Inside - The Work of Bo Burnham
By Hannah Schmidt-Rees
I will admit, Inside is one of my comfort pieces of content. It’s my constant go-to to listen to when I paint or do anything creative, and if I can’t think of anything to watch, you can guess it; Inside. It’s my go-to because of what I love about it. It’s a combination of comedy and raw and often familiar mental decline. It provides moments of tongue-in-cheek jokes and absurdity, with moments of uncomfortable honesty and reality.
After Make Happy in 2016, Burnham returns to comedy specials in 2021 with Inside. It’s release date in 2021 provides context before you even watch it, this is a special about COVID and lockdown. It’s created by Burnham all on his own, filmed in the months of lockdown in 2020 and 2021.
“Um, it’s not gonna be a normal special because there’s no audience, and there’s no crew. It’s just me and my camera, and you and your screen.”
Inside starts with your expectations. If you’re in the majority of the audience, you’re already familiar with Burnham’s work, and that gives you an impression of what to expect. And for the most part in the beginning of the special, it fulfills those expectations. Yes, there are subtle references to lockdown, but all in all, it’s a familiar start. Content provides an introduction, essentially a backstory for what’s to come. Comedy is essentially a follow on from Content, showing the transition from Burnham’s previous specials to the format of Inside. From an overly produced taped show with a live audience to an intimate look into Burnham’s home, alone while creating something that used to involve hundreds of people. Like I said, this is the transition from familiarity to the unexpected. It’s essentially like lulling you into a false sense of security before stripping down to the uncomfortable, and now you’re already invested so you can’t look away. Throughout the special, certain shots show the ‘behind the scenes’ process of creating the special, as well as personal interjections to provide context to Burnham’s inner monologue and personal thoughts. The editing is clunky and switches between different points in time. It’s awkward and unusually quiet, providing an almost voyeuristic view into things that we often don’t see as the viewer.
Burnham creates parodies of common tropes in online content, the need for constant opinions on anything and everything, the ignorance towards real issues in exchange for the next trend, the struggle of being someone who has their entire life available on the internet. These parodies are comedic yes, but attempts to jab the audience with the uncomfortable truth of it. 30 is about the existential fear when growing older, comparing yourself to others. Problematic is about the self-loathing when previous mistakes are broadcasted to the world. Bezos I and II is about the unending hold capitalism has on our society. Shit is kind of obvious, I think we can all relate to that, especially during lockdown. White Women’s Instagram is about how social media can assign unnecessarily deep meaning to things to seem more cultured or knowledgable than they really are, in between moments of personal honesty. So, a wide variety of topics are covered, most of them are unfortunately familiar to especially the younger generations.
Inside is essentially watching a man lose his mind while still providing content for you to consume. It’s essentially feeding the constant grinding gears of media creation, while showing the cost that’s often unseen. Burnham essentially forces you to witness his declining mental health, when you were expecting nothing different than his previous specials. He shows intimate and often uncomfortable insights into his own mind and the pitfalls of society, cushioned by familiar jokes. A clear comparison to this is Nanette by Hannah Gadsby, subverting expectations, making the audience uncomfortable with the destructive truth, and switching between familiar comedy and unexpected tension. In its own way, its uncomfortably voyeuristic, you feel like you’re watching something you shouldn’t, because as an audience, we’re not used to watching someone so intimately show the declining facets of their mental health and their lifestyle in an online forum. And that’s what’s good about Inside, it makes you think, it makes you relate, it makes you distressed.
“You say the oceans rising like I give a shit. You say the whole world’s ending, honey it already did”
But here I am, writing my opinion on the internet, trying to create ‘deep’ content for something that is making fun of adding societal depth to something that doesn’t need it. So, am I part of the problem? No idea, but here we are. All in all, watch Inside. It’s good.