Well, well, buddy you found it, now come out with your hands up we've got you surrounded.". 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"). 20. Mid-song, a spotlight turns on Burnham and shows him completely naked as a voice sings: "Well, well, look who's inside again. Get the fuck up! Burnham walks towards the camera and grabs it like hes grabbing the viewer by the throat. 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. Later in Inside, Burnham thanks the audience for their support while holding them at knifepoint. I think you're getting from him, you know, the entertainment element. While talking to the audience during the opening section, Burnham takes a sip out of a water bottle. HOLMES: Yeah. The structured movements of the last hour and half fall away as Burnham snaps at the audience: "Get up. See our analysis of the end of the special, and why Burnham's analogy for depression works so well. "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. In the song, Burnham specifically mentions looking up "derealization," a disorder that may "feel like you're living in a dream. LINDA HOLMES, BYLINE: Thank you, Michel. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. 7 on the Top 200. 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. So we broke down each song and sketch and analyzed their meaning and context. "Got it? When he appeared on NPR's radio show "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross in 2018, the host played a clip of "My Whole Family" and Burnham took his headphones off so he didn't have to relisten to the song. 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. And now depression has its grips in him. 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. Instead, thanks to his ultra-self-aware style, he seems to always get ahead of criticism by holding himself accountable first. 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. 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. (SOUNDBITE OF COMEDY SPECIAL, "BO BURNHAM: INSIDE"). 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). I'm talking to you, get the f--- up.". With electro-pop social commentary, bleak humour and sock-puppet debates, the comics lockdown creation is astonishing. ", 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.". As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 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. And he's done virtually no press about it. It's progress. "), Burnham sang a parody song called "Sad" about, well, all the sad stuff in the world. He takes it, and Burnham cries robotically as a tinny version of the song about being stuck in the room plays. Also, Burnham's air conditioner is set to precisely 69 degrees throughout this whole faux music video. Well, well, buddy you found it, now come out with your hands up we've got you surrounded.". Its a lyrically dense song with camerawork that speeds up with its rhythm. Finally doing basic care tasks for yourself like eating breakfast and starting work in the morning. He's showing us how terrifying it can be to present something you've made to the world, or to hear laughter from an audience when what you were hoping for was a genuine connection. 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. The performer, along with the record label and brand deals, encourage a parasocial relationship for increased profits. . 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 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. This special spoke to me closer and clearer than Ive ever felt with another person. Social media; it's just the market's answer to a generation that demanded to perform so the market said, here, perform. Thematically, it deals with the events of 2020, rising wealth inequality, racial injustice, isolation, mental health, social media, and technologys role in our lives. After more sung repetitions of get your fuckin hands up, Burnham says, Get up. (For example, the song "Straight, White, Male" from the "Make Happy" special). He brushes his teeth, eats a bowl of cereal, and begins editing his videos. At the second level of the reaction video, Burnham says: "I'm being a little pretentious. All Eyes on Me takes a different approach to rattling the viewer. MARTIN: You know, about that, because it does move into a deeply serious place at some point. 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. 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. "And I spent that time trying to improve myself mentally. And it's important to remember, you know, this is a piece of theater. Yes, Bo Burnham posted a trailer via Twitter on April 28, 2021. It's wonderful to be with you. 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. 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. Theres always been a tension in his comedy between an ironic, smarty-pants cleverness and an often melodramatic point of view. But look, I made you some content. 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. Netflix. It's as if Burnham knows there are valid criticisms of him that haven't really stuck in the public discourse around his work. 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. 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?. 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"). A college student navigates life and school while dealing with a unique predicament he's living with a beautiful former K-pop sensation. our ranking of all 20 original songs from the special here. ", "On September 17, the clock began counting down from seven years, 103 days, 15 hours, 40 minutes and seven seconds, displayed in red," the Smithsonian reported. A distorted voice is back again, mocking Burnham as he sits exposed on his fake stage: "Well, well, look who's inside again. WebBo Burnham: Inside is a 2021 special written, directed, filmed, edited, and performed by American comedian Bo Burnham. 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. 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. Gross asked Burnham if people "misinterpreted" the song and thought it was homophobic. The first comes when Burnham looks directly into the camera as he addresses the audience, singing, Are you feeling nervous? 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. A series of eerie events thrusts an unlikely trio (John Boyega, Jamie Foxx and Teyonah Parris) onto the trail of a nefarious government conspiracy. "Truly, it's like, for a 16-year-old kid in 2006, it's not bad. He brushes his teeth, eats a bowl of cereal, and begins editing his videos. But, of course, it tangles that right back up; this emotional post was, ultimately, still Content. So let's dive into "Inside" and take a closer look at nearly every song and sketch in Burnham's special. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. "If greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rate, then when the clock runs out, the average global temperature will be irreversibly on its way to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels.". 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. Self-awareness does not absolve anybody of anything.". 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.". The penultimate song, "All Eyes On Me," is the best in the whole special, in this writer's opinion. BURNHAM: (Singing) Does anybody want to joke when no one's laughing in the background? True, but it can deepen and clarify art. And like unpaid interns, most working artists cant afford a mortgage (and yeah, probably torrent a porn). While sifting through fan reactions to Inside, the YouTube algorithm suggested I watch a fan-made video that pitch corrects All Eyes on Me to Burnhams actual voice. In the song Problematic, Burnham sings about his past problematic behavior, asking the audience, Isnt anyone going to hold me accountable? The specials intermission looks like a clear view into Burnhams room, until Burnham washes a window between himself and the viewer an explicit, but invisible, boundary between creator and audience. Many of his songs begin seriously, then shift into the joke, but this one doesnt. It's a quiet, banal scene that many people coming out of a depressive episode might recognize. And she's with us now to tell us more about it. Burnham starts spiraling in a mental health crisis, mentioning suicidal ideation after lamenting his advance into his 30s. It's so good to hear your voice. And you know what? Likewise. Theyre complicated. Parasocial relationships are neutral, and how we interact with them is usually a mixed bag. 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. WebBo Burnham's "Inside" special on Netflix is an incredibly detailed musical-comedy artwork. this breakdown of 31 details you might have missed in "Inside,". And they're biting, but he's also very talented at these little catchy pop hooks. See our analysis of the end of the special, and why Burnham's analogy for depression works so well. Released on May 30, 2021, Bo Burnham wrote, recorded, directed, and produced Inside while in lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. 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?". It's conscious of self. 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.". Feelings of depersonalization and derealization can be very disturbing and may feel like you're living in a dream.". I did! Inside doesnt give clear answers like parasocial relationships good or parasocial relationships bad, because those answers do not, and cannot, exist. Long before the phrase parasocial relationship had entered the mainstream zeitgeist, Burnhams work discussed the phenomenon. Though it does have a twist. Burnham can't get through his words in the update as he admits he's been working on the special much longer than he'd anticipated. But he's largely been given a pass by his fans, who praise his self-awareness and new approach. Released on May 30, 2021, Bo Burnham wrote, recorded, directed, and produced Inside while in lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Now Burnham is showing us the clutter of the room, where he's almost claustrophobically surrounded by equipment. Then comes the third emotional jump scare. 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. 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. Its called INSIDE, and it will undoubtedly strike your hearts forevermore. "All Eyes On Me" starts right after Burnham's outburst of anger and sadness. 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 / [. But he meant to knock the water over, yeah yeah yeah, art is a lie nothing is real. Burnham's creative background began with being a theater then he transitioned to musical-comedy. He is not talking about it very much. He was alone. I got better. Hes been addressing us the entire time. "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. I don't think it's perfectly morally defendable.". "I didn't perform for five years," he says. You know, I was not, you know, I was alone, but I was not trapped in one room. Photograph: Netflix Its a measure of the quality of Inside 1.0 that this stuff could end up on the cutting-room floor. But Burnham is of course the writer, director, editor, and star of this show. Like most of Burnhams specials, it includes comedic songs and creative lighting effects. Burnham's earlier Netflix specials and comedy albums. Only he knows. WebBo Burnham has been critical of his past self for the edgy, offensive comedy he used to make. MARTIN: So Bo Burnham has had a lot of different identities lately. Just wanted to make sure everybody knew about Bo's comedy special transcripts on Scraps. 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. In this case, it's likely some combination of depression/anxiety/any other mental disorder. 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. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Burnham reacts to his reaction of the song, this time saying, Im being a little pretentious. This is when the musical numbers (and in-between skits) become much more grim. Burnham quickly shifts from the song to a reaction video of the song itself in the style of a YouTuber or Twitch streamer. 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. It's an emergence from the darkness. It's self-conscious. The incentives of the web, those that reward outrage, excess and sentiment, are the villains of this show. 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. Hes bedraggled, increasingly unshaven, growing a Rasputin-like beard. He uploaded it to YouTube, a then barely-known website that offered an easy way for people to share videos, so he could send it to his brother. He is leaving it to speak for itself in terms of what it says about isolation and sadness. Well now the shots are reversed. 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? He slaps his leg in frustration, and eventually gives a mirthless laugh before he starts slamming objects around him. But we weren't. In Unpaid Intern, Burnham sings about how deeply unethical the position is to the workers in a pastiche of other labor-focused blues. Apathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime. But by the end of the tune, his narrative changes into irreverence. 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. "Part of me needs you, part of me fears you. For those who are unaware, Bos real name is Robert Burnham. The arrogance is taught or it was cultivated. And it has a lot of very clever and very quick wordplay about the specific things you can get on the internet. The songs from the special were released on streaming platforms on June 10, 2021. 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. Its horrific.". He is now back to where he was, making jokes alone in his room, an effort to escape his reality. 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. Im talking to you. Parasocial relationships can be positive too, as outlined in culture critic Stitchs essay On Parasocial Relationships and the Boundaries of Celebrity for Teen Vogue. jonnyewers 30 May 2021. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. 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's hair is shorter in those initial behind-the-scenes moments, but his future-self has a longer, unkempt beard and messy hair. .] Bo Burnhams 2021 special, Inside. The lead-in is Burnham thanking a nonexistent audience for being there with him for the last year. He's almost claustrophobically surrounded by equipment. We're a long way from the days when he filmed "Comedy" and the contrast shows how fruitless this method of healing has been. HOLMES: Thank you. 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. 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. 1 on Billboards comedy albums chart and eventually climbed to No. 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. But it doesn't. And I'm just wondering, like, how would you describe that? The global pandemic and subsequent lockdown orders of March 2020 put a stop to these plans. Linda Holmes, welcome. 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. That's a really clever, fun little rhyme in this, you know, kind of heavy song. Bo Burnham: Inside review this is a claustrophobic masterpiece. Burnham has said in interviews that his inspiration for the character came from real YouTube videos he had watched, most with just a handful of views, and saw the way young women expressed themselves online. The tension between creator and audience is a prominent theme in Burnhams work, likely because he got his start on YouTube. So we broke down each song and sketch and analyzed their meaning and context. 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. Still, its difficult not to be lulled back into, again, this absolute banger. Its an uncanny, dystopian view of Burnham as an instrument in the soulless game of social media. "The quiet comprehending of the ending of it all," is another of Burnham's lyrics in this song that seems to speak to the idea that civilization is nearing collapse, and also touches on suicidal ideation. The label of parasocial relationship is meant to be neutral, being as natural and normal and, frankly, inescapable as familial or platonic relationships. When you're a kid and you're stuck in your room, you'll do any old s--- to get out of it.". Thank you, Michel. Bo Burnham, pictured here at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, wrote, directed and performed the entirety of his new Netflix special, Inside, by himself. Throughout the song and its accompanying visuals, Burnham is highlighting the "girlboss" aesthetic of many white women's Instagram accounts. Even when confronted with works that criticize parasocial attachment, its difficult for fans not to feel emotionally connected to performers they admire. 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. When we saw that projection the first time, Burnham's room was clean and orderly. 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. "I don't know that it's not," he said. Other than Fred Rogers, Bo Burnham is one of the most cited single individual creators when discussing parasocial relationships. And so I think he's always had that stubborn insistence on holding both of those things in his head at the same time. I actually felt true mutual empathy with someone for the first time, and with someone Ive never even met, its kinda funny.. Because there's also a little bit Bo Burnham the character in this almost. Each of the songs from the first half of the special are in line with Burnham's earlier Netflix specials and comedy albums. While he's laying in bed, eyes about the close, the screen shows a flash of an open door. Likewise. Years later, the comedian told NPR's Terry Gross that performing the special was so tough that he was having panic attacks on stage. Got it? In the worst case, depression can convince a person to end their life. Good. Maybe we'll call it isolation theater. Might not help, but still, it couldn't hurt.". 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. 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. 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. Anything and everything all of the time. While this special is the product of evolution, Burnham is pointing out its also a regression. @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.". My heart hurts with and for him. WebBo Burnham's Netflix special "Inside" features 20 new original songs. Carpool Karaoke, Steve Aoki, Logan Paul. 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. WebBo Burnham is more than a comedian he's a writer-director-actor who first went viral in 2006. Mirroring the earlier scene where Burnham went to sleep, now Burnham is shown "waking up.". And it portends and casts doubt on a later scene when his mental health frays and Burnham cries in earnest. Now get inside.". I think this is something we've all been thinking about.
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