Performing Vulnerability in Bo Burnham’s 'Inside'

Inside has broadly been viewed as an entirely novel form of media, refusing to fit neatly into the traditional categories of film or comedy. Whilst it’s been held in high regard as one of the first feature-length pieces of entertainment to explore the state of the human psyche fractured by the last year of quarantine, it never explicitly addresses the ‘event’ (or, rather, complete reality shift) of the pandemic itself. What’s more interesting, to me, is the way that it can be viewed completely outside of this context, and remain entirely salient to our current moment. Inside’s innovation is felt not only in the exploration of the anxious isolation of the COVID social landscape but in Burnham’s understanding of the fraught spirits of those that have come of age through the dimensions of a screen in the precarious age of late-stage capitalism.

Though trapped within the physical confines of a singular room, ‘Inside’ witnesses Burnham undertaking the strenuous task of performing to an audience who we are made aware to be at once present and absent. This audience, of course, is us- the presence behind the screen that remains long after the camera cuts to black and we are confronted by our own gormless reflection. For Bo, however, this occupancy is invisible, constantly felt but never actualized. At times, like prior Netflix specials, he mimics the conventional stand-up format as he stands alone with a microphone, speaking to an imagined congregation. At others, he is all too aware of the internet's place in reinventing the medium, satirizing the realm of YouTube commentary through a self-conscious cycle of criticism. The pattern makes for uncomfortable viewing, Burnham’s analysis begins as an innocent satirisation of this new media format but swiftly spirals into overbearing absurdity. As we’re faced with a multitude of Bo’s, each one critiquing the last, the conventions of online entertainment are inverted. The production of this public self, something usually so intricately choreographed we’re led to believe it's not acting at all, is transformed into a claustrophobic state of vulnerability. The Burnham we see at this moment, and at others, appears to bear the bleakness of his psychological reality, yet as each scene passes and a new version of the comedian appears, we’re reminded that this is a performance within itself.

The ever-shifting position of the self is pivotal to Inside. In the very first track, Burnham apologizes to the audience for his five-year comedy hiatus, desperately attempting to win us back with the gift of his content. Whilst the distance between art and viewer is upheld, the illusion of total power for the creator seemingly starts to slip. Conversations surrounding the parasocial relationships forged by the internet tend to center on the viewer’s own projections of intimacy and the tension this can create, yet here we see what it’s like to be on the receiving end. The inherently transactional nature of content creation felt so strongly within the realm of the Extremely Online, creates a dilemma for any genuine displays of insecurity: to become another comedic amenity, exploited for a small crumb of validation, or to be pushed aside, refusing to sell despair and sacrificing the potential fortune found in the demand for relatability. This asks us to question what vulnerability and self-awareness truly account for in art. Particularly in something as close to our reality as a stand-up comedy about topics like mental illness, who is really benefiting? As much as this confessional style entertains us, it also validates us. It becomes a coping mechanism, both for the artists themselves and the audience watching at home, drawing both parties together under a false sense of closeness. They enter an equally co-dependent state of insecurity as Burnham becomes a reiteration of the ‘sad clown’ trope- renewed for self-deprecating Millenial/Gen-Z audiences as he reflects on our own, collective demise.

Content also momentarily lets us into the secret of Inside. Burnham sings: ‘Robert's been a little depressed’. Though a subtle shift, the differentiation between ‘Bo’ and Robert Burnham feels stark for those who’ve followed him throughout his career. Though parasocial relationships have featured in the comic’s work pretty consistently, this moment redefines his voice as an artist to be that of a character. If Robert is Bo’s reality, then this moment in Inside is him allowing the mask to slip. Though the same can’t be said for the special in its entirety as we are constantly transported in and out of awareness of Burnham’s creative control, here, the joke is not necessarily in what he says. Instead, it is the performance of these more vulnerable lines as something entirely authentic. Whilst we’re invited to laugh at Burnham’s anxiety, it becomes increasingly obvious that the joke is now on us too.

We are the ones who viewed this persona as a fully functioning reality, one that we could fabricate this intense connection with, and now he is desperately pretending to give us what we want. 

These instances are scattered throughout the one-and-a-half-hour running time. The same sentiment can be located in Turning 30, as the purple-blue hues of stage lighting are suddenly dropped in favor of a bare bulb, with Bo (or, currently, Robert) in his underwear, nervously iterating that ‘I just wanna say that, for the record, um, that I do not want to kill myself, okay?’. It is also felt in the comedian’s closing moments as he openly begins to weep. The tears of the latter fall within Inside’s great act of performed sincerity, as fans and critics alike have picked up on this moment, debating the scene's place in Robert’s reality. 

In the former, the audio is taken from another, well-shot, professional seeming clip. This swiftly reunites us with Bo ‘the clown’. The lines of authenticity are, again, blurred and all understanding of truth is lost.

Something interesting about the response to these scenes, rather than the clear-cut jokes about self-loathing and identity politics, is the immediate question plaguing casual watchers and self-confessed stans alike: is Bo Burnham okay? Whilst an empathetic response to someone’s obvious display of emotional pain, the irony of this in regard to Inside feels lost on many. The societal issues he grapples with are those we are confronted by every day, and to be alarmed by someone addressing them should be cause for concern. To individualize these issues as a symptom of Burnham’s pain alone only works to amplify his prior allusions to collectively numbed, parasocial relationship dynamics. We will never truly know Bo Burnham, this special doesn’t change that, but we do know the social issues that led him here, and they’re what we should be focusing on.

Rewatching the special a few weeks on, the sense of mania generated by Welcome to the Internet reads like foreshadowing. On the other end of the spectrum to the overly concerned fans, it took a matter of days for Inside to become part of a more consumable world. Just as the special itself shifts focus away from Burnham’s own mental state as the way we both consume media and create online identities fall into focus, each song has now been broken down into bite-size chunks for TikTok. This rapid transformation from feature-length special into thirty-second audio has already allowed Inside to take on a multitude of lives. It has at once become a provocative piece of cinema, igniting discourse from fans and critics from opposite ends of the parasocial spectrum, and something vacant and malleable, entirely devoid of its meaning. It is in this duality that it proves to be a lasting experiment that lives beyond its run time, continually reiterating Burnham’s exploration of what it means to exist online.

Within all of this, however, it must be said that the performance of something does not invalidate its existence. Bo’s staging of anxiety does not make Robert’s struggle any less real. There’s an element of his exhibitionism during isolation that feels reminiscent of my own feelings toward the last year. As Burnham was exploring how it feels to perform to a crowd that was no longer present, we were attempting to navigate a life that was seemingly held on pause. When faced with the all-consuming uncertainty of the early stages of quarantine, daily tasks often felt futile, as if we were acting out the screenplay of our ordinary lives. Whilst, in this case, this performance results in a finished, consumable product, our own performances are there to simply keep us afloat. 

Just as its more personal moments seek to unveil the claustrophobia of enthusiastic viewership, when speaking on society more broadly, Inside makes a point to place endemic passivity into full view. Though Burnham, when undertaking the voice of the Internet itself, sings that ‘apathy’s a tragedy and boredom is a crime’, both inside and its reception highlight that we have been conditioned into feeling nothing and everything all at once. It is in this that Inside explores the paradox of growing up online across its entirety. The film becomes a liminal space in which we feel at once transported to and confined within, as Burnham performs our uneasiness of self and situation back to us through distorted reality.