That quiet simplicity doesn't feel like a relief, but it is. 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. Toward the end, he appears completely naked behind his keyboard. It's conscious of self. 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. Burnham is also the main character in the game, a character who is seen moving mechanically around a room. ", "I do not think my intention was homophobic, but what is the implicit comedy of that song if you chase it all the way down? 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. 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. 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. 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.". 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 penultimate song "All Eyes on Me" makes for a particularly powerful moment. Still terrified of that spotlight? Mirroring the earlier scene where Burnham went to sleep, now Burnham is shown "waking up.". He has one where he's just sitting on a stool with an acoustic guitar describing our modern world. At the start of the special, Burnham sings "Content," setting the stage for his musical-comedy. So when you get to the end of a song, it often just kind of cuts to something else. 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. In Inside, Burnham confronts parasocial relationships in his most direct way yet. 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. 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. Maybe we'll call it isolation theater. Parasocial relationships are neutral, and how we interact with them is usually a mixed bag. The song brings with it an existential dread, but Burnham's depression-voice tells us not to worry and sink into nihilism. It's like the mental despair of the last year has turned into a comfort. 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 feels like the ending of a show, a climax, but it's not. 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. ", 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.". 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. Released on May 30, 2021, Bo Burnham wrote, recorded, directed, and produced Inside while in lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. While he's laying in bed, eyes about the close, the screen shows a flash of an open door. The whole song sounds like you're having a religious experience with your own mental disorder, especially when new harmonies kick in. I've been hiding from the world and I need to reenter.' He points it at himself as he sways, singing again: Get your fuckin hands up / Get on out of your seat / All eyes on me, all eyes on me.. And like those specials, Inside implores fans to think about deeper themes as well as how we think about comedy as a genre. Comedian and filmmaker Bo Burnham used his time alone during the pandemic to create a one-man show. 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. Underneath the Steve Martin-like formal trickery has always beaten the heaving heart of a flamboyantly dramatic theater kid. Hes been addressing us the entire time. At various points, the gamer is given the option to make the character cry. Might not help, but still, it couldn't hurt.". The final shot is of him looking positively orgasmic, eyes closed, on the cross. I actually felt true mutual empathy with someone for the first time, and with someone Ive never even met, its kinda funny.. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. He is not talking about it very much. Trying to grant his dying father's wish, a son discovers an epic love story buried in his family's distant past. But he's largely been given a pass by his fans, who praise his self-awareness and new approach. It's like Burnham's special has swallowed you whole, bringing you fully into his mind at last. 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. But unlike many of us, Burnham was also hard at work on a one-man show directed, written and performed all by himself. Entertainment correspondent Kim Renfro ranked them in ascending order of greatness. It's a hint at the promised future; the possibility of once again being able to go outside and feel sunlight again. ", He then pulls the same joke again, letting the song play after the audience's applause so it seems like a mistake. But the lyrics Burnham sings seem to imply that he wants to be held accountable for thoughtless and offensive jokes of his past: "Father please forgive me for I did not realize what I did, or that I'd live to regret it, times are changing and I'm getting old, are you gonna hold me accountable?". WebBo Burnham has been critical of his past self for the edgy, offensive comedy he used to make. 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. "I'm criticizing my initial reaction for being pretentious, which is honestly a defense mechanism," he says. In Unpaid Intern, Burnham sings about how deeply unethical the position is to the workers in a pastiche of other labor-focused blues. I feel very close and intimate with him in this version. Get the fuck up! Burnham walks towards the camera and grabs it like hes grabbing the viewer by the throat. WebA grieving woman magically travels through time to 1998, where she meets a man with an uncanny resemblance to her late love. 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. The title card appears in white, then changes to red, signaling that a camera is recording. 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. 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. All Eyes on Me also earned Bo his first Grammy win for Best Song Written for Visual Media at the 2022 Grammys. Then he moves into a new layer of reaction, where he responds to that previous comment. 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). It's a quiet, banal scene that many people coming out of a depressive episode might recognize. In one interpretation, maybe the smile means he's ready to be outside again. 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. And the biggest risk Burnham takes in the show is letting his emotional side loose, but not before cracking a ton of jokes. Copyright 2021 NPR. 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.". 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 flow chat for "Is it funny?" It's not. Here's a little bit of that. "This show is called 'what.,' and I hope there are some surprises for you," he says as he goes to set down the water bottle. He also costarred in the Oscar-winning movie "Promising Young Woman," filmed in 2019. I'm talking to you, get the f--- up.". But in both of those cases, similarity and connection would come from the way the art itself connects people, not any actual tie between Burnham and myself, Burnham and the commenter. 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? 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. Self-awareness does not absolve anyone of anything, he says. 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. The fun thing about this is he started writing it and recording it early on, so you get to see clips of him singing it both, you know, with the short hair and with the long hair - when he had just started this special and when he was finishing it. Burnham uses vocal tuning often throughout all of his specials. 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. . Burnham's earlier Netflix specials and comedy albums. Were complicated. Theyre complicated. "Robert's been a little depressed," he sings (referring to himself by his birthname). 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").
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