In his episode of Chef’s Table, famous Swedish chef Magnus Nilsson discusses his experience with the creative process -
“In any creative craft, what’s produced is a reflection of the person doing it, and everything that person has experienced, and what makes that person up.”
That sentiment, while here is in reference to food, seems an apt way to describe Inside, the recent special written, directed, and produced by Bo Burnham.
Inside is certainly a reflection of Burnham - both literally (he talks about being a white male comedian, his childhood mistakes, his 30th birthday) and metaphorically (the overarching theme of mental health, the characters he plays that may or may not be a reflection of his own feelings). While the contained nature of the special clearly feels like a product of the pandemic, we can also see it through the lens of someone trapped inside their own head. Burnham has less of his classic faux-egotistical energy here, and instead has created a special that “teeters on unfunny in its realism and careens towards becoming an exposition on depression during quarantine”.
All that to say, I liked Inside - but it also disappointed me because it wasn’t exactly the Bo Burnham I wanted to see.
To sidetrack for a bit - Burnham has proved himself to be one of the most skilled wordsmiths working in comedy today, and while Inside was impressive, it was also a slight change in form. His earlier songs were fast-paced and joke heavy, leaning more on technical ability than on sharp satirical targets. They were largely about low-hanging comedy fodder (think sexual references, fake machismo, and, unfortunately, a lot of offensive stuff) but a lot of it was always very intricate lyrically. In “Words, Words, Words” he sings,
A boy, a girl, a middle aged bitch / botox in the third person.
I give the perspective a switch and / Bo talks in the third person.
Or in “Rant”
They've been in love and they've been addicted
Who said they shouldn't? Benedict did
Cause in the holy land of the lord he's the holy landlord and dicks are evicted
There is a lot to break down in these lyrics - there’s his ability to set up and complete a joke within a short space, his usage of multiple meanings, his precision in finding the humor within the very sounds that make up the words (comedy rule dictates that hard consonants are funnier than soft ones). Clearly he has a strong grasp of language and how to use it to its fullest extent.
His later stuff was less joke-per-lyric heavy, but that was mostly because the jokes just had more buildup and sharper targets, like in this one from “Country Song”
I could sing in Mandarin
You'd still know I'm pandering
Huntin' deer and chasing trout
A Bud Light with the logo facing out
The humor is more spaced out but the jokes are still very much there. “A Bud Light with the logo facing out” is a very funny and very succinct way of critiquing both sponsorship culture and the attempt of rich celebrities to appear relatable to the “working class” crowd.
Yet much of Inside relies on list-based lyrics, which are undoubtedly clever but lack the full-sentence joke structure I’ve come to enjoy in Burnham’s past work. For example, in “White Woman’s Instagram” he sings:
Latte foam art, tiny pumpkins
Fuzzy, comfy socks
A coffee table made out of driftwood
A bobblehead of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
In “That Funny Feeling” he continues
The surgeon general's pop-up shop, Robert Iger's face
Discount Etsy agitprop, Bugles' take on race
It definitely nails certain aesthetics, and the mere fact that he has enough examples to fill a whole song is an impressive feat in itself. But it doesn’t have some of the aspects that I had been looking forward to hearing in (what I imagined to be) a classic Bo Burnham song. I found myself begrudgingly becoming one of those people who says things like, “Yeah the new special is good, but I really like his older stuff”.
But as Magnus Nilsson points out, the creation of art isn’t about me as a spectator, it’s about Bo Burnham. And not the old Bo Burnham - the one that is frozen in time as we rewatch his specials or listen to his music over and over. Inside is about Bo Burnham as a person, creating art that evolves and matures as he does and making a special that is heavily steeped in the present time. I don’t remember when I first found his work, but my entry into his canon was an arbitrary point in time. I like his old stuff because that was the stuff that made me a fan in the first place. I’m sure that someone listening to Inside would find that the Burnham character in what. or Make Happy is not the same one they first came to like either.
As an audience member, Bo Burnham doesn’t really owe me anything. It’s his art, and he should be creating the things that he wants to rather than trying to tailor it to his audience’s expectations. He even acknowledges that public opinion, while important to him, is hard to balance with his own artistic process. As he notes in “Can’t Handle This”
The truth is, my biggest problem's you
I want to please you
But I want to stay true to myself
I want to give you the night out that you deserve
But I want to say what I think
And not care what you think about it
He echoes this same sentiment in “Don’t Wanna Know”
How are you feeling?
Do you like the show?
Are you tired of it?
Never mind, I don’t wanna know
That is really the core of mine and Bo Burnham’s relationship. I have opinions, and he cares about them deeply but will continue singing the song regardless. Inside is everything he’s experienced, and what makes him up as a person. It’s where he is as an artist right now - not eleven years ago when he was making Words, Words, Words, or eight years ago when he was making what., or even four years ago when he was making Eighth Grade. This new Bo Burnham isn’t what I expected, but maybe there’s joy in that too.