"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. "I was in a full body sweat, so I didn't hear most of that," Burnham said after the clip played. This sketch, like the "White Woman Instagram" song, shows one of Burnham's writing techniques of bringing a common Internet culture into a fictionalized bit. He, for example, it starts off with him rhyming carpool karaoke, which is a segment on James Corden's show, with Steve Aoki, who's a DJ. Later in Inside, Burnham thanks the audience for their support while holding them at knifepoint. WebBo Burnham: Inside (2021) 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. Bo Burnham: Inside He's almost claustrophobically surrounded by equipment. Netflix. Disclosure: Mathias Dpfner, CEO of Business Insider's parent company, Axel Springer, is a Netflix board member. Mid-song, a spotlight turns on Burnham and shows him completely naked as a voice sings: "Well, well, look who's inside again. 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. Self-awareness does not absolve anyone of anything, he says. In the worst case, depression can convince a person to end their life. HOLMES: So, as you'll hear there, on the one hand, there's a lot of sadness in what he's talking about there. The lead-in is Burnham thanking a nonexistent audience for being there with him for the last year. 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.. The songs from the special were released on streaming platforms on June 10, 2021. Burnham starts spiraling in a mental health crisis, mentioning suicidal ideation after lamenting his advance into his 30s. 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. 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. Might not help, but still, it couldn't hurt.". Yes, Bo Burnham posted a trailer via Twitter on April 28, 2021. I like this song, Burnham says, before pointing out the the lack of modern songs about labor exploitation. Review: Bo Burnham's 'Inside Then, the video keeps going past the runtime of the song and into that reaction itself. This is especially true for Patreon campaigns that give fans direct access to creators on platforms like Discord. The video is an hour-long edit of footage that was deleted from the making of Inside. Bo Burnham: Inside review this is a claustrophobic masterpiece. Bo Burnham He tries to talk into the microphone, giving his audience a one-year update. While talking to the audience during the opening section, Burnham takes a sip out of a water bottle. I have a lot of material from back then that I'm not proud of and I think is offensive and I think is not helpful. Were complicated. But then the music tells the audience that "he meant to play the track again" and that "art's still a lie, nothing's still real.". 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. This special spoke to me closer and clearer than Ive ever felt with another person. 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. You can stream "Inside" on Netflix now, and see our ranking of all 20 original songs from the special here. It's like the mental despair of the last year has turned into a comfort. Its a lyrically dense song with camerawork that speeds up with its rhythm. Now we've come full circle from the start of the special, when Burnham sang about how he's been depressed and decided to try just getting up, sitting down, and going back to work. You know, as silly as that one is, some of the other ones are more sedate. But now Burnham is showing us the clutter of the room where "Inside" was filmed. Burnham is an extraordinary actor, and "Inside" often feels like we're watching the intimate, real interior life of an artist. 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. '", "Robert's been a little depressed, no!" It's a hint at the promised future; the possibility of once again being able to go outside and feel sunlight again. I don't think it's perfectly morally defendable.". ", 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.". He points it at himself as he sways, singing again: Get your fuckin hands up / Get on out of your seat / All eyes on me, all eyes on me.. Released on May 30, 2021, Bo Burnham wrote, recorded, directed, and produced Inside while in lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. So he has, for example, a song in which he adopts the persona of a kind of horror movie carnival barker, you might call it, who is trying to sell people the internet. All rights reserved. and concludes that if it's mean, it's not funny. Bo Burnham Entertainment correspondent Kim Renfro ranked them in ascending order of greatness. Got it? The penultimate song "All Eyes on Me" makes for a particularly powerful moment. Relieved to be done? It's a hint at the promised future; the possibility of once again being able to go outside and feel sunlight again. BO BURNHAM: (Singing) If you'd have told me a year ago that I'd be locked inside of my home, I would have told you a year ago, interesting, now leave me alone. MARTIN: This special is titled, appropriately enough, "Inside," and it is streaming on Netflix now. "They say it's like the 'me' generation. On the simplest level, Inside is the story of a comic struggling to make a funny show during quarantine and gradually losing his mind. Doona! Bo Burnhams latest Netflix special, Inside, is a solo venture about the comedian and filmmakers difficult experience in quarantine thats earned enthusiastic critical acclaim. The clean, tidy interior that first connected "Inside" with "Make Happy" is gone in its place is a mess-riddled space. Or DM a girl and groom her, do a Zoomer, find a tumor in her HOLMES: And this is what the chorus of that song sounds like. The song begins with a fade in from back, the shot painfully close to Burnhams face as he looks off to the side. 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.". Went out to look for a reason to hide again. Depression acts like an outside force, one that is rather adept at convincing our minds to simply stay in bed, to not care, and to not try anymore. Burnham is also the main character in the game, a character who is seen moving mechanically around a room. And he's done virtually no press about it. Burnham quickly shifts from the song to a reaction video of the song itself in the style of a YouTuber or Twitch streamer. Bo Burnham Apathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime. 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. Web9/10. Audiences who might not read a 1956 essay by researchers about news anchors still see much of the same discussion in Inside. In Inside, Burnham confronts parasocial relationships in his most direct way yet. The special was nominated for six Emmy Awards in 2021, of which it won three: Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special, Outstanding Directing for a Variety Special, and Outstanding Music Direction. newsletter, On Parasocial Relationships and the Boundaries of Celebrity, Bo Burnham and the Trap of Parasocial Self-Awareness.. 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. The first half is dominated by sharp, silly satires of the moment, like a visually precise and hilarious song about social media vanity, White Womans Instagram, and a commercial for a woke brand consultant. Because there's also a little bit Bo Burnham the character in this almost. At the forefront of this shift has been Bo Burnham, one of YouTubes earliest stars, who went on to make his own innovative specials with satirical songs backed by theatrical lighting and disembodied voices. 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. 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"). Relieved to be done? It's an instinct that I have where I need everything that I write to have some deeper meaning or something, but it's a stupid song and it doesn't really mean anything, and it's pretty unlikable that I feel this desperate need to be seen as intelligent.". 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.