Bo Burnham Inside Meaning, Psychology of Bo Burnham's Inside, Psychoanalysis of Bo Burnham's Inside
Bo Burnham’s Inside is a Netflix special that he wrote,
filmed, starred in and directed during the pandemic. It is self-indulgent, self-obsessed, mildly
and disturbingly funny, and, in many ways a tellingly interpretive first take
on aspects of the shared experience that we engaged in alone or in very small
groups – living under shelter in place orders during the first year and half of
the pandemic.
The setting for this special is a small house that is oddly
proportioned. Spare and clean at the
beginning, but increasingly cluttered as the year and the special move along
(though the arc of the special is not a particularly linear one), the space is
revealed in greater and greater detail.
The house, as it were, is engaged in a strip tease.
Meanwhile, Burnham did, too.
He lost more and more clothes as he grew more and more hair and we were
treated to a burlesque style tease. The
irony of the title and the tease is that very little of Bo’s psychological
interior is exposed. We are more and
more aware of his surface as he focuses more and more on the ways that we are
engaged in looking at various surfaces while sheltering in place.
The special, then, feels like watching someone masturbate,
and the object of their fantasy is, oddly, themselves. Burnham is a very attractive man who is
incredibly talented. And he is, as he
says, a white man, and white men, as he says, have been incredibly self-indulgent
for a very long time. And then he pours
himself into indulging in himself.
He is a white man, looking in a mirror, finding himself
erotically attractive, and masturbating as an expression of his love for
himself. It is interesting, then, that
he uses only one mirror on the set. The
camera is the primary mirror – the primary lens through which he views himself –
and he points out that we join him in viewing himself through our screens. But there is a distance between him and
us. We are clearly in a different space
from him and we are disconnected from him.
Burnham lampoons commentators by lampooning himself
commentating on his own work. In a very
cleverly conceived and executed sketch, comments on his song, on his commentary
on his song, and on his commentary on his commentary. And despite the ways in which the commentary
clarifies what is going on in the song, there is derisive tone – as if his commentary
and, by extension, mine is not a way of creating a psychological space to
appreciate art, but a waste of time and a further sign of our self-involvement
(and my defensive tone may be an indication of how close to home this hit!).
There is a delightful song about girls on Instagram that is
accompanied by Bo posing with the objects and in the scenes that depict what he
is singing about being posted on Instagram and that “we” are looking at on
Instagram. And this sketch – this song –
is really mean. All the cutesy pictures
feel – fake. They depict a world that is
too cute to be true. And Burnham’s
attitude towards the girls is arch and demeaning.
But Bo has also been mean to Jeff Bezos, the internet (or
more precisely our being sucked into the internet), and commentators. We begin to realize that Burnham’s hatred it
not just directed at the world, but at himself.
He is an object of desire, and he has an arch and demeaning attitude
towards himself for that very thing.
So on some level, this special would feel very small and
unsatisfying. Who wants to sit and watch
someone hate themselves and everything around them? But on another level it is fascinating
precisely because this is what we have all done (or at least I have done) at
some point – or at many points – during the pandemic.
We have been afforded an extended period of time during
which, even if we are busy doing lots of things, as Burnham is here, we are in
our own company much more that we were used to being before the pandemic. We see Burnham thinking through things and we
see the product of that thought – he has been hard at work, as have we. But we have been isolated. We have been inside. Inside our homes – but also inside our own
minds. And what have we found?
Burnham’s answer is that we have found surfaces rather than
depth. Rather than spending a yearlong
retreat learning about the depths of our souls, we have wasted time with lots
of bright and shiny objects that have been brought to us by the internet. This may be texts from friends, it may be
goodies delivered by Amazon, it may be face timing with our parents (his
routine of FaceTiming with his parents is a classic adolescent/parent
interaction) and it may be reading or writing, oh I don’t know, blogs. But these things, at least as I watch
Burnham, have not enriched us, but have enhanced our sense that, in our
aloneness – in our isolation, we are pathetic.
Below this, as it were, when we peel back our pathetically
narrow lives, we discover that we are people who have what we do because we
have exploited others. We sit safely in
our homes while Jeff Bezos grows rich off of the people who sort our goods in
his warehouse and deliver them to our doorstep.
We are pathetic because, really, what do we have to complain
about? We are safe inside and everything
that want or need can be brought into this space, cluttering it up. And we are able to be safe inside because we
can command others to do our dirty work for us (as Bo commands his sock to sing
the words to his song even when the sock doesn’t want to). And we should, I think, be ashamed of the
privilege we enjoy.
As the stay in place orders around here come to a close – as
we are reopening – there is not the burst of joy, at least for me; which many
had predicted. Instead we had vaccinated
friends over – and compared notes on the year.
We had a family gathering to celebrate the reluctant son’s graduation –
and, though it was the first gathering like it in over two years, it also felt
like this is how things should be. There
was a kind of grudging normalcy in the quality of it rather than a joyous sense
of enthusiasm about our sharing space together (though we were excited about
the graduation). And going to the local
ballpark, where fans having suddenly multiplied and are parading around
unmasked, is terrifying.
Burnham, as this special limps to a conclusion, seems less
than excited about emerging from his refuge.
He states that he had just screwed up his courage to return to the stage
– a place he had been avoiding for five years as he was attacked by panic
attacks on it – when COVID hit. He seems
fearful here, though, less about performing – in fact, he seems to crave and
revel in it (imagining adoring fans) – than about emerging. From inside.
Perhaps from a place that, when it doesn’t seem empty, feels
shameful. And having the emptiness and
the shame exposed to himself is something that he cannot imagine not being seen
by others (it is the text of the special, after all – though there is the sense
that, in making this, it was an imaginary space he inhabited – that perhaps we
all did when we were inside), but now that we have been inside, we will bring
what we discovered there out into the open for all to see – and to scoff at –
as we have scoffed at ourselves – at our pettiness – when we were inside.
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