stool. The clean, tidy interior that first connected "Inside" with "Make Happy" is gone in its place is a mess-riddled space. 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. Anything and everything all of the time. The battery is full, but no numbers are moving. He takes it, and Burnham cries robotically as a tinny version of the song about being stuck in the room plays. The aesthetic telegraphs authenticity and vulnerability, but the specials stunning final shots reveal the misdirection at work, encouraging skepticism of the performativity of such realism. Inside is the work of a comic with artistic tools most of his peers ignore or overlook. A harsh skepticism of digital life (a life the pandemic has only magnified) is the dominant subject of the special. Now, you heard me struggling to describe what this is, so help me out. This is especially true for Patreon campaigns that give fans direct access to creators on platforms like Discord. His new Netflix special Inside was directed, written and performed all inside one room. He slaps his leg in frustration, and eventually gives a mirthless laugh before he starts slamming objects around him. Other than Fred Rogers, Bo Burnham is one of the most cited single individual creators when discussing parasocial relationships. Finally doing basic care tasks for yourself like eating breakfast and starting work in the morning. Burnham lingers on his behind-the-scenes technical tinkering handling lights, editing, practicing lines. 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. Even when confronted with works that criticize parasocial attachment, its difficult for fans not to feel emotionally connected to performers they admire. WebBo Burnham has been critical of his past self for the edgy, offensive comedy he used to make. Relieved to be done? His hair and beard were shorter, and he was full of inspired energy. Doona! Bo Burnham defined an era when he created Inside. 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. 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. In his new Netflix special, Inside, Bo Burnham sings about trying to be funny while stuck in a room. The song brings with it an existential dread, but Burnham's depression-voice tells us not to worry and sink into nihilism. ", He then pulls the same joke again, letting the song play after the audience's applause so it seems like a mistake. We're a long way from the days when he filmed "Comedy" and the contrast shows how fruitless this method of healing has been. The structured movements of the last hour and half fall away as Burnham snaps at the audience: "Get up. "And so, today, I'm gonna try just getting up, sitting down, going back to work. It's wonderful to be with you. 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. And like unpaid interns, most working artists cant afford a mortgage (and yeah, probably torrent a porn). As someone who has devoted time, energy, and years of research into parasocial relationships, I felt almost like this song was made for me, that Burnham and I do have so much in common. Is he content with its content? Hes bedraggled, increasingly unshaven, growing a Rasputin-like beard. Instead of a live performance, he's recorded himself in isolation over the course of a year. "Inside" kicks off with Burnham reentering the same small studio space he used for the end of "Make Happy," when the 2016 Netflix special transitioned from the live stage to Burnham suddenly sitting down at his piano by himself to sing one final song for the at-home audience. HOLMES: Well, logically enough, let's go out on the closing song. 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. WebBo Burnham: Inside is a 2021 special written, directed, filmed, edited, and performed by American comedian Bo Burnham. If the answer is yes, then it's not funny. 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. Anyone can read what you share. In a giddy homage to Cabaret, Burnham, in sunglasses, plays the M.C. 1 on Billboards comedy albums chart and eventually climbed to No. See our analysis of the end of the special, and why Burnham's analogy for depression works so well. '", "Robert's been a little depressed, no!" 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. 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." Not a comedy per se, but a masterpiece nonetheless. The tension between creator and audience is a prominent theme in Burnhams work, likely because he got his start on YouTube. / 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. Burnham wrote out: "Does it target those who have been disenfranchised in a historical, political, social, economic and/or psychological context?". Likewise. 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. 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. and concludes that if it's mean, it's not funny. There's also another little joke baked into this bit, because the game is made by a company called SSRI interactive the most common form of antidepressant drugs are called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, aka SSRIs. Now we've come full circle from the start of the special, when Burnham sang about how he's been depressed and decided to try just getting up, sitting down, and going back to work. Maybe we'll call it isolation theater. He was alone. But by using this meta-narrative throughout the whole special, Burnham messes with our ability to know when we're seeing a genuine struggle with artistic expression versus a meticulously staged fictional breakdown. 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. It moves kind of all over the place. "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.". He is now back to where he was, making jokes alone in his room, an effort to escape his reality. While he's laying in bed, eyes about the close, the screen shows a flash of an open door. Burnham is also the main character in the game, a character who is seen moving mechanically around a room. Get up. 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. That YouTube commenter might be understood by Burnham if they were to meet him. So he has, for example, a song in which he adopts the persona of a kind of horror movie carnival barker, you might call it, who is trying to sell people the internet. And I think that, 'Oh if I'm self-aware about being a douchebag it'll somehow make me less of a douchebag.' The penultimate song "All Eyes on Me" makes for a particularly powerful moment. Thank you so much for joining us. This special spoke to me closer and clearer than Ive ever felt with another person. Released on May 30, 2021, Bo Burnham wrote, recorded, directed, and produced Inside while in lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. 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. 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. It's a quiet, banal scene that many people coming out of a depressive episode might recognize. 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. Its a lyrically dense song with camerawork that speeds up with its rhythm. 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. Then comes the third emotional jump scare. Don't overthink this, look in my eye don't be scared, don't be shy, come on in the water's fine."). Burnham reacts to his reaction of the song, this time saying, Im being a little pretentious. Mirroring the earlier scene where Burnham went to sleep, now Burnham is shown "waking up.". Having this frame of reference may help viewers better understand the design of "Inside." 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. 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). Released on May 30, 2021, Bo Burnham wrote, recorded, directed, and produced Inside while in lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. 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. He doesn't really bother with any kind of transitions. Good. Still, its difficult not to be lulled back into, again, this absolute banger. Down to the second, the clock changes to midnight exactly halfway through the runtime of "Inside.". Burnham slaps his leg in frustration and eventually gives a mirthless laugh before he starts slamming objects around him. WebA grieving woman magically travels through time to 1998, where she meets a man with an uncanny resemblance to her late love. 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. 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. "And I spent that time trying to improve myself mentally. From the very beginning of "Inside," Burnham makes it clear that the narrative arc of the special will be self-referential. WebBo Burnham: Inside is by far one of the riskiest and original comedy specials to come out in years. 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 Burnham is an extraordinary actor, and "Inside" often feels like we're watching the intimate, real interior life of an artist. Let's take a closer look at just a few of those bubbles, shall we? People experiencing depression often stop doing basic self-care tasks, like showering or laundry or brushing their teeth. MARTIN: This special is titled, appropriately enough, "Inside," and it is streaming on Netflix now. Simply smiling at the irony of watching his own movie come to life while he's still inside? our full breakdown of every detail and reference you might have missed in "Inside" here. Web9/10. 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. 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? Bo Burnham: Inside review this is a claustrophobic masterpiece. I have a funky memory and I sometimes can't remember things from something I've watched, even if it was just yesterday. And it portends and casts doubt on a later scene when his mental health frays and Burnham cries in earnest. Look at them, they're just staring at me, like '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. Linda, thank you so much for joining us. ", 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.". After more sung repetitions of get your fuckin hands up, Burnham says, Get up. 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. The flow chat for "Is it funny?" Theyre complicated. It has extended versions of songs, cut songs, and alternate versions of songs that were eventually deleted; but is mainly comprised of outtakes. With electro-pop social commentary, bleak humour and sock-puppet debates, the comics lockdown creation is astonishing. But he meant to knock the water over, yeah yeah yeah, art is a lie nothing is real. 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 reminder, coming almost exactly halfway through the special, of the toll that this year is taking on Burnham. He says his goal had been to complete filming before his 30th birthday. For fans who struggle with panic attacks (myself included) its a comfort to see yourself represented in an artist whose work you respect. . 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. Bo Burnhams Inside: A Comedy Special and an Inspired Experiment, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/arts/television/bo-burnham-inside-comedy.html. Daddy made you your favorite, open wide.". Who Were We Running From? Might not help, but still, it couldn't hurt.". 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.". And it has a real feel of restlessness to it, almost like stream of consciousness. WebA Girl and an Astronaut. Now get inside.". Netflix. "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. Later in Inside, Burnham thanks the audience for their support while holding them at knifepoint. "Truly, it's like, for a 16-year-old kid in 2006, it's not bad. I got better. 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. He had a role in the film "Promising Young Woman." It's not. 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.". Linda Holmes, welcome. 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. And I think the pandemic was a time when a lot of people were in this do I laugh or cry space in their own minds. 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. But I described it to a couple of people as, you know, this looks like what the inside of my head felt like because of his sort of restlessness, his desire to create, create, create. 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. And then, of course, he had previous standup comedy specials. Its a feat, the work of a gifted experimentalist whose craft has caught up to his talent. Now, hes come a long way since his previous specials titled What. and Make Happy, where his large audiences roared with laughter newsletter, On Parasocial Relationships and the Boundaries of Celebrity, Bo Burnham and the Trap of Parasocial Self-Awareness.. I've been singing that song for about a week NOW. Performing "Make Happy" was mentally taxing on Burnham. Throughout the song and its accompanying visuals, Burnham is highlighting the "girlboss" aesthetic of many white women's Instagram accounts. If "All Eyes on Me" sounds disconcertingly comforting to you, it could be because you can recognize the mental symptoms of a mood disorder like depression. The special is available exclusively on Netflix, while the album can be found on most streaming platforms. See our analysis of the end of the special, and why Burnham's analogy for depression works so well. 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. 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. I like this song, Burnham says, before pointing out the the lack of modern songs about labor exploitation. 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. And if you go back and you look at a film like "Eighth Grade," he's always been really consumed by sort of the positive and the negative of social media and the internet and the life of of young kids. Audiences who might not read a 1956 essay by researchers about news anchors still see much of the same discussion in Inside. And now depression has its grips in him. HOLMES: Yeah. When you're a kid and you're stuck in your room, you'll do any old s--- to get out of it.". That's when the younger Burnham, the one from the beginning of his special-filming days, appears. Thematically, it deals with the events of 2020, rising wealth inequality, racial injustice, isolation, mental health, social media, and technologys role in our lives. But, like so many other plans and hopes people had in the early months of the pandemic, that goal proved unattainable. ", 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.". It's prison. That's a really clever, fun little rhyme in this, you know, kind of heavy song. 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. 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. @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.". He tries to talk into the microphone, giving his audience a one-year update. WebBo Burnham's new Netflix comedy special "Inside" is jam-packed with references to his previous work. Instead, thanks to his ultra-self-aware style, he seems to always get ahead of criticism by holding himself accountable first. BURNHAM: (Singing) Could I interest you in everything all of the time, a little bit of everything all of the time? He tries to talk into the microphone, giving his audience a one-year update. 20. Good. And maybe the rest of us are ready, too. 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.". 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. So let's dive into "Inside" and take a closer look at nearly every song and sketch in Burnham's special. The whole video is filmed like one big thirst trap as he sweats and works out. begins with the question "Is it mean?" I've been hiding from the world and I need to reenter.' 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. On the simplest level, Inside is the story of a comic struggling to make a funny show during quarantine and gradually losing his mind. Not in the traditional senseno music was released prior to the special other than a backing track from Content found in the trailer. "I was in a full body sweat, so I didn't hear most of that," Burnham said after the clip played. 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. 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. When we saw that projection the first time, Burnham's room was clean and orderly. 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. Photograph: Netflix Its a measure of the quality of Inside 1.0 that this stuff could end up on the cutting-room floor. It's conscious of self. HOLMES: It felt very true to me, not in the literal sense. 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). Went out to look for a reason to hide again. BURNHAM: (Singing) The live-action "Lion King," the Pepsi halftime show, 20,000 years of this, seven more to go. WebStuck in a passionless marriage, a journalist must choose between her distant but loving husband and a younger ex-boyfriend who has reentered her life. Then, the video keeps going past the runtime of the song and into that reaction itself. That his special is an indictment of the internet by an artist whose career was born and flourished there is the ultimate joke. 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. 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. ", 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. Underneath the Steve Martin-like formal trickery has always beaten the heaving heart of a flamboyantly dramatic theater kid. 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 ".
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