Bo Burnham: Inside (2021)
★★★★★
What if you decided to return to preforming but the audience wasn’t there, how would you go about making a special, this is the question that Bo’s character is asking for you to grapple with when he returns at the beginning of Inside and it’s a question that is answered pretty quickly as we watch him explore how tough it is to make comedy at a time like this, a time where his character is not receiving instant gratification for the jokes that he is telling instead he is going to receive that praise after the special is recording an upload, which creates some weird dissonance for Bo as we watch him grapple with this thought even reject this offer.
Bo is sucked back into the comedy world that he left at the end of Make Happy and he is learning how to exist within this new comedy scene, it isn’t that he has rejected any lessons that he learned in the previous specials but more so that he has incorporated the lessons of the previous specials into this one, the songs seem more sincere, there is an act of trying from preformer Bo to explore more sincere topics with some jokes but not much, it feels like this was mainly made for him as he states at the beginning of this thing “I hope this special can do for you what it has done for me” this special more than the previous feels like an exploration of the themes of reality vs fiction, what is real in a time where performer and actor are living in the same room, a reoccurring theme that Bo is constantly exploring but this one takes it to its extreme revealing details about Bo’s real life under the guise of the character, though he reveals personal information it isn’t really anything to new, stuff he talks about in interviews and press runs for his movie.
Which is what makes the guise of revealing personal information so interesting, Bo the real person is attempting to manipulate us the audience's, to get us to connect to him, this is what the ending for me represents, as Bo is exits the house it is slowly revealed that the house is on a sound stage and more to that we pull back even further to reveal that Bo is watching this special that we are currently watching he smiles as if an evil mastermind has just completed his work, as if all the emotional beats in a essay that he wrote worked really well.
I have no doubt that for real Bo this special means a lot to him behind the scenes, to speculate I could see him having a copy of inside that he made just for himself that he can pop in an watch from time to time, I can see him watching footage from this time and understanding the real struggle that he went through to get certain shot, but for us the audience that struggle will always feel like an overdramatic storm towards a camera knocking over camera equipment that is in his way, just like he does in the special.
I do love all the songs that are presented but hesitate to talk about them for the because they have been broken down and taken apart and analyzed to death, though all the songs are important to the special and reveal something’s about the character that Bo is playing it’s towards the end of the special those last 4 or 5 songs that are important and crucial All Eyes on Me and Look Who’s Inside Again specifically, the former being an explorations of the ideas that Bo was trying to explore in the Kayne rant just more haunting and terrifying and sincere, the latter being an exploration of how stuck Bo might feel in life at this current moment as he is trapped inside doing nothing but reflecting on the past.
I think that thought is what makes the special so interesting with problematic it is clear that Bo has been reflecting on his past actions as he explored in this song, so this special needs yo explore the thought of what happens when a performer and actor are starting to melt together and more so what happens when they are stuck in the same place and doing nothing but reflecting on previous actions, how does that affect someone? We all pretty much know the answer to this one as a result of the pandemic.
If Words was an exploration of how Bo forms his comedy chops, What is an exploration of the struggle to make these art pieces he is preforming meaningful to both him and the audience Make Happy is exploration of trying to make others happy while not being entirely happy himself and deciding to retire than Inside is an exploration of how much of the world that Bo is presenting here is real or fake, what is the line that separates real Bo and fake Bo, Bo’s response is try to explore this thought and it will lead you in a circle read the art for what I put on the screen not from what you assume about me, it all comes full circle and back with we think we know you, but in this special it’s evilly disguised as welcome to the internet.
