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. Only he knows. 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.". Under stand up, Burnham wrote "Middle-aged men protecting free speech by humping stools and telling stories about edibles" and "podcasts. The songs from the special were released on streaming platforms on June 10, 2021. 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. So we broke down each song and sketch and analyzed their meaning and context. 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. The special is hitting an emotional climax as Burnham shows us both intense anger and then immediately after, a deep and dark sadness. Having this frame of reference may help viewers better understand the design of "Inside." And he's done virtually no press about it. 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. Accuracy and availability may vary. So in "Inside," when we see Burnham recording himself doing lighting set up and then accidentally pull down his camera was that a real blooper he decided to edit in? It's prison. Well now the shots are reversed. Just as often, Burnhams shot sequencing plays against the meaning of a song, like when he breaks out a glamorous split screen to complement a comic song about FaceTiming with his mom. An ethereal voice (which is really just Burnham's own voice with effects over it) responds to Burnham's question while a bright light suddenly shines on his face, as if he's receiving a message from God. Went out to look for a reason to hide again. 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. Many of his songs begin seriously, then shift into the joke, but this one doesnt. He takes it, and Burnham cries robotically as a tinny version of the song about being stuck in the room plays. You can stream "Inside" on Netflix now, and see our ranking of all 20 original songs from the special here. Burnham makes it textual, too. Now, you heard me struggling to describe what this is, so help me out. 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. 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. The special is available exclusively on Netflix, while the album can be found on most streaming platforms. 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. I like this song, Burnham says, before pointing out the the lack of modern songs about labor exploitation. I mean, honestly, he's saying a lot right there. The penultimate song, "All Eyes On Me," is the best in the whole special, in this writer's opinion. I don't think it's perfectly morally defendable.". 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. 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? Don't overthink this, look in my eye don't be scared, don't be shy, come on in the water's fine."). And did you have any favorites? "Goodbye sadness, hello jokes!". Theres always been a tension in his comedy between an ironic, smarty-pants cleverness and an often melodramatic point of view. 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 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. 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. Good. It moves kind of all over the place. 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. And part of it is sometimes he's just in despair. Released on May 30, 2021, Bo Burnham wrote, recorded, directed, and produced Inside while in lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Photograph: Netflix Its a measure of the quality of Inside 1.0 that this stuff could end up on the cutting-room floor. BURNHAM: (Singing) Start a rumor, buy a broom or send a death threat to a Boomer. 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 ". One of those is the internet itself. While he's laying in bed, eyes about the close, the screen shows a flash of an open door. (SOUNDBITE OF COMEDY SPECIAL, "BO BURNHAM: INSIDE"). Trying to grant his dying father's wish, a son discovers an epic love story buried in his family's distant past. By inserting that Twitch character in this earlier scene, Burnham was seemingly giving a peek into his daily routine. And then, of course, he had previous standup comedy specials. MARTIN: So Bo Burnham has had a lot of different identities lately. By keeping that reveal until the end of the special, Burnham is dropping a hammer on the actual at-home audience, letting us know why his mental health has hit an ATL, as he calls it ("all time low"). It's self-conscious. I don't know exactly how it tracks his experience, Bo Burnham, the person, right? The tension between creator and audience is a prominent theme in Burnhams work, likely because he got his start on YouTube. Research and analysis of parasocial relationships usually revolves around genres of performers instead of individuals. 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). I think you're getting from him, you know, the entertainment element. All Eyes on Me also earned Bo his first Grammy win for Best Song Written for Visual Media at the 2022 Grammys. 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 let's dive into "Inside" and take a closer look at nearly every song and sketch in Burnham's special. But, like so many other plans and hopes people had in the early months of the pandemic, that goal proved unattainable. Tell us a little bit more about that. Netflix The first comes when Burnham looks directly into the camera as he addresses the audience, singing, Are you feeling nervous? Simply smiling at the irony of watching his own movie come to life while he's still inside? The final shot is of him looking positively orgasmic, eyes closed, on the cross. 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. begins with the question "Is it mean?" 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 / [. After more sung repetitions of get your fuckin hands up, Burnham says, Get up. And so I think he's always had that stubborn insistence on holding both of those things in his head at the same time. People experiencing depression often stop doing basic self-care tasks, like showering or laundry or brushing their teeth. Bo Burnham, pictured here at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, wrote, directed and performed the entirety of his new Netflix special, Inside, by himself. The Volcano, which touched on labor rights. Daddy made you your favorite. Bo Burnham; former YouTuber, iconic Viner, and acclaimed stand-up comedian has recently released a new Netflix special. ", 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. 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. Open wide.. 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. But Burnham doesn't put the bottle down right, and it falls off the stool. Also, Burnham's air conditioner is set to precisely 69 degrees throughout this whole faux music video. "Truly, it's like, for a 16-year-old kid in 2006, it's not bad. And it portends and casts doubt on a later scene when his mental health frays and Burnham cries in earnest. "Healing the world with comedy, the indescribable power of your comedy," the voice sings. ", 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.". Its an instinct I have for all my work to have some deeper meaning or something. And like those specials, Inside implores fans to think about deeper themes as well as how we think about comedy as a genre. I've been singing that song for about a week NOW. "And I spent that time trying to improve myself mentally. The song is like having a religious experience with your own mental disorder. Other than Fred Rogers, Bo Burnham is one of the most cited single individual creators when discussing parasocial relationships. I think this is something we've all been thinking about. Get the fuck up! Burnham walks towards the camera and grabs it like hes grabbing the viewer by the throat. But by the end of the tune, his narrative changes into irreverence. 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. We're a long way from the days when he filmed "Comedy" and the contrast shows how fruitless this method of healing has been. 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.". In the song "That Funny Feeling," Burnham mentions these two year spans without further explanation, but it seems like he's referencing the "critical window for action to prevent the effects of global warming from becoming irreversible. Like he's parodying white people who think that by crucifying themselves first they're somehow freed from the consequences of their actions. HOLMES: Yeah. Burnham uses vocal tuning often throughout all of his specials. HOLMES: So, as you'll hear there, on the one hand, there's a lot of sadness in what he's talking about there. Social media; it's just the market's answer to a generation that demanded to perform so the market said, here, perform. "Robert's been a little depressed," he sings (referring to himself by his birthname). He is leaving it to speak for itself in terms of what it says about isolation and sadness. Then he moves into a new layer of reaction, where he responds to that previous comment. Theres a nostalgic sweetness to this song, but parts of it return throughout the show, in darker forms, one of many variations on a theme. 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? I was not, you know, having these particular experiences. Burnhams eyes are sharply in focus; the rest of him faded out subtly, a detail you might not even notice with how striking his eyes are. Now, five years later, Burnham's new parody song is digging even deeper at the philosophical question of whether or not it's appropriate to be creating comedy during a horrifyingly raw period of tragedy like the COVID-19 pandemic and the social reckoning that followed George Floyd's murder. Released on May 30, 2021, Bo Burnham wrote, recorded, directed, and produced Inside while in lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Thematically, it deals with the events of 2020, rising wealth inequality, racial injustice, isolation, mental health, social media, and technologys role in our lives. The incentives of the web, those that reward outrage, excess and sentiment, are the villains of this show. Audiences who might not read a 1956 essay by researchers about news anchors still see much of the same discussion in Inside. You know, as silly as that one is, some of the other ones are more sedate. And they're biting, but he's also very talented at these little catchy pop hooks. All rights reserved. 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. According to a May 2021 Slate article, the piece was filmed at Bo Burnhams Los Angeles guest housethe same room used for June 2016s Are You Happy? and the closing shots of the Make Happy special. He had a role in the film "Promising Young Woman." 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. This is especially true for Patreon campaigns that give fans direct access to creators on platforms like Discord. MARTIN: This special is titled, appropriately enough, "Inside," and it is streaming on Netflix now. 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.". Likewise. of the internet, welcoming everyone with a decadent menu of options while disco lights twirl. Perform everything to each other, all the time for no reason. At the end of the song, "Inside" cuts to a shot of Burnham watching his own video on a computer in the dark. And she's with us now to tell us more about it. I'm talking to you, get the f--- up.". We see Burnham moving around in the daylight, a welcome contrast to the dark setting of "All Eyes on Me." 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. BO BURNHAM: (Singing) If you'd have told me a year ago that I'd be locked inside of my home, I would have told you a year ago, interesting, now leave me alone. 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. And like unpaid interns, most working artists cant afford a mortgage (and yeah, probably torrent a porn). "Oh Jesus, sorry," Burnham says, hurrying over to pick it up. He was only 16. 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. (The question is no longer, Do you want to buy Wheat Thins?, for example. Get up. And I think that, 'Oh if I'm self-aware about being a douchebag it'll somehow make me less of a douchebag.' On May 30, 2022, Burnham uploaded the video Inside: The Outtakes, to his YouTube channel, marking a rare original upload, similar to how he used his YouTube channel when he was a teenager. Finally doing basic care tasks for yourself like eating breakfast and starting work in the morning. Performing "Make Happy" was mentally taxing on Burnham. 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. And then the funniest thing happened.". That's what it is. Most sources discuss fictional characters, news anchors, childrens show hosts, or celebrity culture as a whole. He is not talking about it very much. Now, hes come a long way since his previous specials titled What. and Make Happy, where his large audiences roared with laughter This line comes full circle by the end of the special, so keep it in mind. 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. @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.". "Problematic" is a roller coaster of self-awareness, masochism, and parody. 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. Bo Burnham defined an era when he created Inside. 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. We're a long way from the days when he filmed "Comedy" and the contrast shows how fruitless this method of healing has been. ", He then pulls the same joke again, letting the song play after the audience's applause so it seems like a mistake. He was alone. So this is how it ends. Something went wrong. It's as if Burnham knows there are valid criticisms of him that haven't really stuck in the public discourse around his work. "Got it? 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.