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Burnhams 2013 special, what., culminates in Burnham, the performer, reacting to pre-recorded versions of himself playing people from his life reacting to his work and fame, trying to capitalize on their tenuous relationship with him. 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. But we weren't. "I don't know that it's not," he said. This is when the musical numbers (and in-between skits) become much more grim. 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. 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.". 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. Who Were We Running From? Performing "Make Happy" was mentally taxing on Burnham. Thematically, it deals with the events of 2020, rising wealth inequality, racial injustice, isolation, mental health, social media, and technologys role in our lives. 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.". Thank you, Michel. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. 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. But he meant to knock the water over, yeah yeah yeah, art is a lie nothing is real. 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.". So let's dive into "Inside" and take a closer look at nearly every song and sketch in Burnham's special. 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. I don't think it's perfectly morally defendable.". Even when confronted with works that criticize parasocial attachment, its difficult for fans not to feel emotionally connected to performers they admire. Yes, Bo Burnham posted a trailer via Twitter on April 28, 2021. 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. "Problematic" is a roller coaster of self-awareness, masochism, and parody. And I don't think that I can handle this right now. The result, a special titled "Inside," shows all of Burnham's brilliant instincts of parody and meta-commentary on the role of white, male entertainers in the world and of poisons found in internet culture that digital space that gave him a career and fostered a damaging anxiety disorder that led him to quit performing live comedy after 2015. WebBo Burnham: Inside is by far one of the riskiest and original comedy specials to come out in years. Research and analysis of parasocial relationships usually revolves around genres of performers instead of individuals. And I think that's what you're getting here. In one interpretation, maybe the smile means he's ready to be outside again. 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. 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. 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. Instead of a live performance, he's recorded himself in isolation over the course of a year. Instead of working his muscles at open mics or in improv, Burnham uploaded joke songs to the platform in 2006. . And maybe the rest of us are ready, too. With electro-pop social commentary, bleak humour and sock-puppet debates, the comics lockdown creation is astonishing. HOLMES: That was NPR's Linda Holmes reviewing Bo Burnham's new Netflix special "Inside." Relieved to be done? "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. 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. In this case, it's likely some combination of depression/anxiety/any other mental disorder. Bo Burnham also uploaded Welcome to the Internet and White Womans Instagram on his YouTube channel. Is he content with its content? ", And last but not least, for social media he put "sexually pranking unsuspecting women at public beaches" and "psychologically abusive parents making rube goldberg machines" alongside "white people using GIFs of Black people widening their eyes.". 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. Daddy made you your favorite, open wide.". 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. It's not. "I was a kid who was stuck in his room, there isn't much more to say about it. and concludes that if it's mean, it's not funny. But also, it's clear that there's a lot on his mind. It's an emergence from the darkness. We see Burnham moving around in the daylight, a welcome contrast to the dark setting of "All Eyes on Me." Get the fuck up! Burnham walks towards the camera and grabs it like hes grabbing the viewer by the throat. Burnham starts spiraling in a mental health crisis, mentioning suicidal ideation after lamenting his advance into his 30s. Burnham uses vocal tuning often throughout all of his specials. A distorted voice is back again, mocking Burnham as he sits exposed on his fake stage: "Well, well, look who's inside again. Whatever it is, NPR's Linda Holmes, host of Pop Culture Happy Hour, has reviewed it, and she liked it. 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. And I think that, 'Oh if I'm self-aware about being a douchebag it'll somehow make me less of a douchebag.' 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"). Inside has been making waves for comedy fans, similar to the ways previous landmark comedy specials like Hannah Gadsbys Nanette or Tig Notaros Live (aka Hello, I Have Cancer) have. 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. Hes bedraggled, increasingly unshaven, growing a Rasputin-like beard. Throughout the song and its accompanying visuals, Burnham is highlighting the "girlboss" aesthetic of many white women's Instagram accounts. Trying to grant his dying father's wish, a son discovers an epic love story buried in his family's distant past. At just 20 years old, Burnham was a guest alongside Judd Apatow, Marc Maron, Ray Romano, and Garry Shandling. 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. It chronicles Burnhams life during the pandemic and his journey creating the special. 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. 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. Mirroring the earlier scene where Burnham went to sleep, now Burnham is shown "waking up.". Because there's also a little bit Bo Burnham the character in this almost. 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. One of those is the internet itself. begins with the question "Is it mean?" I actually felt true mutual empathy with someone for the first time, and with someone Ive never even met, its kinda funny.. Inside is the work of a comic with artistic tools most of his peers ignore or overlook. 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. He says his goal had been to complete filming before his 30th birthday. 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. (The question is no longer, Do you want to buy Wheat Thins?, for example. .] While this special is the product of evolution, Burnham is pointing out its also a regression. BURNHAM: (Singing) Does anybody want to joke when no one's laughing in the background? In Inside, Burnham confronts parasocial relationships in his most direct way yet. Apathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime. 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. 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. He is leaving it to speak for itself in terms of what it says about isolation and sadness. Burnham's earlier Netflix specials and comedy albums. That his special is an indictment of the internet by an artist whose career was born and flourished there is the ultimate joke. But he's largely been given a pass by his fans, who praise his self-awareness and new approach. 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. It's self-conscious. Having this frame of reference may help viewers better understand the design of "Inside." Years later, the comedian told NPR's Terry Gross that performing the special was so tough that he was having panic attacks on stage. If the answer is yes, then it's not funny. Inside, a new Netflix special written, performed, directed, shot, and edited by comedian Bo Burnham, invokes and plays with many forms. Its called INSIDE, and it will undoubtedly strike your hearts forevermore. 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. 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. 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). But then the video keeps playing, and so he winds up reacting to his own reaction, and then reacting yet again to that reaction. Or was it an elaborate callback to his earlier work, planted for fans seeking evidence that art is lie? "Goodbye sadness, hello jokes!". The tension between creator and audience is a prominent theme in Burnhams work, likely because he got his start on YouTube. Linda, thank you so much for joining us. Copyright 2021 NPR. 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. 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.". Netflix did, however, post Facetime with My Mom (Tonight) on YouTube. .] It's wonderful to be with you. You know, I was not, you know, I was alone, but I was not trapped in one room. (SOUNDBITE OF COMEDY SPECIAL, "BO BURNHAM: INSIDE"). And she's with us now to tell us more about it. While he's laying in bed, eyes about the close, the screen shows a flash of an open door. 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. So when you get to the end of a song, it often just kind of cuts to something else. jonnyewers 30 May 2021. 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? But look, I made you some content. MARTIN: And it's deep, too. 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 ". Bo Burnhams Inside: A Comedy Special and an Inspired Experiment, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/arts/television/bo-burnham-inside-comedy.html. Don't overthink this, look in my eye don't be scared don't be shy come on in the water's fine."). 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"). Is he content with its content? 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. 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. Well now the shots are reversed. 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 brushes his teeth, eats a bowl of cereal, and begins editing his videos. HOLMES: Right. Now get inside.". Its horrific.". 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"). Linda Holmes, welcome. this breakdown of 31 details you might have missed in "Inside,". And then the funniest thing happened.". Burnham quickly shifts from the song to a reaction video of the song itself in the style of a YouTuber or Twitch streamer. "And so, today, I'm gonna try just getting up, sitting down, going back to work. The penultimate song "All Eyes on Me" makes for a particularly powerful moment. According to the special, Bo decided he was ready to begin doing stand-up again in January 2020, after dealing with panic attacks onstage during his previous tour, the Make Happy Tour of 2015-2016. Entertainment correspondent Kim Renfro ranked them in ascending order of greatness. Bo Burnham: Inside is a devastating portrait of the actor-director-singer-comedian's dysfunctional interiority and 2020's unyielding assault on mental and social health. It's like the mental despair of the last year has turned into a comfort. 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. 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. Please enter a valid email and try again. LINDA HOLMES, BYLINE: Thank you, Michel. Inside doesnt give clear answers like parasocial relationships good or parasocial relationships bad, because those answers do not, and cannot, exist. The label of parasocial relationship is meant to be neutral, being as natural and normal and, frankly, inescapable as familial or platonic relationships. WebBo Burnham is more than a comedian he's a writer-director-actor who first went viral in 2006. And we might. BURNHAM: (Singing) Could I interest you in everything all of the time, a little bit of everything all of the time? This is especially true for Patreon campaigns that give fans direct access to creators on platforms like Discord. Got it? Anyone can read what you share. Self-awareness does not absolve anyone of anything, he says. Transcript Comedian and filmmaker Bo Burnham used his time alone during the pandemic to create a one-man show. He is now back to where he was, making jokes alone in his room, an effort to escape his reality. MARTIN: You know, about that, because it does move into a deeply serious place at some point. . I hope to see you inside at some point. 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. There's no more time left to add to the camera's clock. At the start of the special, Burnham sings "Content," setting the stage for his musical-comedy. Parasocial relationships are neutral, and how we interact with them is usually a mixed bag. The album peaked at #7 on the Billboard 200 chart, #1 on the Comedy Albums chart, and #18 on the Independent Albums chart. It's a quiet, banal scene that many people coming out of a depressive episode might recognize. Its a stupid song, and, uh, it doesnt really mean anything. The video continues. Yes, Amazon has a pre-order set up for the album on Vinyl. 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. With menacing horror movie sound effects and hectic, dreamy camerawork, what becomes clear is Burnhams title has a double meaning: referring to being inside not just a room, but also his head. In recent years, he has begun directing other comics specials, staging stand-up sets by Chris Rock and Jerrod Carmichael with his signature extreme close-ups. I've been hiding from the world and I need to reenter.' I was not, you know, having these particular experiences. 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 world needs direction from a white guy like [you] who is healing the world with comedy. Please check your email to find a confirmation email, and follow the steps to confirm your humanity. 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. Bo Burnham's new Netflix comedy special "Inside" is jam-packed with references to his previous work. Accuracy and availability may vary. WebA grieving woman magically travels through time to 1998, where she meets a man with an uncanny resemblance to her late love. Other than Fred Rogers, Bo Burnham is one of the most cited single individual creators when discussing parasocial relationships. 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. 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. Under stand up, Burnham wrote "Middle-aged men protecting free speech by humping stools and telling stories about edibles" and "podcasts. Were complicated. our ranking of all 20 original songs from the special here. Good. Now get inside.". 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.