Dissect - Dissecting INSIDE (Part 9)

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

We conclude our analysis of Bo Burnham's INSIDE with its final song "Goodbye." We'll also discuss the rich symbolism of its final scenes as well as draw some final conclusion about the film. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Spotify, this is Dysect, long for our musical analysis broken into short, digestible episodes. This is part nine of our nine-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 on Dyskt, we examined All Eyes on Me, the emotional climax of Inside's narrative. There we experienced the peak of Bo's dissociation and agoraphobia as he performed for an imaginary audience as if he were on stage at Madison Square Garden. During the song's bridge, Bo revealed that he'd quit performing for five years to focus on his mental health. And just when he was ready to re-enter the world and perform again, the pandemic forced him to stay inside, a tragic irony he framed as funny.

At the end of the song, Bo's frustration with performing inside to a camera for over a full year finally boils over. He aggressively grabs a camera before collapsing to the floor. When Bo collapses, the screen goes black and we hear microphone feedback. After a few moments, the screen fades up to reveal a close-up of Bo's face, lying down in bed sleeping. The lighting is bright and crisp, a sharp contrast from the somber, dark blue that dominates the entirety of all eyes on me. We hear the chirping of birds, signaling that it's morning time, a new day. Careful observers of this shot of Bo's face lying in bed will notice that it mirrors exactly a shot we've seen previously in the film. It came during the inside video game sequence,

where Bo played a Twitch streamer playing himself like a video game. After the simulated day was complete, we saw a title card that read, Another Night approaches, and then video game Bo lied down in bed as a giant spotlight shine on his face, symbolizing the inescapable entrapment he feels from performance. Bo the twist streamer ended his stream, yet the bed scene continues on,

blurring the lines between Bo's life and a simulation, implying that he's losing his sense of time and reality, like someone in solitary confinement. Bo then closed his eyes and went to sleep. And it's this shot of Bo falling asleep that mirrors exactly the shot we see directly after all eyes on me. Only now the light on Bo's face is natural light, not artificial light from a spotlight. And instead of falling asleep at night, Bo is waking up in the morning.

Between these two mirrored scenes is where the vast majority of Bo's rapid mental decline occurs. This is where we heard the song's shit, all time low, that funny feeling, and all eyes on me. And it's where we saw Bo increasingly panicked, delirious and defeated in the scenes between the songs. The mirrored scenes of Bo falling asleep and then waking up, bookending this intense section of the film, might be a deliberate visual cue that implies a few possibilities.

It could be another way Bo is messing with our sense of time and reality, reflective of how Bo lost his sense of time and reality locked inside alone for over a year. Or it could imply that Bo's experience during this entire stretch of the film was something akin to a fever dream, which is, quote, a very strange experience or situation, usually a bad one, that seems like a dream rather than something that would actually happen, unquote. There's also the off chance Bo actually foreshadowed his condition back on the song How the World Works. It was there that we heard Sacco say this.

I've been where I always am when you're not wearing me on your hand. In a frightening liminal space between states of being. Not quite dead, not quite alive. It's similar to a constant state of sleep paralysis. Sacco is only. animate when performing, when on somebody's hand. Otherwise, he's in a frightening liminal space he compares to sleep paralysis, which is a temporary inability to move that occurs right after falling asleep or waking up, and often involves troubling hallucinations. If Bo was subtly foreshadowing his own

eventual condition here, Sacco is, after all, an extension of Bo. There does seem to be an app parallel between him and Sacco in terms of performance, of getting life from an audience, but also feeling captive by that audience, feeling like a hundred, hostage because you don't want to face the state of being when you're not performing. In any case, the waking scene after All Eyes on Me leads us into a montage that most certainly calls back to previous parts of the film. And our first clue to these callbacks is the music that begins to play as Bo rolls on his back to wake up. Here we see a montage of various B-roll shots of the room and equipment mixed with Bo brushing his teeth over the sink,

eating breakfast, and playing with lights. This montage mirrors the one in the very beginning of the film, just before the song Comedy, where we saw B-roll shots of equipment in the room while the same exact music played, which we now realize is a slower rendition of the chords and melody from Welcome to the Internet. Instead of showing himself testing equipment like in the beginning of the film, Bo is now seen editing the special together. While eating breakfast, he's proof-watching the first mirror monologue on his laptop, where he introduced us to inside and explain the concept. We then see him recording the melody for the montage music we're currently hearing, implying that he's scoring the film.

The montage ends with Bo watching the final shot of All Eyes on Me, where he collapses to the floor with the camera in his hand. The laptop screen then goes black, and Bo closes it, which seems to convey that he's completed the special up until the very point we're now watching. As the montage and music ends, there's a cut to a new scene where we see a close-up of Bo's face lit by natural light from the window. Eventually, he holds a microphone to his mouth and begins to speak. I think I'm done.

In terms of a traditional narrative structure, the montage in this brief monologue signals the beginning of Inside's third and final act. Third acts typically followed what's dubbed the Supreme Ordeal, the protagonist's biggest test, the climactic fight scene, the direct confrontation with the villain. And inside, the Supreme Ordeal was certainly All Eyes on Me, or Bo goes toe to toe with the soul-sucking eye of the camera. After surviving the Supreme Ordeal, the third act finds the protagonist making their way home from their journey, that was sparked by their call to adventure. For Bo, his call to adventure was making this special while locked inside. Returning home for him would seem to be completing the special,

finally leaving this room and going outside. But typically, the road home comes with one final obstacle, one final test, which will see play out in Inside's final song, Goodbye. Possible ending song that is not finished yet. Test. Take one. Shockingly, we see Bo with short hair, sit down at the piano wearing a collared black shirt,

the ruin behind him completely clean. At this moment, it appears Bo has truly returned to the start. He's showered, he's cut his hair, he's cleaned his room. He's putting his life back together, or so it seems. He tells the camera this is the possible ending song, a test, and as he begins playing the piano, he looks around checking the camera and his laptop. As soon as bow begins singing, another shot is overlaid on the original test recording. It's a profile shot of bow with long hair and a beard also singing goodbye.

And the translucency of these two shots are set in a way that we see them simultaneously. It seems to confirm the motif of returning to the start. As seeing a short hair clean-cut bow against the long-haired bearded bow reminds us of how far he's come and how much he's been changed by his special long journey of being stuck inside. The two Bose sing, So Long, Goodbye. I'll see you when I see you. You can pick the street, I'll meet you on the other side. Bo here continues the kind of ambiguity we heard in all eyes on me, deliberately allowing for simultaneous readings. On one hand, he's addressing us, his audience, and referring to the end of this special. I'll see you when I see you as a farewell expression used

when you're unsure when you'll see that person again. In terms of this special in Beau's comedy career, the line might imply another possible hiatus from performing, that Bo is unsure if or when he'll return to the stage, seeing that this special took him through hell and back and conjured up all the performance, anxiety, and panic he battled in the past. These lines could also be a sly reference to the COVID-19 pandemic, that when we're allowed to go outside again,

we'll have to meet each other on the other side of the street to maintain social distancing, since we've all learned this past year that real-world human-to-human tactile contact will kill you. But perhaps the most potent readings of these lines continue the themes established on that funny feeling and all lies on me, a reference to the end of the world. Thus, Bo meeting us on the other side is a reference to the afterlife, whatever is next on our collective human journey as our time on Earth expires. Now, about midway through this first verse, the shot of Clean Cut Bow begins to fade away.

and by the time the second verse begins, that bow has completely vanished, leaving only the bearded, long-haired bow for the remainder of the song and special. Thus, as here we realize that the clean-cut bow was actually a flashback, that it actually was Bo testing his camera and equipment in the early stages of making the special, and that the song was truly unfinished at that point. This would seem in line with what we learned from the large whiteboard that we saw a glimpse of after White Woman's Instagram. It was on that whiteboard that Bo had an early outline of the first.

film, which included most of the songs we saw in the first half of the special, and none of the songs that we see in the second half. That is, except Goodbye. It's the only song from the board that appears in the later half of the special. We can therefore assume that Bo has had the song for a while, and always intended to end the special with it in some capacity. Understanding this, and understanding that the clean-cut bow is merely a flashback, the fact that he fades out, leaving only the burnt-out bearded bow feels incredibly tragic. It's a reminder of what being inside has done to him. It's a reminder that returning to normalcy isn't as simple as just cutting your hair and putting on some clean clothes. Indeed, like a lot of us, it would appear

that Bo has changed in a fundamental way by his journey stuck inside, that the pre-pandemic version of Bo is gone forever. Thus, it's incredibly fitting that as soon as the clean-cut bow fades completely from the screen, the bearded bow begins singing the second verse, as if saying goodbye to himself. To return's always diminish. Did I say that right? Bo here questions whether or not he really has to finish. As Bo nears the end of the special,

he's experiencing anxiety about what to do with himself when he's done, something he expressed more directly just after Welcome to the Internet. So I've been freaking out for a long time thinking that I'm never going to finish his special and then I'm going to be working on it forever. And recently I've been feeling like, oh man, maybe I am getting close to done with this. maybe I'm going to finish it after all. And that has made me completely freak out

because if I finish this special, that means that I have to not work on it anymore. And that means I have to just live my life. And so I'm not going to do that. And I'm going to not finish the special. I'm going to work on it forever, I think. Bo finds himself in a catch-22. Making the special is killing him.

Yet without this special to work on, he'll be forced to go back outside and have to face the anxieties there. which historically have only made him want to return back inside. Bo then sings, do returns always diminish, referring to the economic law of diminishing returns. According to Investopedia, quote, the law of diminishing marginal returns is a theory in economics

that predicts that after some optimal level of capacity is reached, adding an additional factor of production will actually result in smaller increases in output, unquote. In other words, the more you put into something, at a certain point, the less you get out of it. In Beau's case, we've seen those diminishing returns play out in the second half of the special, where the continued effort he puts in causes detrimental damage to his mental health. Bo then jokes about his vague understanding of the law of diminishing returns as he asks,

Did I Say That Right? Fittingly, this joke leads us into the song's refrain. Does anybody want to joke when no one's laughing in the background? Beau first asks if anyone wants to joke when no one's laughing in the background, lyrics that once again allow for multiple readings, applying to both this special and the world at large. On one hand, we've seen Beau struggle telling jokes without an audience throughout inside. Instead, he's been performing for the soul-sucking, unresponsive abyss of a camera's lens.

However funny he's being, his punchlines are met with silence every time, leaving Bo to second-guess the quality of his material. On the other hand, these lines seem to acknowledge the grave circumstances of the current moment as we exist amid so many coinciding catastrophes. It is joking around appropriate when no one's laughing or having a good time, when so many people are suffering. This is the moral dilemma that's plagued Bo since Inside Start, and it seems Bo has still found no real answer to his question. He's just as insecure about making this special at its end than he was at its start. Next Bo sings, so this is how it ends.

I promise to never go outside again. These lines once again apply both to the special and the world simultaneously. In terms of the special, Bo's promise to never go outside feels tied to his previous question of do I really have to finish? Does this really have to be the end? Do I really have to go back outside now? It could also be a reference to Bo's comedic career, a promise to never return to the stage given the hell he went through performing for over a year making this special.

In terms of the end of the world, it seems as if his promise to never go outside, is akin to someone staying hold up in a bunker as the outside world becomes far too dangerous to enter. Once again, despite the hellish conditions of staying inside, it seems Beau still prefers it to the thought of going back outside. Now during this part, we see a new transparent visual, a wider shot of Bo performing the song with a giant full moon projection on the wall right behind him. This continues the inside-out visual motif that we've seen throughout this latter part of the film, where foliage, trees, a campfire, and blue sky projections have been

displayed on the room's main wall, reflecting the homogenization of our interior and exterior worlds. Symbolically, full moons traditionally represent completion and transformation, since they are the final stage of the moon cycle, an interpretation that would make sense here at the final stage of Bo's journey. So long, I'm slowly losing power. Has it only been an hour? No, that can't be right. Bo sings the opening so long, but rather than singing goodbye again, he says bye in a way that calls back to the opening of the film and its very first mirror monologue.

Hi. Bo continues the verse singing, I'm slowly losing power. Has it only been an hour? No, that can't be right. Expressing his current depleted mental, emotional, and physical state, Bo refers to himself as if he were a dying battery in a camera or phone. This might be a subtle nod to the flashing empty battery icon we saw during All Eyes on Me just before he collapsed. to the floor. Bo then expresses his bewilderment that it's only been an hour, that he's given his everything to make this current special for over a year, yet he only has an hour's worth of content to show for it. Despite how Bo nearly killed himself to make this for our entertainment, for us, the viewing audience will most likely consume it like we do anything else and immediately move on with

our lives. And it's perhaps this thought that leads to Bo's resentment heard in the following verse. How about I sit on the couch and I watch you next time? As he's done all special long, Bo here once again plays with the motif of fun or funny. He sings, Here's a fun idea, which is the way we typically phrase something when we're being sarcastic. He then suggests that he watches us from his couch next time.

Like he expressed in the finale of Make Happy and All Eyes on Me, Bo Hears shows a little contempt toward us, the audience. His extreme anxiety and panic caused by performance and our passiveness as a viewer is an unsettling, disproportionate contrast. But his resentment doesn't seem personal. It feels more the result of Beau's continued struggle with the concept of performer and audience, something he struggled with most of his career. His return to performance after five years only seemed to have confirmed his worst fear,

that no matter his mental condition going into the performance, he'll always come out the other side mentally ravaged. Am I going crazy What I even know Am I right back where I started 14 years ago When I guess the ending If it ever does After a repetition of the chorus

Goodbye transitions into an extended bridge Beau begins asking Am I going crazy would I even know This of course acknowledges his mental deterioration And dissociation that slowly developed over the course of the film being isolated for so long when the only perspective you have is your own, it can be hard to know the true state of your mental condition.

It seems Bo is worried that he might be getting worse without even knowing it. He then continues, Am I right back where I started 14 years ago? Once again, Bo can't help but see the parallels between performing inside his room alone now and when he first started as a 16-year-old YouTuber making videos in his bedroom. If he's essentially doing the same thing he was doing when he was 16, what does that say about his evolution and growth as a person? This, combined with turning 30,

seem to have inspired something like a quarter-life crisis, which we've seen play out as part of the second half of the film, where Bo has gone deeper and deeper inside his head. Bo then makes yet another reference to the end asking, Want to guess the ending, if it ever does? Once again, Bo is questioning whether or not he'll even finish the special, since that would mean he'd be forced to go back outside and re-enter the world. But given the context of this bridge thus far,

Bo could easily be referencing the end of his comedic career, or even the end of his life, a suicidal ideation has been a thread throughout inside. Now, if we take a look at the chords Bo is playing beneath this section of the bridge, we realize he's doing something pretty clever. Here's the four-core progression heard during this part. This is actually the same chord progression Bo used in the song All-Time Low. A few things start to happen, my vision starts too flat, in my heart it gets to tapping, and I think I'm going to die.

Recall that All Time Lowe described symptoms of a panic attack and really began to display just how bad Bo's mental state had gotten. This subtle musical and thematic callback to a previous song in the special, thus begins what will now become a more obvious string of lyrical and musical callbacks that make up the remainder of goodbye. Given Bo's love of musical theater, it seems he's making his version of a traditional musical finale, where a number of songs from the musical are reprised at the end of the show in a culminating medley. I swear to God that all I've ever wanted was a little bit of everything all of the time. A bit of everything all of the time. Apathy's a tragedy and boredom is a crime.

I'm finished playing and I'm staying inside. Bo here reprises the chorus of Welcome to the Internet, using the same chord progression heard there as well. Recall that song was written from the perspective of the Internet's ringleader selling us on its mountains of content and promising to make make all of us stars. Here on Goodbye, Bo admits that all he wanted was a little bit of everything all of the time, which seems to at once reference his 16-year-old self making songs for YouTube, the internet, and his current 30-year-old self making songs for Netflix, also the internet.

Despite his critiques of the web, Bo clearly understands he's very much a part of it, that his success as a comedian and artist were because the internet, that he's not immune to its seductive call and ability to garner attention. But now, understanding where that road ultimately led him, he promises that I'm finished playing and I'm staying inside. This seems to again refer to the end of this special, but also the end of his career as a performer. After experiencing the damaging effects of performance yet again, it seems like the end of Make Happy, Bo is vowing to never go back, choosing to once again hide from the world, perhaps this time for good. This leads Bo to a train of thought in which his career is over. If I wake up in a house that's full of smoke, I'll panic.

So call me up and tell me a joke When I'm fully irrelevant, totally broken, damn it, call me up and tell me a joke. Oh shit. Really joking at a time like this. With this reprise of comedy, Beau flips perspectives from its original form. On comedy, he was the white saver who was here to heal the world,

and thus offered himself as a resource to call when we are in trouble. Now at the end of the special, Bo's the one in need. He sings, if I wake up in a house that's full of smoke, I'll panic, so call me up and tell me a joke. It's a line that now describes the end result of making this special. Metaphorically speaking, Bo's house, his inside, is full of smoke. He did panic. He does need to connect with someone. He does need cheering up. Indeed, this idea of a house full of smoke might explain the color of the house during goodbye, as it's dimly illuminated by a dull orange color, similar to a smoky sky in the aftermath of a large fire. Bo continues when I'm

fully irrelevant and totally broken. Damn it, call me up and tell me a joke. Here we get some clever text painting, which is what is called when the music or melody reflects the words being sung. When Bo sings Broken, he leaves a long gap between its two syllables, broke, in. He literally breaks the word in two. But the break also serves the line thematically, because when he's fully irrelevant, he'll be both broke, he'll have no money, and he'll be broken mentally, looking for someone to cheer him up with a joke. Bo then throws the criticism he feared he'd be subject to by making this special back at us, singing, oh shit, you're really joking at a time like this? When he says this line, Bo looks directly into the camera, at us. For a moment, we lock eyes, we connect, which makes

what happens next all the more shocking. In a dramatic hard cut, the room goes dark except for a large spotlight that shines down on Bo who is at the piano, now completely naked. Bo looks at the camera in shock as we hear a reprise of Look Who's Inside Again sung by mechanical, disembodied voices. As Bo listens to what they're saying to him, he grows visibly sad and defeated, bowing his head like a criminal who knows he's been caught. The symbolism of this scene is potent. The shot itself mirrors the beginning of comedy, where we saw Boe in the same exact position at the piano with the same spotlight on him. But here at the end of the special, the spotlight is much more like a police's searchlight, binding together the idea of Bo being

held captive by performance, by us the audience, that feeling like he's surrounded. Bo being naked here seems to represent how, to quote, welcome to the internet, his insides out, that he's given us the audience everything he has. He's been extremely vulnerable, letting us into his home, telling us everything he's thinking and feeling for over a year. He's been fully exposed, and now there seems to be nothing left to give. Being naked is also the end result of being in front of a camera for over a year, which Bo has remarked is an extremely violating experience, one he directly compared to being naked.

I totally, totally get why actors are insane. There is something like psychically violating and insane about being in front of a camera. It's just like the eye of God and the devil staring at you, like immortalizing you and taking your soul. It's just like, it's just naked. After giving us everything, after being completely naked and vulnerable for over a year, after finally completing the special,

it seems that Beau may have thought he'd be able to truly hide for a while, get away from the camera, get away from performing. As he said and goodbye, he's finished playing and he's staying inside. And just as he was completing the end of the finale song, the song putting a nice bow on the special by reprising its songs in a retrospective medley, he suddenly interrupted by disembodied voices and a searchlight,

like a SWAT team invading his house. Knowing that he's surrounded, he understands what he must do. He must come out with his hands up. He must go outside. In another full circle moment, we hear the eerie, high-pitched sound effect that we heard at the very beginning of inside. Fading up from black, we also see a shot of the room that is nearly identical to the very first shot of the film, an empty, totally clean room with a chair in the center.

In the opening shot, the chair was empty with a piano next to it, and Bo entered the room from the outside, ready to perform. Now Bo is sitting in the chair, and the piano, a symbol of performance, is gone. A piercing sliver of bright light seeps in through the crack in the door that is now slightly ajar. Bo stares at the door and terror, but eventually stands up and makes his way toward it. We cut to a close-up of the exterior of the door and see Bo's concerned face emerge as he slowly opens the door and steps outside. We hard-cut to a wide shot and see for the first time in the film the entire exterior of the house. Dressed in a white shirt and white pants,

Bo stands expressionless outside the front door with his hands by his sides. While we might have assumed the bright light that peeked through the crack in the door was sunlight, it's revealed here in this wide shot that the light was actually a spotlight, which now shines on Bo out in front of the house as if you were on a stage. Bo stands silent for a few moments, trying to understand what's going on. He's then met with rapturous applause from a disembodied, unseen audience. As the applause fade, Bo exhales, turns around, and attempts to go back inside. But the door is locked.

Bo panics. He tries again and again to open the door, aggressively yanking on the handle and pounding on the door with theatrical desperation. All the while, the disembodied audience laughs hysterically. As Beau continues to try unsuccessfully to open the door, there's a sudden cut and the screen turns visibly grainy. The camera slowly zooms out to reveal that we're now watching the scene play out on a projection on a wall. Bo pounds and pounds on the door, only to turn around and slide down the door to a sitting position, visibly distraught and defeated. While we continue to hear the audience laughing, there's a cut to a shot of Boe sitting alongside the light of his projector.

We watch him watch the scene somewhat expressionless. Finally, he slowly cracks a slight smile. The screen then suddenly goes black and the film ends. we finally reached the film's ambiguous ending, we are left wondering what it all means. Why was there a spotlight outside his house? Why was the door locked? Why did Beau smile at the end? We'll try to figure it all out right after the break. Welcome back to dissect. Before the break, we reached the ambiguous end of inside. Now let's try to figure out what it all means, starting with the scene in which Bo finally goes outside. At certain points in the film, the idea of going

outside for Bo was the desire to escape from the symbolic prison of being trapped inside, escape from creating this special that put him through hell. Outside represented freedom, fresh air, real physical human interaction, relief from the spotlight and stage of digital performance. But at other points in the film, particularly towards its end, it became clear going outside was also Bo's worst fear. Outside represented terror, the dangers of climate change in war and disease and gun violence and the potential collapse of society. And it's this fear of both the inside and the outside that led to what Bo described on that funny feeling as agoraphobia, an anxiety disorder in which you fear or avoid places or situations that might cause you to panic and make you feel trapped.

In Bo's case, his fear of both the inside and outside left him seemingly with no good option, no possible escape. Nonetheless, as implied by the end of goodbye, Bo ran out of reasons to hide. With the special complete, with its final song performed, the disembodied voice, demanded that Bo come out with his hands up, forcing him to face his fear. But what Bo discovers when he does this is that the performance isn't over. The outside of his house is a stage two, complete with the same menacing spotlight that haunted him throughout inside and forced him outside at the end of goodbye. And so even though this final scene is the first time we see the outside of the house,

it's actually quite consistent with the inside out motif that Bo has been developing in the second half of the film, where natural elements like the moon, trees, blue skies, and foliage have appeared inside as projections on the wall. Now the outside world Beau has re-entered is a theatrical stage just like the one he thought he was leaving behind. Even what we first thought to be daylight coming through the cracked door turned out to be artificial light from a spotlight, symbolic of how it's getting harder to distinguish between what's real and what's performed. Thus, when Bo is met with disembodied applause to congratulate him on the special we just watched, the very thing he's trying to escape. He's horrified. He panics. Full-blown agoraphobia. It's at this moment he realizes

that the boundaries between the inside and outside have all but homogenized, that today there's truly no escape from performance. That's the real truth that matters now is what is your performed truth to other people? Because your private truth is dead now. There's no private moment anywhere. We all know that the CIA is like looking at us through our webcam. So like that version of ourself is going away. So it's like, who is the you that you present to the world, which is increasingly becoming the you that you're being most of the time? And that wasn't the case. You know what I mean? The sort of public performance of ourself is, is everywhere now. The truth of the current moment is how you choose to perform honesty. That to me is so much more vulnerable than the thing we scribble in our

diary, which go read your diary. It's a performance too. You're performing to yourself. read your diary. You'll read your diary and go like, why am I trying to sound deep to myself? You know what I mean? Right. And that's what you realize. Like, oh, the performance goes all the way down.

Realizing the outside world provides no escape, Bo attempts to go back inside. But of course, the door is locked because the very idea of being inside is gone now. As Beau just articulated, our private truth is dead, our insides out. Who we are and the performance of who we are

has blurred beyond distinction. Knowing Bo's struggle with performance and the anxiety that comes with it, this revelation is tragic, as Bo seems doomed, destined to a life of anxiety, agoraphobia, and dissociation whether he's inside or outside. Thus, it's a bit unsettling when Bo's desperate struggle with the door is met by canned laughter by the universal audience, who is unable to tell the difference between sincerity and performance. The laughter, juxtaposed with Bo's panic, blurs the lines between comedic and tragic irony,

in the same way that funny feeling did, where we wanted to both laugh and cry at the observations of the current moment. It feels like Beau is purposefully evoking that same funny feeling here in the final scene, as his attempts to get back inside are incredibly theatrical, befitting of someone on a stage under a spotlight. On one hand, his inability to go back inside is tragic and its symbolic representation of the loss of interiority in the age of the internet. On the other hand, Bo is purposefully infusing this tragic symbolic moment with slapstick exaggeration that resembles a vaudeville show. The resulting feeling of the scene is a funny one, both unsettling and comedic. This feeling is only intensified as this outside scene suddenly transforms into a projection of itself that Bo is watching inside.

The transition from outside to inside, from Bo living a moment to watching himself live that moment, is instantaneous and seamless, a symbolic visual flourish that reflects the dissociative, overlapping experiences of both living and watching your life, the blurred lines between reality and performance. The final shot of Bo back inside next to his projector, watching his performance, adds a few additional thematic layers into the film's ending sequence. In terms of inside being a poymnon,

a story about the process of creating the story itself, Bo watching his creation in full feels like the natural ending to this foundational aspect of the film. But this ending shot is also nearly identical to a shot we saw just after a little, lacquots inside again, where Bo sat next to his projector watching himself perform My Whole Family, his performance origin story. The framing of both projector scenes are nearly identical, except for two key differences. In the My Whole Family projector scene, Bo is seen on the left side of the

screen looking left, and the projector light is beaming from right to left across the screen. In the ending projector scene, Bo is on the right side of the screen looking right, and the projector's light is beaming from the left to right. In other words, they are mirror images of each other. In film, a scene's composition is often manipulated to communicate more information and elicit emotional responses to what's happening in that scene. One common technique is manipulating the way we interpret motion. Since we're taught very early on to read from left to right, we intrinsically interpret motion from left to right as progress. Understanding this, filmmakers typically have their characters move from the left side of the screen to the right when they're shown progressing

toward their goal. When a character is losing or being taken further away from their goal, they're often shown moving from right to left. We can use this common film technique to help inform our interpretation of these mirrored projector scenes. In the My Whole Family scene, the motion on screen moves from right to left. Bo is on the left, facing left, and the projector light beams right to left. This is fitting of a scene in which Bo is literally looking backwards into his past and is horrified by what he sees. In the ending projection scene, where Bo is watching the final scene of inside, the image is flipped, and all the motion is left to right, fitting of Bo's progress toward and completion of his goal,

making and surviving the making of this film. Thus, the two mirrored projection scenes are a microcosm of the personal narrative thread that runs throughout inside. While Bo previously made work that he finds embarrassing and horrifying, he's now made something that he's genuinely proud of, which he did in part by confronting that past work in order to progress past it. And this seems to be one layer of meaning in Bo's smile at the end of inside. Like any worthwhile journey, Bo was put through hell making this film, but he did come out the other side with something truly meaningful, something he could stand by as a filmmaker and artist, and his smile seems to communicate genuine satisfaction with his work. Rather than watching himself in horror, Bo is finally content with his content.

And in terms of inside following the traditional hero's journey story structure we've discussed all season, this final scene feels in line with the final stage of the hero's journey, which is dubbed Return with the Elixir. This is when the hero returns home a change person as a result of their journey. The final reward or elixir that the hero brings with them may be literal, like the ring and the lord of the rings, or metaphoric, like wisdom or experience. Whatever it is, the reward or elixir traditionally represents three things, change, success, and proof of the hero's journey. In terms of Bo's personal journey on inside, the final scene seemingly fulfills all three requirements. Bo has no doubt been changed by his journey inside.

He was ultimately successful creating a film, and the proof of his journey is the film Inside itself. Inside is Bo's elixir, the reward he returns home with and shares with all of us, so we too may benefit from the acquired wisdom of his journey. Indeed, while Inside might have not healed the world with its comedy, the world is certainly a little better because of it. And so in terms of the personal narrative presented an inside,

the smile at the end ties a nice narrative bow on the film. But as we've discussed all season, running concurrently with Bo's personal narrative has been a more symbolic narrative that Bo's character represents, someone who is alive in the age of the internet, using the tools of the internet, expressing themselves through the internet, someone alone inside filming himself, editing himself, and then presenting himself to the world digitally, someone who is living his life and watching the movie of his life simultaneously, someone who is actively thinking about their performance and how that performance will be received by an audience.

And it's this experience, previously only shared by performers, that's now become universal for an entire generation growing up with the internet, which Bo once called the realization of his career. Through talking about performance anxiety, I had sort of unknowingly backed into a, I think, a shared generational experience of me and the people younger than me. And it was sort of the realization of my career, which is that, um, the stresses I feel as a sort of, again, D-list celebrity have been democratized to an entire generation. And now everyone feels like they're being watched.

Everyone feels like there's a proper noun version of their self that they have to maintain and curate and perform. And so basically it was like, okay, on stage, I've been telling our story through my experience. Now let's explore our story through your experience. That was the thing of, if you can see yourself in me up here, I should be able to see myself in you in your everyday life. Bo here acknowledges how a universal story can be told through an individual story. In Make Happy, he was telling our story through his experience on stage. In his film Eighth Grade, which he was referring to in this interview,

he told our story through the individual story of an everyday middle school girl who expresses herself on a YouTube channel no one watches. And with Inside, Bo returns to telling our story through his individual experience of creating inside, of making content, of curating a digital persona and a personal brand, of performing alone for a camera as a means of interfacing with the world. Specifically, as became clear in the second half of the film, Bo is particularly interested in portraying how we're all feeling as a result of living this way. And what I think, I hope all of my work was trying to sort of get up,

which is to try to give a more subjective emotional description of what the internet is, not like a description of the internet as most people do, which is like the rates of cyberbullying are up and kids are spending five hours staring at a screen and they're getting headaches. And it's like, no, no, no, what is the feeling of walking through your life and not just living your life, which is already hell and impossible, but taking inventory of your life, being a viewer to your own life, living an experience at the same time hovering behind yourself and watching yourself live that experience, being nostalgic for moments that haven't happened yet, planning your future to look back on it.

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 mouth, which is very similar to anxiety,

which is just, you know, objectifying yourself, objectifying your own experience. As we've heard both speak about time and again throughout this season, dissociating from ourselves and our experiences is one of the main results of living our lives as one unending performance, which Bo here directly links to anxiety and compares to a hall of mirrors,

which is a disorienting situation where it's difficult to distinguish between truth and illusion, or between competing versions of reality. We saw all three of these ideas developed throughout inside. His dissociation was expressed through a developing visual motif of seeing multiple bows and reflections of Bose simultaneously. Bo's anxiety completely consumed the latter half of the film, while his perception of reality became so distorted that the lines between day and night, inside and outside, funny and tragic, began blurring together.

Things became inside out. These three parallel and simultaneous conditions came to a head in the climactic All Eyes on Me, where a fully dissociated anxiety-consumed beau hallucinated a live audience, ending in his mental and physical collapse with his camera in his hand, a chilling symbol. Then after goodbye, with the performance finally over, Bo was forced to go outside where he had the tragic realization that the performance was not over, will never be over, that the lines between inside and outside had in fact blurred. The hall of mirrors was permanent, that Bo was destined to perform everywhere all of the time,

dooming him to an indefinite state of anxiety and panic. This was the symbolic theatrical ending of Bo the performer, an individual story that tells our story, a reflection of an entire generation doomed to perform. And with that theatrical ending, we might be led to believe that Bo is finally showing us the real bow in the final projector scene, the mastermind behind Bo the performer. And that's true to an extent.

Like we discussed, the smile at the end does seem to be an artist expressing genuine contentment with his work. But that's only half of it, because as we know, like a hall of mirrors, the performance never ends. The bow we see in the final projector scene is also Boe the performer. And sure, he might have finally gone outside, but he only did so to gather content,

to capture an appropriate ending for his performance. In other words, he treated the outside world like a dangerous coal mine. He suited up, gathered what was needed, and returned to the much more real, much more vital digital space. He immediately went back inside. And it's inside where we see Bo the performer become his own audience, watching his own performance. If this scenario sounds familiar, it's because it is.

It's the reason Bo quit performing. social media it's just the markets answer to a generation that demanded to perform so the markets that here perform everything to each other all the time for no reason it's prison it's horrific it is performer and audience melded together what do we want more than to lie in our bed at the end of the day and just watch our life as a satisfied audience member i know very little about anything but what i do know is that if you can live your life without an audience you should do it It is performer and audience melded together. What do we want more than just to watch our life as a satisfied audience member?

In these final moments of Make Happy, Bo quite literally describes Inside's final scene. We see Bo as both performer and audience melded together, just like the converging worlds of inside and outside. In this context, Bo's smile is symbolic of his satisfaction as an audience member watching his own life on a screen, laughing alongside the disembodied audience at his own tragic, unresolvable. situation. This convergence of dissociative identities is the same way a hall of mere ends.

As the receding duplication of images converge into each other, they eventually reach a point where we can no longer perceive them as separate. The duplications blend together, in the same way Bo's dissociative selves blend together in Inside's final scene. And so in this symbolic context, Bo's smile is pretty unsettling, stuck as he is in this horrific, disassociated performance prison where all eyes are on him, including his own, finding pleasure in the very thing causing him pain. And this simultaneity of sincerity, comedy, and tragedy is to me the brilliance of Inside's final scene. By the end of Bow's Poemonon, he has so successfully blurred the lines between the real Bo and Bo the performer,

between his real life and the movie of his life, that we experience its final moment with two competing emotional reactions. We are both happy and terrified. We want to laugh and to cry. Indeed, and Inside's final scene, Beau once again vividly captures the sincere and the tragic all at once. He captures that funny feeling of being alive in the age of the internet. It'll stop any day now. Any day. Any day. It'll stop any day now. Any day now.

Anything now. Now, having analyzed Inside in its entirety, we can briefly take a step back and draw some final conclusions from this modern masterpiece. As a whole, Inside is what's known as a me's on a beam, a term that refers to the technique of placing a story within a story. On one level, we had the symbolic story of Bo the performer, and above that story was the story of Bo, the filmmaker, struggling to create that story, which is where the polemnon aspect of the film is seen. But at an even higher vantage point, I believe there's a third story that's told through the interaction and eventual convergence of those two stories, the story told by the actual Bo Burnham, the one we never see in the film,

the one who's creating a film about creating a film about performance. And it's from this higher vantage point that I believe we can find one of the more universal insights present in the film. We can start with the setting of the stories, the house. Obviously, Bo was not actually locked in this house for over a year. It was the guest house in the backyard of his actual house, which, by the way, is the same house seen in the classic horror film, Nightmare on Elm Street. We assumed the actual Bo Burnham lived in his actual house while working on the special to be with his partner and beloved dog. Thus Bo's decision to exclusively use the small house as the old,

setting of the film and imply he was actually locked inside and then locked outside was a deliberate cinematic choice. We've already talked at length about the symbolism of being inside and what it represents in our digital internet-driven world. But we haven't talked so much about what the house might represent from this higher vantage point, how it's representative of the world, our shared home, our only home, a home we cannot leave, no matter its condition, much like the symbolic dynamic between Beau and his house. In this way, The physical disarray, clutter, and chaos of the house, combined with the anxiety, dread, and mental deterioration that takes place within the house, contains universal implications.

Symbolic of a world and population plagued with issues Bo addresses throughout the film, climate change, disease, war, racism, gun violence, exploitation, corrupt institutions, absurd leadership, growing economic inequality, hostile and polarized political parties, drastic unchecked technological advancements, and much more. As Bo asked on comedy, what do we do when we find ourselves in a house that's full of smoke? What do we do when we're living in a world that feels like it's on the brink of collapse? We can't just leave. Like Bo inside the house, we're stuck here.

What are we to do with ourselves in the face of that harsh, oftentimes overwhelming reality? To me, this is the central question inside asks. The question Bo is trying to find an answer to. Just listen to its very first mirror monologue, where he told us directly why he was creating this special. 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. Essentially what Bo reveals here is that inside is his reason to live. It's an attempt to do something meaningful enough to avoid killing himself. And this at its heart is the great

existential question. Why bother? Why live? Amid so much suffering, why do we choose to carry on? Bo's journey inside to find what's funny at a time like this is the universal human journey to find fun or joy amidst turmoil, to find peace amidst chaos, to find out if that's even possible. And that's what I'm left asking myself every time I finish watching inside. Did he do it? Did Bo find it? The answer, of course, is subjective, but for what it's worth, will end this season with my personal answer to that question, did Bo find it? Well, of course he did. Perhaps more than anything, inside to me represents something beautiful, birthed out of one of the ugliest eras in recent history. It's an example of someone who worked within the uncontrollable constraints and circumstances

of the times and found a way to express his truth. It's the story of someone who took his tiny corner of the world and made it as beautiful as he could. And through that process, he gave himself and his life purpose. After all, a poyamon at its heart is a story about creation, a divine act. It's a story about the creation of a story. And that to me is the human story, all of us creating our story and attempting to make it as meaningful as possible amidst the uncontrollable circumstances we inherit. If inside offers us any hope at all, it's that Beau, despite the horrors outside and his struggles inside, created a story that's truly meaningful, something honest, something he's proud of, something that helped himself and others. And if the tragedy of the current moment

is that we're all destined to perform everywhere all of the time, we might as well try and make our performance an honest one, one that means something, one with as much beauty and joy that we can create for ourselves and others amidst the uncontrollable circumstances we inherit. And then at the end of our story, we can hope to sit back as a satisfied audience member of our life and smile. Thank you, everyone, for listening to this nine-part series on Bo Burnham's Inside. If you'd like to extend our parasycial relationship over the break, follow at Dysack podcast on Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok. Special thanks to Camden Ostrander for helping with the analysis, to Kevin Pooler for audio editing, welcome to the team Kevin, and to Beirocratic

for the great theme music as always. An extra special thank you to Dan Beihar at Spotify for everything you've done for the show. We'll miss you. All right, thanks again for listening, everyone. I really appreciate it.