Bo Burnham’s Inside: Return of the Prodigal Art-Vlogger
What being trapped indoors does to artists.
Two thoughts pervaded my viewing of Bo Burnham’s unique Netflix special about losing his mind stuck in a small apartment for a year:
Bo Burnham is incredibly hot with long hair and a beard, and
This is basically an Endless Jess video.
In a way that’s no surprise—at the time Jess was making artistic youtube vlogs, he wanted to be doing it on stage, specifically citing Burnham as the closest to what his stage show would be. Nevertheless, it was shocking to see how much the tonality and compositional sense of Burnham’s special ended up resembling Jess’, just as soon as Burnham was trapped on his room for a prolonged period as Jess had been. The biggest difference between them is how Bo uses his stage experience and equipment to arrive at his tone instead of collectibles and costumes (though there are plenty of costumes in certain parts and, just as emotionally as Jess ever did it, one is a birthday suit.)
Bo Burnham started as a youtuber in his teens, singing and playing piano in his room, and was recognized for his talent almost immediately. He took to the stage making intricately detailed and perfectionist stage specials at the kind of young age that forces people to call someone a genius; and that praise and pressure bled straight back into his writing. He was always the kind of artist who seemed to battle with intense emotions about basically everything, and who needed to find a way to perfectly encapsulate those impressions to communicate them to anyone at all—but most hopefully, to everyone within the limits of accessible viewership. His earlier specials bled with the need to prove himself, most especially to himself, as capable of living up to his expectations.
My first thought seeing Burnham’s face in Inside was, “what the hell? Bo Burnham looks like a man now.” To be clear, Bo Burnham is one year older than me, and neither of us started showing any age until recently—but I think Burnham’s career has hit him a lot harder. There are surreal moments during Inside where sentiments and camera angles seem like stuff straight out of Insomnia Analysis—my own series of long-form artistic vlogs which had been heavily inspired by Endless Jess in the first place, and where I also had a beard and looked much older. But before I go sounding like I’m calling Bo derivative, I was incredibly happy to see someone doing what I had been trying to do at the highest level I could imagine doing it. I wouldn’t know what to do with any of that awesome equipment even if I had it, and I certainly cant write a hit song. I think Inside could be taken as a great no-context art film about a stage performer stuck in his room for a year; which it is. My favorite part is having no idea how much the story is or isn’t fictional.
More affirming than the artistic reflection of my past, though, was the simple realization that this is just what being stuck inside does to people. Like, obviously not everyone is making videos about it, but the reason there is an audience for the content is that it reflects relatable emotions. When Jess and I were stuck in our rooms, much of our hardcore viewership was similarly stuck in their rooms; and Bo only got stuck there because basically everyone did. Ironically, I am not one of those people—entering a suddenly relatable world full of scared people losing their minds indoors helped me to feel the need to go out and meet people to help them deal with a reality Ive gotten used to but wouldn’t wish on anyone.
Inside is a great special, and Bo Burnham is a definite genius of his craft. I hope he gets to do it on stage again soon because he looks really sad in his room and I want to protecc.
I´d love to see some sort of collaboration between the PCP circles and Bo - it does seem that there is a definite crossover in artistic sensibilities.
He did speak about his on stage panic attacks about some of the interviews he did for his directorial debut.
The strongest thought of many I had during the special was your idea of (not) pushing buttons. The creators of our generation see what extreme success leads to - exploitation of other people and extreme (self)scrutiny that could only be avoided by extreme privacy.
On the other hand, there is no survival without some success - but the vision of its extremes puts a damper on any ambition in forms of extreme selfconciousness and a shaming culture.
A little bit of everything all of the time shows us not only our concious failings, but also our various levels of privilege and discrimination and demands excellence in absolutely EVERYTHING we attempt, raising our own standards to absurd levels unconciously most of the time, and crushingly, when our selfloathing rises to the surface of our emotion.
That is, if someone falls on the more sincere part of the spectrum, the other being a scumbag who feels FUCK IT, FUCK EVERYONE not ironically and is just playing the game for their own benefit.
At times, I felt his special to be trivial and derivative of the "everybody is depressed, haha kill yourself please dab the irony out" internet meme zeitgeist. Yet, I have to remind myself that that is far from the regular human experience.
I am at the same time intrigued and horrified by the idea of showing this special to my conservative parents.
It might finally be able to explain me, how I feel and how a room gets real messy real quick.
On the other hand, I don´t know if I would like the me they would discover.