Around 2015, Bo Burnham decided to stop touring because of anxiety-related issues, like having panic attacks onstage. Then in January of 2020, he decided to start touring again.
And then.
Now it’s 2021, and Inside is his latest special. It’s on Netflix.
If anyone could manage to pull off standup without an audience, it’s Bo Burnham. This isn’t quite that. It’s more sketch comedy, which he already tended toward in his acts. It’s full of songs & self-awareness like you’d expect, touching on things like Instagram, reaction videos, & Twitch culture, but it’s largely about the elephant in the (very small and lonely) room.
When future generations want to know what the bleakness of isolation felt like, this special captures it. And what it felt like is descending into such madness that you fuck your belly button with a water bottle. With the obligatory suicidal ideation, of course.
I don’t think it would have been healthy to watch this before the light at the other end of the tunnel came into view. If you’re living in a country where that could still be some way off, I might hold off on this one. For all its artifice, it gets real.
In a way tt’s really kind of a concept video to an albums worth of material. Thought it was a pretty impressive piece of performance art.
I watched the special during my vacation. Gotta admit, I kind of liked it, kind of hated it. It’s a pale imitation of the confessional comedy that Hannah Gadsby has been doing lately. And it reaaallllly leans on self-awareness as an excuse for its various sins, which includes a huge amount of eye-rolling 20-something whingeing.
What sins are you talking about specifically?
And I’m not sure it’s supposed to be confessional comedy, as much as relating to how a large segment of people dealt with the pandemic.
I think that applies more to Daniel Sloss’s X special, where he literally tells someone else’s story in an effort to get through to straight men.
In Bo Burnham’s own words, “Nothing is real / Art is a lie.” I very much doubt he spent the past year entirely isolated in that studio. He’s known for absorbing the trends on social media and turning them into songs. Isolation was the theme of the year, so that’s what the show is about. He’s better at artifice than confession.
I don’t think you have to be entirely isolated to feel the effects of isolation in general. But yeah, i had a discussion with a friend about how much of that special was real and how much was manufactured. Maybe it doesn’t matter? I’m not sure. I feel like he touched on something real, in either case.
I agree with that. All I’m saying is that the show is less about his personal reality than it is about our collective reality. I’m sure he relates to it as much as the rest of us, but it’s not confessional the way Mae Martin’s Feel Good show is, which is only as fictional as Philip K Dick’s A Scanner Darkly was. Shows like that speak personal truths. Shows like Inside capture universal truths. He did a great job with that part.
I still can’t get White Woman’s Instagram out of my head.
I hiked for many hours last weekend with “Thaaaat is how the world works…” stuck in my head on repeating loop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XWEVoI40sE
One year later.
Enjoyed watching some of the out-takes, alternate cuts, as well as some of the fun stuff that got cut from the original special.
I missed this thread when this came out initially, but I have found myself watching this special multiple times since it came out.
It is hard to state how brilliant the special is. A complete send up of “content” culture, as well as a deep descent into a very personal place, as well as mental health issues. All exacerbated by the pandemic. Incredibly cool how it is put together, all performed/directed/composed by Bo. As someone who had some significant problems with anxiety and panic episodes in 2020, this hit pretty hard.
“That Funny Feeling” is probably the song that sticks in my mind the most. Genius.
I also love Phoebe Bridger’s cover version as well.
My son walked in the other day and said, “Hey do you want to watch something? It’s about an hour.” And we sat down and watched this.
It’s kind of amazing how many seeds of other clever bits where there, and I was impressed with the creative editing choices. It really captures the feeling of going crazy because you shouldn’t go outside but you still can and also maybe you shouldn’t plus you don’t really have a creative outlet and maybe you should get something done but you don’t have to but you feel guilty anyway.