Bo Burnham: Inside is a Netflix special released by comedian and musician Bo Burnham, shot and performed by himself over the course of the last year. It joins three other comedy specials by Burnham (what, Make Happy, and Words, Words, Words). What separates Inside from the other comedy specials is that you might turn it on because you want a laugh, but you come away from it feeling like you have some deep and personal reflection to do. Inside works as a chaotic amalgamation of ideas that come together to craft a narrative about staying inside, whether that be due to outside circumstances or due to mental health struggles.
Inside is more than one of Bo Burnham’s comedy specials though — it’s performance art. It manages to be so much at once: relatable, conflicting, unsettling, cathartic, and yes, even funny. It easily stands out as Burnham’s most vulnerable and down-to-earth piece of work to date. It isn’t just a commentary on life during the pandemic — the isolation, integration into the digital realm, and political unrest — but also Burnham’s own emotional journey of recovering from an anxiety disorder that prevented him from performing for years. Inside isn’t just a look at an adapted way of life in response to the pandemic, it’s an examination of how he’s been locking himself away from the world, yearning to re-enter as an artist who’s also terrified to be seen.
So, what exactly is Inside? It’s hard to explain. It’s songs he performs on his piano and guitar about a white woman’s Instagram or sexting; it’s interspersed narratives about him turning 30, his struggles with finishing the special, and his anxiety; it’s performance art where he imitates and criticizes internet culture. Inside has rough transitions and sharp cuts between scenes and ideas, but you never get a sense of whiplash like in some of his other specials. Burnham’s energy is a lot more subdued as well and the piece often features sincere and unscripted monologues from him.
What quickly stands out about Inside is Burnham’s creative use of lighting. He uses backlighting, bright lighting, black and white, spotlights, projections of galaxies and stars — essentially any type of lighting that furthers his storytelling and makes for a visually stunning piece. Burnham is the sole puppet master of the show, and he lets us see how he pulls the strings by having pedals at his feet that allow him to turn off and on lights, creating duplicate shadows of himself during harmonies, or by rotating a phone’s flashlight around himself to make the room seem like it’s spinning.
Burnham, as someone who’s been a musician on YouTube for the past 13 years, is well acquainted with internet culture by now, and it shines through in Inside. He’ll parody YouTube videos that overly rely on stock music, a green screen in the background, and an over enthusiastic thanks to the audience for watching the video — all while holding a knife. Then he’ll pivot and perform a livestream where he plays a video game (popularized by streaming sites like Twitch), but the video game is a day in his life during quarantine that also comments on his declining mental health.
The exploration of the internet’s role in the modern person’s life is further explored in the song, “Welcome to the Internet,” which, arguably, is one of the best songs in the special. Burnham uses piano plunks to create a semi-carnival, semi-villain theme song for the internet that captures both the friendly, well-known aspects as well as the darker corners that still exist. He speaks to the addictive, overwhelming, and all-consuming side to the internet as well, and how it’s become much more than anyone initially anticipated in lines like, “Could I interest you in everything all the time? / A little of everything all of the time / Apathy’s a tragedy, and boredom is a crime / Anything and everything all of the time.” His commentary on the internet is relatable even to an audience mostly raised with it, and it’s without the usual “technology is bad, fire is scary” rhetoric.
Overall, Inside manages to be a satisfying, entertaining, and poignant piece that intelligently summarizes this entire past year in one performance. It captures both a relatable, universal experience of the pandemic, the need to increasingly depend on the digital realm, and a deeply personal journey for Burnham and his mental health. Give it a watch and see what you take from it yourself.
Image: Netflix
Chandy is a biology major/chemistry minor who's been a staff writer, Arts editor, and Managing Editor at The Cascade. She began writing in elementary school when she produced Tamagotchi fanfiction to show her peers at school -- she now lives in fear that this may have been her creative peak.
