"Inside" With Bo Burnham

Up until this point, I knew Bo Burnham as the writer/director of "Eighth Grade," and more recently from his work as an actor in "Promising Young Woman."  I was not familiar at all with his history as a singer/songwriter wunderkind, who made his name as a teenage performer on Youtube, and later as a popular comedian.  I will admit that I managed to confuse him with Marc Maron at some point, and am still a little stunned that he only turned thirty last year.

Burnham's latest special for Netflix is 90 minutes of songs, sketches, and monologues that he wrote, directed, and filmed during the pandemic.  The first thing you'll notice is his impressive technical proficiency, especially his use of all kinds of fancy lighting, staging, and projection techniques to turn a single room into a gigantic canvas for his ideas.  In the opening minutes, he uses a headlamp and a disco ball to create his own light show.  Later on, he parodies saccharine Instagram posts by recreating their very specific aesthetics, one meticulous selfie at a time.  

You'll also very quickly realize that Burnham is wildly creative and talented.  His songs are catchy and densely packed with information.  Weird Al is cited as an influence, but Tom Lehrer is a better point of comparison, because of the topicality and difficulty of the subject matter Burham favors, and the similarity in performance style.  "Inside" features songs about Facetiming, about being problematic, about the horror of being famous on the Internet, and a two-part ode to Jeff Bezos.  The highlight is "Welcome to the Internet," a despairing ditty about the nightmare that Internet interaction has become.  I'm also fond of the song about sexting, mostly for Burham's hysterical delivery.  

But as the special progresses, Burnham's mood grows darker and darker, his hair and beard become more unkempt, and the wear of being stuck in quarantine for months becomes impossible to ignore.  Camera and lighting equipment litter the floor.  The moments of dark humor shift into a constant atmosphere of dread, and it becomes apparent that Burnham - or at least his onscreen persona for this project - is not mentally well.  There are uncomfortably candid moments where he talks about his past battles with depression and anxiety.   There are even more disturbing segments where he seems to be sliding into a full blown psychological crisis.  The struggle to finish the special becomes part of the narrative.  It is difficult not to want to read too much into "Inside," and project my own ideas onto Burnham, but his palpable misery onscreen throughout most of this special clearly go beyond failing to cope with unexpected social isolation.  

And I'm sure that's part of the larger point.  Bo Burnham very eloquently voices a lot of worries I share about environmental collapse, internet addiction, social disintegration, and privacy concerns.  And I can't help but notice that he's one of an unfortunate number of Internet darlings who have hit burnout and battled self-destructive urges by their late twenties.  With "Inside,"Burhman has managed to turn himself into an avatar for all this Millennial anxiety that's been roiling for years now.  And how he gets this all across is so sharp and so poignant.  Put aside the songs, and Burnham still has about the best grasp of internet visual language that I've ever seen.  One skit mocks reaction videos by stacking reactions on reactions on reactions ad infinitum.  Another is a gaming livestream where the game in question is Burnham's own bleak quarantine existence - press A to sob uncontrollably.  And since Burnham DIYd so much of the production, in a single room, with very limited resources, the special often feels like the ultimate Youtuber video essay.

I've seen pretty strong warnings about triggering content going around in discussions of "Inside," and I want to echo them here.  However, the special was very cathartic for me, because it was such a relief to hear someone else affirm some of my own fears and paranoia about modern life.  The pandemic had a devastating effect on many people's mental health that we've only just begun to acknowledge, let alone try to deal with.  "Inside" feels self-obsessed and self-pitying at times, but it also cannily reflects a brutal reality for a significant segment of the population.  And while the show was made during the pandemic, the pandemic is only rarely invoked directly, allowing the central metaphor of being trapped inside to represent a broad range of existential themes.  

I'm going to go and explore Bo Burnham's back catalogue, and get myself more context for "Inside."  And rest assured, I will never mistake him for Marc Maron again.

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