The Nu-Normal #08: The Bright (In)Side
An overture to Bo Burnham's latest Netflix special.
As a stubborn and often recalcitrant millennial, I’m typically always playing catch-up with online culture. Picture that Abe Simpson, “Old Man Yells At Cloud” meme and that’s essentially where my brain is at for most hours of the day. Without essential explainers like YouTube’s Sarah Z or the stellar Garbage Day newsletter by Ryan Broderick, I’d be well and truly stuck in a time vortex at the End of History. Fortunately, I have my very well plugged-in fiancée to thank for introducing me to actor, comedian, writer, director, and musician Bo Burnham.
Unlike me, however, Burnham has had no problem immersing himself in online culture. For the last fifteen years, Burnham’s music and comedy skits have traversed the digital realms of YouTube, Vine (RIP), and, more recently, TikTok to a rabid and devoted fanbase.
At only 30 years old, Burnham has also racked up some fairly significant career accolades, including being the youngest person to record a half-hour comedy special with Comedy Central and over 300 million views on YouTube as of earlier this year. Released in 2018 to widespread critical acclaim, Burnham’s first feature film, Eighth Grade, earned him the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – First-Time Feature Film, not to mention his standout performance in 2020’s devastating Promising Young Woman. Suffice to say, the dude is talented.
Recorded in his home over several months during the COVID-19 pandemic without a crew or audience, Burnham’s latest Netflix comedy special, Inside, features a variety of songs and sketches about the process of day-to-day life stuck indoors. Over 87 captivating minutes, the viewer bears witness to the disintegration of Burham’s mental health, his increasingly slovenly appearance, and expressions of frustration, desire, creativity, depression and performativity.
Regardless of our physical location or personal experiences, I think it’s fair to argue that most people found the societal impact of the (still ongoing) global COVID-19 pandemic and 2020 lockdown to be a pretty miserable affair overall. A surface-level reading of Inside then would make the innocuous observation that it’s simply a comedy special about being stuck inside alone for months. And while this is certainly true enough, I think there’s probably more going on here.
In a review for The Guardian, Brian Logan described the film as a “claustrophobic masterpiece,” comparing it to a work of Gesamtkunstwerk: a word Wikipedia informs me means “total artwork,” with origins in 19th-century German opera and links to aesthetic movements like Dadaism. Accordingly, we can think of Gesamtkunstwerk as representing a piece of art that contains a holistic and comprehensive synthesis of forms and styles.
Now, while Inside—with musical performances, comedy skits, diaristic meta-commentary, along with varying combinations of comedy, drama, documentary, and theatre—definitely operates in this mode, what makes Burham’s special, well… special for me is his interrogation of profoundly dyschronic themes.
Consider the fifteenth track featured on Inside’s 54-minute soundtrack, cheekily titled “Welcome to the Internet”:
At its core, the track functions as a jaunty, uptempo, vaudeville-style ditty about the dangers and conflagrations of the Internet. And yet, underneath the jokes about unsolicited feet pics and pasta strainer aficionados, graphic beheadings and Harry Potter hentai, time and our usage of it is the fundamental object in question here.
After six verses of increasingly chaotic content, Burham delivers this chorus:
“Could I interest you in everything all of the time?/
A little bit of everything all of the time.
Apathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime/
Anything and everything all of the time.
Could I interest you in everything all of the time?/
A little bit of everything all of the time.
Apathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime/
Anything and everything all of the time.”
Even more tellingly, after this use of rhyme and rhetorical epistrophe, the bridge moves to Burnham speaking directly to the character of a young, impressionable, always-online child, before hitting us with this:
“Your time is now, your inside’s out/
Honey, how you grew.
And if we stick together/
Who knows what we'll do?
It was always the plan to put the world in your hand.”
The problem with the Internet isn’t that it’s widely unregulated and a glut of information devoid of any central purpose or overriding authority. It’s a problem because it operates as a distraction from reality with an explicit profit motive; a vast online realm that acts as an algorithmically-gameified timesink, rapaciously absorbing attention from anyone and everyone who gets sucked in.
And look, Burnham should know, he’s been doing this long enough. But that’s what makes the track so interesting and engaging. The meta-humour of the song’s lyrics acknowledge its own function as an inherent form of distraction: for us right now in an ephemeral present, but also for Burnham, as a creative outlet to distract him from the crushing anxiety and loneliness of lockdown.
While the performances in Inside differ widely in style and form, with glistening, operatic pop (“All Eyes On Me”; “Sexting”; “FaceTime with My Mom (Tonight)”; “White Woman’s Instagram”), ‘80s post-punk synthscapes (“Problematic”; “Bezos I”; “Bezos II”; “Content”), and humourous educational ditties (“How the World Works”; “Unpaid Intern”), my favourite composition in the film is perhaps the most subdued and tonally distinct.
“That Funny Feeling” is a straightforward folk ballad, where Burnham’s plaintive voice and delicate acoustic instrumentation drives home a series of poignant reflections on life in this, the Year of Our Lord, 2021.
“Stunning 8K resolution meditation app/
In honor of the revolution, it’s half-off at the Gap.
Deadpool’s self-awareness, loving parents, harmless fun/
The backlash to the backlash to the thing that's just begun.”
As the song plays out over five aching minutes, Burnham’s earnest, observational humour is juxtaposed against pronounced feelings of irony, self-awareness and melancholy.
“The livе-action Lion King, the Pepsi Halftime Show/
Twenty-thousand years of this, seven more to go.
Carpool Karaoke, Steve Aoki, Logan Paul/
A gift shop at the gun range, a mass shooting at the mall.”
For all of its intricate wordplay and slick production, most of Inside feels very much like a performance. Which, of course, it is, with Burnham directly acknowledging this very point several times in the film’s diegesis.
Yet, I think what makes “That Funny Feeling” hit so hard is just how raw and true it feels to our present-day experience. There’s little comedic affect in Burnham’s delivery here, which I’m sure is wholly intentional, and much of the track’s emotional impact derives from listening to it intently and unpacking layers of double meaning in your own mind palace.
“That Funny Feeling” forces the listener to lift the burden of self, and for most of us, that’s something that will only get heavier as the world continues to spiral aimlessly towards existential oblivion.
“Total disassociation, fully out your mind/
Googling ‘derealization,’ hating what you find.
That unapparent summer air in early fall/
The quiet comprehending of the ending of it all.”
After watching Inside close to a month ago, I’ve been stewing on my thoughts regarding the special. It’s a fascinating take on the idea of a ‘one-man show’ and I do think it will stand the test of time as one of the most visceral, relatable, and culturally relevant depictions of 2020 and life in lockdown.
So, in summary, give it a go. Watch Inside and make up your own damn mind.
“Don’t be scared, don’t be shy/
Come on in, the water’s fine.”