Dissect - Dissecting INSIDE (Part 2)

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

Our song by song, scene by scene analysis of Bo Burnham's INSIDE continues with "Comedy" and "FaceTime With My Mom." Follow @dissectpodcast on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Spotify, this is Dissect, long-form musical analysis broken into short digestible episodes. This is part two of our seven-part series on Inside, a music comedy special shot and performed by Bo Burnham over the course of a very unusual year. I'm your host, Cole Kushner. Last time I Dissect, we examined the opening four minutes of Inside, which began with Bo walking into the same room he walked out of at the end of his last comedy special, make happy, symbolizing the end of what became a five-year hiatus from performance. Bo's return began with the song Content, performed in his room in front of a camera, the stage of the 21st century. It was here that he subtly acknowledged the circumstances of 2020 and his hiatus from performing. We then saw a montage of Bo setting up his lighting and recording equipment,

establishing the film as a poymion, a film in part about the creation of the film itself. We also saw what will become a recurring shot of Bo's camera, and through a slow zoom into itself by way of an unseen mirror, We were brought inside the camera's lens until the screen went completely dark. There's a subtle transition from this black screen to the blackness of Beau's room. We then hear footsteps as Bo makes his way

to the piano in the center of the room and sits down. He flips on a spotlight that shines on him as if he's performing on an actual stage in front of a live audience. He then begins singing Inside's next song, the subject of our episode today, comedy. The world is changing. The planet's here.

eaten up, what the fuck is going on? Rearranging, it's like everything happened all at once. Um, what the fuck is going on? Like all the songs on Inside, comedy is written and produced by Beau Burnham. He begins the song singing, The World is Changing, The Planet's Heating Up, What the Fuck is Going On? rearranging, it's like everything happened all at once. What the fuck is going on? For anyone who's lived through the past decade and 2020 specifically, these lines don't actually need much explanation. The vagueness of the lines allow them to apply to the entirety of events in recent

history, including, but certainly not limited to climate change, a global pandemic, social uprisings, rapid technological process, and a reality TV star president. We should also acknowledge that it isn't just 2020 that Bo is referring to here, as Beau had been expressing his feeling that the world is on fire for years. Here he is in 2018 surveying the state of the culture after Donald Trump was elected president. It's crazy. It's crazy times. But I get it. I get why it's crazy. When the shit happened November 2016, I was like, it's over. It's over. And what you might be seeing is like, it's over. You know, we have to tear down everything. We have to like, I was literally thinking like, okay, all the shows are canceled.

Like, there's no way I'm going to see another fucking talk show again in my life, let alone I saw twice as many, you know? So, like, there's way less culture tearing down than I expected. I think people are being very well behaved. It's actually happening. In comedy, Bo's repeated question of what the fuck is going on as a response to the state of the world could be a nod to Marvin Gay's classic song What's Going On, which also addressed the state of the world in the late 60s and early 70s,

which included recent incidents of police brutality, protests, and the view of the Vietnam War, only to ask what's going on. Bo of course punctuates his own What the Fuck is going on with pre-recorded canned laughter, which he triggers himself on his computer, drawing attention to the absurdity of performing in his room as if in front of an actual audience. The laughter is also a bit ironic, seeing how these opening lines actually feel pretty sincere. This sincerity is accentuated by the chords Bo is singing over on piano. The song is set in D minor, a key signature often associated with seriousness or melancholy, and features a chord progression constructed around a descending chromatic line,

which just means a sequence of notes that get lower and lower. And now let's hear this descending line inside Bose chords for comedy. This type of descending chord progression is very commonly used and emotional ballads, such as Jim Croce's Time in a Bottle, performed here by Julia Church. If I could save time in a bottle, Bo utilizing a minor key chord progression closely associated with ballads seems like an intentional move. While we understand this to be a comedy special, thus priming us to laugh at even the most tragic of statements, I do feel like Bo is seriously contemplating the condition of the world, and next what his role is in such a place.

The people rising in the streets, the war, the drought, the more I'm going to, the drought, the more I'm Look the more I see nothing to joke about. Is comedy over? Should I leave you alone? Because really who's going to go for joking at a time like this? Should I be joking at a time like this? I want to- Oh continues comedy singing.

The people rising in the streets, the war, the drought. The more I look, the more I see nothing to joke about. Is comedy over? Should I leave you alone? Because really who's going to go? for joking at a time like this. Should I be joking at a time like this? Again, these feel like legitimate concerns,

as Bo wonders aloud what purpose comedy serves in times of global crisis. And just like his recognition of the world's problems began years before 2020, Bo also has a history of attempting to reconcile being funny in a world littered with problems. Through a computerized voice addressing the audience before Bo took the stage, the opening moments of his 2016 special Make Happy examine this exact dynamic of comedy's role in times of tragedy. You are here because you want to laugh. And you want to forget about your problems.

But I cannot allow it. You should not laugh. You should not forget about your problems. The world is not funny. We are all dying. The world is not funny. 12% of the world's population does not have access to clean drinking water. clean drinking water.

The world is not funny. Guy Fieri owns two functioning restaurants. Five years and a laundry list of new global problems later, Bo is still clearly concerned about his role as a comedian in the world and thus questioning the need for the very special we're currently watching. And part of this concern seems influenced by Bo's belief that comedy and our constant desire for entertainment has actually contributed to the problems we face. I'll never get over that.

I'll never get over that it's don't. Donald Trump. I'm like, even the people like, yeah, yeah, I get it. Like, yeah, and like snowflakes and you don't like her and Hillary. It's Donald Trump. Like, you're on, you're on board with Donald Trump. Like, I, no, no, I'll take those arguments. Okay, yeah, yeah, maybe that should be less.

It's Donald, Donald Trump. It's crazy, it's crazy. It's crazy, it's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. And I blame. I'm comedy for 80% of it. I do.

Swear to God. Swear to God, he learned everything he needed to learn at the Comedy Central Roast. It's not a joke. Learned everything. Everything. It's funny. He won comedically. As comedy continues, so do Beau's questions about his role in a world that is already a parody of itself.

I want to help to leave this world better than I found it. And I fear that comedy won't help. And the fear is not unfounded. Should I stop trying to be funny? Should I give away my money? Beau sings, I want to help to leave this world better than I found it. And I fear that comedy won't help,

and the fear is not unfounded. In terms of taking Bo at his word in this song, which will very soon take a dramatic turn toward parody, these lines seem especially important. He tells us directly what he wants, to help improve the world, and what he fears, the fact that comedy, his trade, isn't a practical contribution.

It's here that we realize that the song comedy could be interpreted as Beau's version of an I-Want song. I-Want songs are a main feature in almost every American musical, including Broadway shows and Disney movies. John Kendrick, the author of the Encyclopedia of Musicals 101, says, quote, The main I-want song comes early in the first act, with one or more of the main characters, singing about the key motivating desire that will propel everyone, including the audience, through the remainder of the show. In many cases, these songs literally include the words I Want, I Wish, or I've Got to, unquote. Popular I Want songs include the Little Mermaids part of your world.

I want to see, want to see them dancing. Wouldn't it be lovely from My Fair Lady? All I want is a room somewhere far away from the cold night air. You and me, but mostly me from the Book of Mormon. And yes, Bo Burnham's comedy. Yes, I want to help to leave this world better than I found it. Beau's utilization of a classic I Want song shouldn't be all that surprising due to his background in theater, which he participated in throughout high school. I love theater.

Like that was my first love, really. And that's what I thought of my shows as. Because every other special that I'd seen were, we're, we're, we're, you know, we're, It's basically hours of material that are worked out in clubs, 15 minutes at a time, whatever. And then for the special, they put all these lights up and they do the special. And I was like, I want to do a show that you can't, you can't practice in a club. It makes no sense in a club. The whole meaning of the show is that it's in front of 1,200 people and it's on this sort of scale.

We'll observe more theater's influence on Inside as we get deeper into the film. But we can recognize here, in terms of plot devices, both seems to be using the traditional I Want song structure to help. establish his desire and his fear, the thing that stands in the way of his desire. He wants to help the world, and fears that comedy, specifically the comedy special he's currently making and we're currently watching, won't help at all. He immediately follows with a series of questions. Should I stop trying to be funny? Should I give away my money? No. It's here that Bose's I Want song begins to turn satirical, as he mocks and criticizes himself for not wanting to sacrifice his wealth, which in theory might be a more

practical approach to helping the greater good. We then see the first new shot of the song so far. Up until this point, it had been a single shot of Boe center frame in the room performing on his piano under the spotlight. After this line about his money, it cuts to a close-up of Bo still at the piano. His face shows satirical concern as he asks, what do I do? Again, while it's framed with satire, there's truth in the question. Bo has essentially talked himself into a corner. He wants to do the comedy special, but doesn't feel that comedy is a practical, to his desire of helping improve the world. And by his own admission, at least within the framework of this film,

he's also not willing to personally sacrifice much to contribute either. And it's here that the song turns to total satire, as Beau is suddenly enveloped in a bright white light as if God has suddenly entered the room. An ethereal voice then begins to sing. The world needs a wretch from a white guy like me who is healing the world with.

comedy. This section is a spoof of divine intervention. Bo, the rich white male celebrity, has found a way to center himself as God's prodigal son, a white savior, sent to fix the world with his divine gift of comedy, perhaps a cheeky play on Dante's divine comedy. In terms of narrative structure, this is Bo's call to action, a traditional plot device where the protagonist is invited on the journey that will directly resolve an external conflict.

In this case, the world is suffering, and Bo wants to help, so he's called by God to heal the world with his comedy, specifically to make the comedy special we're currently watching. And so now suddenly determined in his resolve, Bo's character takes a dramatic turn. God's blinding white light fades, and fittingly, the spotlight is back on Bo, our white savior. He looks directly into the camera with an overly grave look on his face, speaking to us with a performed seriousness in his voice. That's it. The world is so fucked up. Systematic oppression. income inequality, the other stuff. And there's only one thing that I can do about it

while being paid and being the center of attention. Beau's character here feels like a mockery of the kind of tone-deaf celebrity attempts at activism that often center the celebrity as much or more than the issue itself. These types of so-called philanthropic acts function more as marketing or positive PR hidden behind the guise of raising awareness. Bo also seems to be mocking his own special, and its importance as a practical means of combating things like systemic oppression and income inequality, making it clear, by way of irony, that that is not what the special is pretending to do at all. This becomes more clear as Bo gets up from his piano and performs the next section

of the song standing amidst a projection of a heavenly blue sky superimposed on the wall. Bo has answered God's call, and his standing up shows action and change, giving his new character a rhetorical sense of visual power. of saying that his comedy won't make a practical difference at all. He proves this with a joke. A Jew walks into a bar, which is a cliche setup for a joke based on Jewish stereotypes. But Bo's character is too progressive for a harmful punchline, so he says, and I've saved him a seat, which is of course not a joke at all, but simply a kind gesture. He then immediately pats himself on the back singing, that's healing the world with comedy. The absurdity of this

anti-joke without a punchline seems to highlight the absurdity that comedy can help heal the world. It also makes it funny. Bo's wholesome anti-joke feels true to the internet, where understanding irony and sincerity is near impossible. The line between funny and unfunny is in constant motion, creating a jumbled mess of signs and symbols until we don't know what we're supposed to laugh at. If there is a punchline to this joke,

it seems it would be the use of the word saved, perhaps a nod to Jesus saves, and Bo's white savior character, an intentionally ignorant, clumsy reference given that Jews do not believe Jesus to be the Messiah. From here, the song transforms into a full-fledged 1980s movie montage. We see Bo quote-unquote hard at work, devising a plan to heal the world while continuing to center himself, his admiral self-reflection, and his selfless, heroic willingness to use his privilege for good.

In stark contrast to the dark, shadowy lighting of comedy until this point, the majority of shots during this sequence are fittingly dominated by whites. Bo's wearing a plain white-collared shirt, the background is the solid white of his walls. He drinks from a white coffee cup, and he writes on a large whiteboard. I'm a special kind of white guy. I self-reflected and I want to be an agent of change. So I am going to use my privilege for the good. Very cool way to go. American white guys.

We've had the floor for at least 400 years. So maybe I should just shut the... I'm bored. I don't want to do that. Midway through this verse, Bo sings, American white guys. we've had the floor for at least 400 years, so maybe I should just shut the fuck up. Acknowledging the fact that since settlers arrived in the 1600s,

white men have dominated positions of power in the United States, both suggests that perhaps it's time guys like us take a back seat, that as we work to equalize opportunity and dismantle structural bias in our various institutions, guys who look like us should actually be listening to, supporting, and amplifying the historically disenfranchised groups directly affected by these biases. This idea of addition by self-subtraction is something that Bo has alluded to in past interviews. When asked directly about how we should hold people accountable for things like racism and sexism, while also allowing for space for people to heal and improve, Bo gave this response.

Yeah, I mean, the truth is like the person to give this answer is really not me. No, no, no, no, truly, truly, truly. Because like, the conversation that's happening right now that I do agree with is that there is, at once a shared experience and also a specific experience that people with my specific experience demographically tend to speak with a lot of authority in the moment and maybe they shouldn't so often but here I am in the lights. Bo also addressed this general idea of subtraction in a 2020 interview with Josh Horowitz. But yeah it's difficult. I don't know. It's a strange time and a strange way to engage with the world.

It's also, it's very tough to offer, when it feels just like the world is just drowning in opinion and drowning in commentary to feel like you're going to be additive when it feels like the most additive thing would actually be subtracting from it in some sort of way. After Beau sings the line, maybe I should just shut the fuck up. There's of course a long silence, after which Bo says, I'm bored and continues singing, I don't want to do that. While obviously a joke, there does seem to be some truth revealed here. During an appearance on the Zolgood podcast, Bo was asked about what motivates him creatively, and he talked about boredom and the associated feelings that come with it. I think the main deep motivating factor is that I am never as happy and fulfilled as when I'm making something that to me is interesting and challenging myself and feels like I'm never more fulfilled. I'm never more engaged.

I spend a lot of days when I'm not doing it. I feel really bored and guilty and I feel useless and I feel dark. And when I am making something, there isn't a better feeling for me other than like extremely emotional personal relationships with people like those moments. Other than like, you know, being with my girlfriend or being on my dog or laughing with my family or something like outside of that stuff like there's and it's its own thing like um that that is what motivates me is that like when i'm writing or when i'm doing something and it's going well there's there's nothing better in my life there's nothing more enjoyable in my entire life than that like

that is what motivates me is just pursuing that as we'll become more clear as inside progresses this seems to be one of the central tensions of the film that beau is conflicted between a need to create for his own mental health and his feeling that comedy isn't necessarily helpful to the actual issues we face. The verse then closes out with Bo continuing to mock himself as a white savior, singing, The Weight is Over, I'm White and I'm Here to Save the Day. Lord, help me channel Sandra Bullock in The Blindside. Released in 2009, The Blindside is one of the more recent films with a white savior narrative, which sociologists and author Matthew Huey described this way, quote,

A white savior film is often based on some supposedly true story. second and features a non-white group or person who experiences conflict and struggles with others that is particularly dangerous or threatening to their life and livelihood. Third, a white person, the Savior, enters the milieu and through their sacrifices as a teacher, mentor, lawyer, military hero, aspiring writer, or wannabe Native American warrior, is able to physically save or at least morally redeem the person or community of folks of color by the film's end, unquote. The Blindside joins a lengthy list.

of American films throughout history that present a white savior narrative, including movies like 1967's Up the Down Staircase, 1995's Dangerous Minds, 2007s Freedom Writers, and 2011's The Help. As Manny Fidel points out in his article for Insider, quote, no matter how black or multicultural a film is in its content, filmmakers would have us believe that white characters are the best vehicles for the story. Characters of color become far less important in their own stories. And yes, many white savior films are based on true stories, but they often either oversimplify race issues or flat out get things wrong, unquote. The Blindside specifically tells the story of Michael Orr, a black

teenager who overcame his impoverished upbringing and became an NFL player after being adopted by white parents, the mother played by Sandra Bullock. Well, based on a true story, the film was criticized for centering the white family's contributions to Orr's story, thus undermining his own intelligence, strength, and perseverance. Orr himself voiced criticism about his portrayal, saying that while his adopted parents did help him greatly, quote, I felt like the movie portrayed me as dumb instead of a kid who had never had consistent academic instruction and ended up thriving once he got it, unquote. Rather than emphasize the systems that restricted Orr, the film instead emphasized a white

family's role in his individual story. Bose wished to channel Sandra Bullock in the blindside thus continues to expose and parody his character's underlying motivations, an opportunist exploiting the plight of the disenfranchised for the self-serving optics of help. This underlying motivation and the relationship between Beau's character and the cinematic white saviour trope highlights an ongoing history of white people centering ourselves and the plight of others. More recent examples can be found in a disturbing trend most visible during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, where white influencers began using the protest as a backdrop for their social media photo shoots, exploiting the murders of

black individuals for content. Some influencers were caught standing in front of looted. stores, posing with protesters, and pretending to march. Perhaps the most infamous incident was the woman caught on film borrowing a drill from a worker repairing a vandalized storefront, posing for a picture as if she were helping, only to hop into a Mercedes SUV and drive away after the photo op was captured. While Mo doesn't explicitly reference these incidents, it feels like there's an app parallel between his character's self-serving exploitative tendencies and those influencers who saw opportunity in the tragedy, pain, and outrage of the historically disenfranchised, who saw the world's attention gravitate towards something and desired nothing more

than to stand in front of it. It's what happens when we're participating in an attention economy, when performance knows no boundaries, when the world is viewed only as a theatrical backdrop to one's digital presentation. As comedy continues into its bridge, Beau underscores the practical irrelevance of comedy in times of crisis with three specific examples. That's right after the break. Welcome back to dissect. Before the break we heard comedy's 80s inspired verse, wherein Bo Mocks's character's self-serving motivations as a white savior. This is followed by the song's bridge. If you wake up in a house that's full of smoke, don't panic, call me and I'll tell you a joke. If you see white men dressed in white cloaks,

don't panic, call me and I'll tell you a joke. Oh shit, should I be joking at a time like this? If you start to smell burning toast, you're having a stroke, or a stroke, or a joke, or a shit, In this bridge section, Bo gives three examples of life-threatening situations, beginning with a house full of smoke. A face value, it implies a house fire. But we suspect that Bo might also be implying a more universal fire, climate change. Recall that in comedy, we've already heard what feels like two specific references to global warming when he sung, the world is changing, the planet's heating up, and later, the war, the drought.

According to NASA, global climate change is predicted to alter precipitation and evaporation patterns around the world, leaning to wetter climates in some areas and drier in others. Areas that face increasingly severe droughts will also be at risk for more and larger fires. Also, as we mentioned earlier, in past interviews, Bo commonly used a metaphor of the country being on fire when assessing the general condition of the current cultural climate. And so Bo's reference to a house fire seems that one's personal and universal, literal and metaphoric. It's an especially relevant symbol given that the inside of a house is the only location of the film, and over the course of inside, the house seems to take on this dual symbolism.

It's Bo's house, his home, and it's the world, our home. The condition of the inside of his home reflects the inside of Bo, which has universal implications of what's inside all of us. And if our house is on fire, a joke doesn't seem to help in any practical sense. Bo then does something similar with his next example of seeing white men dressed in white cloaks, a reference to the Ku Klux Klan as a means of representing racial violence in America, the horrors of which date back to the country's inception. And once again, jokes offer nothing to someone being threatened by racial violence. Of course, the way Bo communicates the irrelevance of jokes

is through jokes about the irrelevance of jokes. And so he immediately questions the appropriateness of these jokes by asking, oh shit, should I be joking at a time like this, while looking directly into the camera. Again, there does seem to be sincerity in the question, and him looking directly into the camera makes it feel as if the question is shared, that perhaps we should be asking ourselves whether watching a comedy special is appropriate at a time like this, or if there might be something better we can be doing with our time. After a repetition of the refrain heard at the beginning

of the track, Boe launches into the final rendition of the song's chorus, with one important musical change. In this final section of the song, Bo utilizes a modulation, which is what is called when a piece of music changes keys. The song moves from the key of F major up a full step to G major. This specific kind of modulation, which is known as a step-up modulation,

is very common in pop songs, particularly those written in the 80s and 90s, which seems to be the era Bo is emulating in comedy. They most often occur at the end of the song to give the final performance of the chorus extra momentum and perceived climax, but the novelty and effectiveness of this type of modulation declined when it was overused to the point of becoming a cliche. Here's the Backstreet Boys' 1999 hit, I Want It That Way,

which makes use of a step-up modulation for its last chorus. Bo actually mocked this formulaic keychain directly in his parody country pop song, Pandering, from 2016's Make Happy. Y'all dumb motherfuckers want a key change, This parodied use of a cliché mandarin and emphatically pandering This parodied use of a cliche modulation might help clue us in on its function in comedy.

In the same way many pop songs are formulating sequences of lyrical and musical clichés to the point of disingenuity and hollowness, it seems both utilizing these very musical cliches is done to call more attention to the disingenuity of a celebrity white savior character. While they might be doing and saying all the right things, just like pop songs hit all the right notes and sing the right lyrics,

there's something noticeably disingenuous about their motives. The attention they receive is most often more important than the act themselves, just like generic pop songs are made to sell more than they are trying to express some felt truth or shared emotion. Now that we've reached the end of comedy, we realize that this entire song has centered Beau's character. We never once hear specific injustices he's supposedly combating. The closest thing was a spoken statement, income inequality, systemic oppression, the other stuff, which obviously points to the fact that this

character doesn't understand or care about the actual issues, but instead saw personal opportunity in the optics of helping. But for all the satire of comedy, the song and video does feel at least partially aimed at Bo himself in a very genuine way. After all, here Bo is making a comedy special that features no one but himself, a comedy special that will not directly address national or global issues in a practical way. Bo will also profit from this special by selling it to a multi-billion dollar corporation, not to mention the praise and attention

he'll receive from it as well. Despite his own self-awareness, is Bo that much different than the exaggerated character he's playing? In a film that largely examines performance, continuing Bo's career-long interest in the dynamic of audience and performer, camera, and subject, is fitting that Bo begins inside by questioning his own performance and his own motivations for making the very thing we're currently.

watching. Overall, comedy feels like one big cinematic subordinate phrase, letting us know up front by way of satire what this special is not attempting to do. Bo is not here pretending that this comedy special will heal the world. He's not pretending to have some golden answer or practical solution to the massive problems we're facing. And so if Bo wants us to understand what inside is not, we have to ask then, what is it? What's its purpose? After seemingly talking himself into a corner, why did Bo decide to go through with making the special? Well, he pretty much tells us directly in the next scene. After the closing moments of comedy,

the film cuts to a shot of blinds being open to let the outside daylight inside. We then see a shot of Bo sitting alongside his camera in front of a mirror. He holds a microphone and begins to talk to us directly. Hi, welcome to whatever this is. I've been working for the last couple months. testing this camera and testing lights and writing. And I've decided to try to make a new special for real.

It's not going to be a normal special because there's no audience and there's no crew. It's just me and my camera. And you and your screen the way that our Lord intended. Bo once again draws attention to the layered Poemonon aspect of the film, that is simultaneously a comedy special while also being about the process of making the very special we're watching. He then makes a direct reference to the dynamic of performer and audience, camera and screen, a central area of interest that Bo will examine throughout inside. We recall he's already drawn our attention to this dynamic a few times in the first 10 minutes

of the film, specifically the sequence in which we see Bo, the performer, sending up his camera in lights, interspersed with a shot of his camera zooming into itself until our screen becomes a black mirror, and we see ourselves in the reflection of our own screen. We'll talk a lot more about this audience performer camera screen dynamic later in the film, but I do think it's worth keeping in mind Bo's side of this dynamic, that while we're on the receiving end of his performance and thus feel a connection with him, Beau is completely alone in this process, performing only to a camera, performing to everyone and no one all at once.

He will then watch that performance, judge it, and edit himself in order to best present that performance to his audience. As Bo often mentions in interviews, this process has been democratized to essentially anyone who's active on social media. And as the internet and technology become more central in our lives, the lines between who we are and the performance of who we are blur to the point of simultaneity, where it gets hard to distinguish between the two. And it seems this topic is one that Bo is particularly interested in, specifically how we're feeling as a result of this dynamic.

And I was feeling like I had spent so much time riffing on the internet like in my head or out loud. And I was like, the better answer to this is just a portrait of someone feeling this thing. But the way it's made me feel about myself is like similar to what being a D-List celebrity did to it, which is like it turned. And that was my realization that like, oh, my experience, my anxieties as a D-List celebrity are actually shared by every kid in the country because the internet has democratized the stresses of being a low-level celebrity. which are the final answer your name as a sort of proper noun you know what I mean you have you have bow burnham but then you have bow burn them in the world you have a brand you are your own publicist

you walk through your experiences but you also float behind yourself like a camera following yourself through your own experiences you're you're sort of out of body all the time you're disassociated you're in a situation but you're already thinking of how that situation is going to be perceived when presented to the world digitally your anticipating the backlash to that perception, maybe even before you've even had the experience. It's that weird sort of hall of mirrors, strange meta thing that, you know, makes you not want to leave the house, makes you not want to ever open your mouth. And it makes you not embodied, not in yourself, not in your moment, which is very similar to anxiety, which is just, you know, objectifying

yourself, objectifying your own experience. Everything you do is a quantity to be sold and presented and thought about and attended to even after the fact. Yeah. Plan a moment to reminisce on that moment. It's crazy, you know, weird. And we just still have no idea. I mean, we're starting just now to see what being on your phone did to people like me that are 30. And I'm looking around and I see millennials and I'm like, oh, we're broken by being on our

phones and watching television our whole life, let alone what's going to happen to these people that have been on their phone since they were three years old. You know, we have to like, yeah, I think it's, I think it's scary. As Bo continues his monologue in the mirror, he reveals his underlying motive for making inside. And the whole special will be filmed in this room. And instead of being filmed in a single night, it will be filmed in however long it takes to finish. I hope you enjoy it. I hope this special can maybe do for you what it's done for me these last couple months,

which is to distract me from wanting to put a bullet into my head with a gun. So, yeah, thank you. Bo here reveals suicidal ideation and says that working on the special has helped distract him from those feelings. We can pair this admission with a few things we've heard in the special so far. In the opening track content, Bo sung, Robert's been a little depressed, and so today I'm just going to try getting up, sitting down, going back to work. Might not help, but still, it couldn't hurt. In an interview clip earlier, we also heard Bo say how when he's not creating or working on

something meaningful, he feels dark and anxious. So just 10 minutes into the film, Bo has been pretty direct about the personal motivations for making inside. But we also know he has genuine reservations about comedy's practical role during times I've global crisis, particularly around addressing race-related issues. And it's here we can listen to a few interview clips from 2018 to try to get a sense of how Bo might be thinking about the role of his work within the current social context. Here's Bo on the podcast, Team Human, responding to the host's framing of Bo's special

Make Happy. You talk a lot about, and people just hate this argument in this era of, you know, Black Lives Matter and Me Too and all. But you're basically saying, look, I am white and privileged and acknowledge. acknowledge that, but that doesn't mean I'm happy. You know, and that's really upsetting to people because it's like, well, wait a minute. You don't deserve not to be happy if you're white and privileged. Yeah, I have patience for that argument, though.

I understand that, not even patient. It sounds condescending. I understand that. I think that sort of infighting on the liberal side is just collateral damage from trying to seek justice in a world where it seems like justice is so inherently failing us. So I get that. You know what I mean? I get that there's like sort of messiness and a little bit of infighting in and the collateral damage in that is so small next to the actual crime that's been committed, which is a psycho is running the free world. Like a legitimate psychopath. So, so and I feel like the dangers we sort of falsely equivocalize or whatever the fucking verb is.

You know, a psychopath running the world with some college students overstating their opinions. Right. A little clunkily. So like, but I. I understand that. And I think there's a way to do both, hopefully, which is acknowledge these specific circumstances of people that have been disenfranchised and have not gotten a voice and specific pains that are fought that way. Well, also acknowledged, like, but we're also like, we all have parents that are dying, and we all love our pets and we're all, like, sad. And I do believe, you know, a lot of the most

significant experiences of the human condition are shared. Bo also talked about this topic in an interview with 92Y. I do believe that the most significant things, or some of the most significant things are shared. Love, grief, family, pain. What I don't want to do is I, and again, this is what I don't want. I'm like, please see this as like open. I'm not really addressing necessarily just you, but anyone that could interpret an answer as wrong.

It's also, it's crazy the amount of subordinate phrases you need to put before a statement nowadays. But it might be right. That might be right because the culture's on fire. I get it. I really do get it. I'm saying like, the worst fucking thing happened in the world 18 months ago that set the country on fire.

So I get that we went like, we need to like tear our culture down and look at every piece of it. and go, how the fuck did it add up to this? But I will say that, like, what I don't want, what I seek out in art, I'm just going to keep it to art for me, for my sake. I personally connect so much with pieces of art

and things that I don't demographically align with. That is a really powerful experience for me and, like, a huge engine for empathy and change. And it's beautiful, too, to see myself in someone that on the surface is nothing like me, which is something like this story. And I don't want that to go. I don't want the belief to be that we can never understand each other.

We just, you know, there of course are certain circumstances and life experiences that cannot be understood, and we need to listen to each other. And specific groups need to step back and listen to other groups. But of course, there's a shared humanity that we can all talk about, right? right like I'm sorry you know what I mean like we all we all have parents that are like dying we all we're all trying to love each other we're all like hearts in chests and brains and heads while comedy and its parody of the white savor complex seems to make clear what inside will not be attempting to do I believe these interview clips help us understand what boat is attempting to do

tap into this universal shared humanity through art specifically the feelings of anxiety and depression while living amidst so many enormous, simultaneous cultural and global events, and the resulting fear, helplessness, and dread we feel as individuals attempting to confront these problems on our own. And if inside, if Beau's comedy is to offer any practical help at all, which is what Bo seems to allude to in his mirror monologue, is that this feeling is shared, that those that identify what the feelings Bo is expressing can know that they're not alone, which is exactly what helped Bo with his own anxiety. And it was the thing that, oh, this very specific circumstance of my life, which is the specific stresses of being a D-list celebrity, has now been democratized and given to everybody.

Everybody is a brand. Everybody is their own publicist. Everybody is worrying about their legacy. Everyone's being their own biographer. It's horrifying. But it was the two sides of a coin that one obliterated me. One was my deepest fear, and one actually saved my life, which was, I am not unique and I'm not alone. You know, I was worried, of course, what I'm feeling is because I'm so, I'm so deep, I'm so smart, I'm in such a specific, no, really.

But no, it's not true. I'm kind of, my stresses are very, very common and shared by sort of everybody. And it led to this movie, which is that, you know what, if I'm being honest with me, my experience in totality is equal to or less than that of a regular 13-year-old girl. And I believe that. I believe that. I do believe that now, and that helps. So that's back to your question of like, the problem with anxiety, and it can bleed into other sort of mental problems as well, is that like, dispositionally with people, it tends to select people that are very, want to be a little closed off and singular. And the feeling of anxiety itself, I've described it as like, it's like riding a bull, and the bull is your nervous system, and you're just trying to hold on.

and being in the world, everyone else is an equestrian to you, and you're the only one that has to struggle with this thing, and it just isn't true. And I think the part some anxious people, myself included, don't want to believe is you don't actually want to believe that your experience is shared. You actually want to be alone because it means you're special. And you have to let that go, because that is dark, dark, dark, dark.

After his mirror monologue that solidifies the film's intention, Inside continues with the song, FaceTime with My Mom. FaceTiming with my mom, my mother's covering her camera with her thumb. I'll waste my time. FaceTiming with my mom. My mother's cover raised my time. FaceTiming with my mom. With FaceTime with my mom, Bo begins experimenting with aspect ratio, at first shrinking

the screen to mimic a phone's vertical screen all of FaceTime. The song's last repeating couplet feels particularly relevant to Bo's interest in screen and camera center communication. As he sings, my mother's covering her camera with her thumb. I'll waste my time, face-timing with my mom. Bo has his camera and screen, and so does his mom, just like the good Lord intended. But the generation gap between Bo and his mom cause a frustrating disconnect when technology is their means of communication.

If the song was meant to be more than pure comedy, it might point to a larger societal disconnect that's intensified by technological barriers, the mediums we use to communicate. In an interview with 92Y, Bo spoke about Twitter and its character limits as an example of how reductive technology complicates communication. You can't be a human on the internet. You're not going to out-tweet Donald. You're not, it doesn't, it's his medium. What are you talking about? We're having a national conversation by throwing fortune cookies at each other. The antidote for him isn't better

tweets. It's long-form conversation. Right? I mean, it's his medium. What do you fucking talking about? Of course this stuff is reductive. It's literally reductive. It's 160 characters. But of course, you know what I mean? Of course, like, they're, they're to, like, it's fine. It's the mediums. It's the mediums. That's the problem. It's probably not the people. You know what I mean? That's the problem. It's people thinking it's people versus people. And it's mediums. It's people slight, literally sliding fortune cookies to each other, trying to have an argument about complex, giant things. No wonder it's uncivil. In the case of FaceTiming with my mom, Bo grows increasingly frustrated and eventually enraged with his mom's inexperienced with technology.

leading him to feel like he's wasting his time, talking to his own mother, which in theory should be a fulfilling experience. Connecting genuinely with the people that matter seems increasingly important in the age of technology, but technology here is actually the thing that creates a disconnect. Bo and his mom are at once connected and disconnected, a paradox at the heart of the internet. It just feels like the internet hasn't even, in least in popular media, hasn't even been described, let alone figured out,

Like, so, yeah, I just wanted to portray it and portray it how it feels to her and me a little bit, which is just weird. It's just like it's a lot. But it's not like it's just like it's just, if we threw our phones in the ocean and we'd be happy. It's like, it's both. We're super connected. We're super lonely. We're super stimulated. We're super numb.

We're self-expressing and objectifying. FaceTime with my mom is followed by a brief interlude where we see Beau walk to his chair and open his laptop. As described in the lyrics of content, he's getting up, sitting down, going back to another day of work on the special. As Beau waits for an airplane flying overhead to pass, a tiny image briefly flashes in the lower right-hand corner of the screen before immediately vanishing. If we pause the film at this moment, we discover that this split-second image is Bo wearing a headset acting as a Twitch streamer, foreshadowing an upcoming skit that we'll see over 30 minutes later in the film. While we can't know for sure, this seems to be a nod to the movie Fight Club directed about, by David Fincher. Edward Norton plays a film's protagonist, who works a monotonous corporate

9 to 5 and suffers from insomnia due to his unfulfilling life. He deteriorates so much that he begins to disassociate, resulting in a full-blown alter ego named Tyler Dernan, played by Brad Pitt. Before this alter ego is introduced in full, the film foreshadows it by using the same single-frame splice technique. For example, when Norton's character is monotonously making copies at a copy machine, the Tyler Durdon alter ego flashes on screen for a split second. It's so quick you might miss it, but the effect is seemingly used to portray the early symptoms of the character disassociating. And this seems to be the reason why Bo utilizes the single-frame splice to portray the early signs of his own disassociation

that will climax with the song All Eyes on Me near the end of the film. After this brief interlude scene, there's a hard cut to Bo sitting at the piano. He's in the spotlight once again, and a projector colors the walls behind him solid orange. He smiles widely, and begins performing the next song. Hey kids, today we're going to learn about the world. The world that's around us is pretty amazing, but how does it work? It must be complicated.

This is how the world works, featuring Schrodinger sock puppet Socko. A song will examine line by line, frame by frame, next time on Dysect. This episode of Dysect was written and produced by me. If you enjoyed today's episode, please tell a friend about the new series or share on social media. It really helps.

Additional analysis by Camden Ostrander. Audio editing by Kevin Pooler. Theme music by Berocratic. All right. Thanks, everyone. Talk to you next week.