By Woodlief McCabe ’23
Staff Writer
Content Warning: this article mentions suicide.
On May 30, Netflix released “Inside,” Bo Burnham’s first comedy special since 2016. Burnham has broken his performance hiatus with a special unlike any other, embracing the context of life in a pandemic by confining its production to just one room.
“Inside” is familiar. Fans of Burnham will recognize recurring themes, like his catchy piano instrumentals with pointed, introspective lyrics. To new viewers, though, this special still captures a common psychological experience. Burnham has found a way to articulate the cocktail of loss, fear, apathy and eagerness overwhelming a generation raised not just alongside but intertwined with the internet. He weaves comedy with existentialism and depression. “Inside” asks the question: At what point does a Netflix special become performance art, and can we call this a comedy when it ends with a disclaimer for suicide prevention? Burnham has continued his exploration of his place and his privilege in a new, intensely personal setting.
Bo Burnham’s style of comedy could be described as an intersection of surrealist comedy, anti-comedy and blue/black comedy, using jokes about controversial or unexpected topics to evoke a reaction from his audience. His comedy has also long dealt with subjects like white supremacy, racism, religion and homophobia, and has examined what his position of privilege as a white man means for his comedy.
At 30, Burnham is feeling the effects of the permanence of the internet. People who evade repercussions for their actions in real life are unmasked with their internet history, yet the tangible consequences vary. As a straight white man, accountability neither has nor will be given to Burnham generously, and he knows this. One song in this special has a chorus kicking off with an energetic “I’m problematic!” He references parts of his past acts, singing, “I wrote offensive shit, and I said it,” and asks several times over the course of the song, “isn’t anybody gonna hold me accountable?” The upbeat music, shots of his bare chest, and the sweaty elliptical bike choreography create a curious clash against the lyrical content. He sings, “Father, please forgive me,” and poses himself against a light projection in the shape of a cross. Never one to miss an opportunity for irony, Burnham’s self-crucifixion is with a spotlight. A self-proclaimed atheist, Burnham isn’t speaking to God, but rather the audience that has bestowed on him success and appreciation without acknowledging his faults. The imagery seems to mock an earnest apology, using sex appeal as a distraction from the song’s layered meaning. He wants us to consider that the emphasis we put on labelling celebrities “problematic” isn’t working the way we think it is, because he’s been problematic, and he keeps making money.
“Inside” is unlike any traditional comedy special. We move from shots of Burnham lying apathetic on the floor to a fully lit music video about sexting. The editing feels abrupt, like scrolling through someone’s “finsta,” or private Instagram account. He goes from depression to smooth jazz without warning.
Burnham’s work has long dealt with the internet and its impact on him and our culture. He takes what we feel but cannot articulate and creates something tangible. “Inside” is a roadmap and an exhibition of the fallout of the internet generation. He takes on a carnival barker persona in the song “Welcome to the Internet,” which includes an ever-faster repetition of the phrase “Can I interest you in everything all of the time, a little bit of everything all of the time?” Burnham is tired, and so are we.
The reality of the internet is it is overwhelming. We are expected to consume every type of media and form opinions on all of it. Certain aspects of our lives exist solely on the internet. What happens when we get everything all of the time, even when we were too young to have a say in any of it? Burnham posits, from the floor of his room, “maybe allowing giant digital media corporations to exploit the neurochemical drama of our children for profit … was a bad call by us.” We are facing the effects of being the technology generation without our consent. His “Welcome to the Internet” persona reminds us digital media and devices are working just as they were designed. We feel lost, betrayed by the people who gave us the internet and told us we could do anything we want. When we saw the world was overwhelmed with injustice and pollution, we believed we could do something about it. After all, we were promised endless possibilities. As it becomes clearer to us that the majority of these issues are caused by systemic oppression and the actions of a handful of excessively wealthy individuals and corporations, we feel both obligated and powerless against the entire world.
Throughout the pandemic, media surrounding apocalypses and the end of the world have returned to the cultural consciousness, and Burnham’s softly sung “twenty-thousand years of this, seven more to go” quickly gets to the heart of a feeling so many of us have been unable to articulate.
The structure of this special gives us the content we crave at the same time as it tries to show us how the content is getting produced. At times, it feels like we are invading Burnham’s privacy. As he makes eclectic content about sexting, capitalism, Jeff Bezos, the way white people see social movements through the “myopic lens of [their] own self-actualization” and just feeling like shit all the time, a narrative unfolds about more than just the pandemic, and more than just Bo Burnham himself. He has spent his entire adult life with an identity tied to the confines of the internet and its culture, and in “Inside,” he synthesizes multi-generational existentialism in under 90 minutes.