Bo Burnham's "Inside" and the Brain Scramble of Social Media
The comedian/songwriter's pandemic one-man-show is an opus to the modern psyche--and a reinvention of the comedy special.
This piece contains spoilers and references to Bo Burnham’s “Inside,” so please proceed accordingly (and go watch it if you haven’t seen it).
There’s a moment late in Bo Burnham’s “Inside” where he speaks so directly to my innermost thoughts that I almost tossed my laptop across the room. On “Hands Up”—a voice modulated Kanye-inspired track—Burnham posits himself as a reverend of digital apathy, beckoning you/himself to recognize the perils of the world (climate change, pandemic, drought) and simply stop giving a shit. In fact, during the song’s voice-modulated chorus crescendo, Burnham sings just that:
You say the ocean is rising/I don’t give a shit/You say the world is ending/Honey, it already did/You’re not gonna slow it/Heaven knows you tried/Got it? Good/Now get inside
The lyrics work in a two-fold manner here, referencing the “inside” that those privileged enough to quarantine endured this past year, and also the immersion into depression that can come from mainlining the world through our daily social media intake. Overwhelmed by consuming articles about civilization-ending climate change, biblical drought, mind-numbing wealth inequality, Kanye’s divorce and cats mic’d up eating chow all before coffee? Perhaps you feel compelled to do something and get involved, and yet, the depression you feel has paralyzed you into a frozen state. Sound familiar?
Burnham took a well-publicized five-year break from live performances in 2016 to nurture his mental health after experiencing panic attacks onstage, and knows the allure of succumbing to the apathy of depression. Why respond to the needs of the present, when you can simply lower the blinds, crawl into bed, and watch TikTok dance choreography while watching Netflix as ambient noise? He knows that being a “content creator” is both a lifeline for him and so many others seeking public validation through our screens. He even admits that, in January 2020, he had decided to return to doing live performances again. Until a “funny thing happened.”
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Very little art has been made directly addressing the psychological impact of this past year, about the sheer turmoil of the early days, weeks and months, when the foundation of the world blurred. The time we spent locked in our homes, or venturing out into the world for groceries or work, panic-stricken we might be next.
Burnham was determined to make something out of his isolation—and to stop himself from succumbing to self-professed suicidal ideations—he needed to make this work as a form of self-preservation. So he bought some cameras, basic lights and props, and sequestered himself to his guest house to make a special, mental health be damned.
Because of these limitations (COVID prevented a crew from working in his home), and his increasingly diminishing mental health, “Inside” straddles a line between self-assessment and sheer confusion, which is exactly what makes it genius. Burnham doesn’t have the answers. He’s contradictory and he knows it, but he also knows something else: you are too. He knows that you’ve mostly been absorbing the world through your blue screen portal, perhaps as a distraction, perhaps a lifeline to human connection.
On tracks like the plaintive “That Funny Feeling,” he acknowledges the sheer perplexity of making sense of shit in the physical world when we are inundated with contrast through our digital ones:
Full agoraphobic/Losing focus/Cover blown/A book on getting better hand-delivered by a drone
Burnham was an early beneficiary of Youtube, rising to popularity as a teen by posting his comedic songs on the then-burgeoning platform. He’s more-or-less grown up under the spotlight of online fame, where one is hyper-aware of public scrutiny, the impossible demands to be likable to a mass audience, and the relentless pressures to churn out “content” in a machine-like fashion. He wants the attention, because it has shaped his self-worth, and also shuns it because he knows that it is not the true sustenance to a balanced mind. He, like all of us, is caught in the push-and-pull of these platforms, in the schism of being public and private, and increasingly not knowing where that line resides. The pandemic just made those thoughts even more confusing.
Watching the special on repeat viewings, one recognizes the seemingly abrupt cuts and abbreviated song lengths as emblematic of our current collective psyche (gestures to me skimming articles, tapping through hundreds of “stories” and being unable to read a physical book). We don’t know how to focus, but is that a product of social media, or did the pandemic just expose the oatmeal brain that late capitalism creates? Or is it a bit of both? After all, America is still a place where you can order take-out from seemingly anywhere within minutes, yet insulin is a cost-prohibitive medicine. We evaded one fascist president, but the ideological shift into autocracy creeps close to our reality. The contrasts are staggering.
In the end—and the beginning and the middle—Burnham’s special is an opus to fragmentation. He is not a messiah for a generation, nor is he claiming to be. He is not speaking to every topic of political significance, nor is he claiming to be. He is simply an artist, trapped in his house, juggling with the privileges of his skin, background and status, trying to figure out how to make a positive impact on a world that feels increasingly—and literally is—on fire. Rather than inundate us with social media screeds, he took the long road and makes art; art fraught with self-consciousness, depression and anxiety; art that he needed for himself, in order to survive; art that is deeply, sometimes alarmingly personal and raw; art born of limitations, not diminished by them.
And we are all the better for it.