Bo Burnham - Inside (2021, Netflix) • Page 5

I don’t personally think, given the sentiments of a lot of this particular special, that he’s out there trying to poke fun at someone’s grief.

 

Second time I watched that part had me tearing up, to me its still commentary on how social media warps how people present themselves, but it also feels very sincere in a these-people-have-little-tropes-but-there-are-real-people-behind-these-accounts way

 

it’s always felt very humanizing to me personally, especially when the rest of the song is presenting a caricature of a person, the bridge feels like a moment to establish empathy. and again, it especially hits that way for me the way the music shifts and opens up directly after. plus the way the aspect ratio opens up too. idk. yeah, the song is poking fun at how vapid these people can come off as being but to me it’s also essentially acknowledging that it’s not particularly harmful, despite the (fairly lighthearted imo) roast.

 

5. Content
4. White Woman’s Instagram
3. Shit
2. Look Who’s Inside Again
1. Funny Feeling

Honorable mentions to Comedy and Sexting

 

Member of the dead parents club and I took that moment as empathetic on first watch and hadn’t considered it being cynical at all. I can see how it could be interpreted that way, but it was one of my favorite moments of the special tbh

 

I really liked this reading of White Woman’s Instagram:

The song "White Woman's Instagram" is edited primarily into the square format of an Instagram photo, but the aspect ratio opens up when the song touches on an example of genuine emotion.

Throughout the song and its accompanying visuals, Burnham is highlighting the "girlboss" aesthetic of many white women's Instagram accounts. The tropes he says you may find on a white woman's Instagram page are peppered with cultural appropriation ("a dreamcatcher bought from Urban Outfitters") and ignorant political takes ("a random quote from 'Lord of the Rings' misattributed to Martin Luther King").

But during the bridge of the song, he imagines a post from a woman dedicated to her dead mother, and the aspect ratio on the video widens.

It's as if Burnham is showing how wholesale judgments about the way people choose to use social media can gloss over earnest, genuine expressions of love and grief being shared online.

He's also giving us a visual representation of the way social media feeds can jarringly swing between shallow photos and emotional posts about trauma and loss.

At the end of the song, "Inside" cuts to a shot of Burnham watching his own video on a computer in the dark. He's self-evaluating his own visual creation in the same way people will often go back to look at their Instagram stories or posts to see how it looks after they've shared it.

31 details and references you might have missed in Bo Burnham's new Netflix special 'Inside'

 

All Eyes On Me is already one of my most played songs of the year. It's absolutely gut-wrenching but in a way that I can't stop going back to it

 

Will post my ranking tomorrow, I read the bridge of White Woman's Instagram as a misdirect. You start it thinking he's poking fun, but by the end it has transcended that entirely.

 

yeah the bridge/ending to White Woman's Instagram is one of my favourite parts of the whole special and I definitely think it's meant in a positive light.

tried making a top 5 and couldn't do it, lol. shout out to Unpaid Intern though.

 

1. All Eyes On Me
2. Goodbye
3. That Funny Feeling
4. Welcome To The Internet
5. Look Who's Inside Again

That fifth slot could've gone to, like, 4 or 5 different songs lol

 

All Eyes On Me is my favorite song of the year so far. It actually reminds me of Street Lights by Kanye with how it kind of just repeats a few segments over and over in a way that's almost mesmerizing (hopefully that makes sense lol)

I also just love the vocal effect and the melodies are outstanding

 

I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic when I say this is my favorite thing I’ve watched in the last few years. I’m blown away by it.

 

Plus, what’s wrong with a little hyperbole? God forbid any of us be a little enthusiastic in this short life about things that make us happy.

 

There are a couple of us right there with you

 

1. All Eyes on Me
2. That Funny Feeling
3. Goodbye
4. Welcome to the Internet
5. Look Who’s Inside Again
6. Comedy
7. Content
8. How the World Works
9. FaceTime With My Mom
10. Bezos 1

 

1. All Eyes On Me
2. That Funny Feeling
3. Comedy
4. Welcome to the Internet
5. Look Who's Inside Again
6. FaceTime With My Mom/Problematic/Sexting

 

I say be hyperbolic. It's that good. It kind of took me completely by surprise too. I love 8th Grade, but I've never really been enthusiastic about musical comedy, so this wasn't really something I was itching to watch. I haven't stopped thinking about it since.

I'm getting to the point where I'm likely overanalyzing every lyric and frame to the point where I'm almost doing the self-reaction video bit. I can't help it. This is the most instantly relatable, relevant, and meaningful piece of art I've engaged with in a while.

 

The harmonizing outro of Problematic is so good. My ranking changes every day so I'm not even gonna bother.

 

Because my dick looks like the baby from Eraserhead

 

I really feel for anyone else who tries to release something this year cause it's gonna have to compete with this

 

I’ve listened to All Eyes On Me the most.

 

Big ‘ol mutherfucking duffel bag of shit.

 

Late to the White Woman’s Instagram bridge discussion but I have some opinions.

I feel like it is a type of joke Bo has done very often through his career, which is draw the audience in by making fun of a shallow caricature, then flip it on its head and remind you that the caricature you (and he) are mocking is actually three dimensional and worthy of sympathy, thus making you think that the actual punchline is you (and him) for making fun of it in the first place. But then he immediately goes right back into more derision, which yeah is a kind of shock value, but also is a kind of recognition that he’s there to entertain you and not preach to you. You could arguably take it even a step further and say that it is Bo taking off his mask for a moment to be genuine, only to immediately realize that preaching to the audience like that would soon lead to losing them, so he corrects course and goes back into derision, but obviously that bell has already been rung and he can’t unring it. The joke, then, is Bo pretending as if he can unring the bell.

It’s also indicative of another recurring theme of Bo’s, which is the idea that we are all performers for each other. Aside from I guess the LOTR/MLK line, there’s really nothing in the song that is *inherently* derisive: like on its face, he really is simply describing a stereotypical woman’s IG, and the joke is entirely just in recognizing the stereotype. So the “Is this Heaven or…” is a recognition that the mask the woman puts up on social media is obviously an idealized self and that (more importantly) it actually works: we *do* see other people’s social media and get it in our heads that their lives are far more ideal than ours. To that end, the mom post is obviously her taking off that mask and being open about her own suffering.

But there’s also an additional tragic irony in that, by posting about it in the first place, it simultaneously becomes just another part of that mask in the end. Hence why Bo is using it in a song that is nothing but stereotypical IG posts, and hence why, after he’s done with it, he immediately moves on to more idealized images with no delay, implying that the mom post itself is just as carefully curated as every other part of their social media presence. Even though we get tired of seeing people obviously curating idealized selfs on social media, we’ve simultaneously reached a point where, when we do see something sincere, it is also easy to think: why would you post about something so obviously personal like this in the first place? Why inherently reduce the value of something so personal and emotional by bringing it into the shallow realm of social media? Isn’t it now just another means of achieving that insignificant self-centered dopamine rush? Maybe social media actually *should* be limited to things that are more shallow and idealized so that it doesn’t further cheapen what is real

So the ultimate message becomes ones of: through the very act of using social media in the first place, the line between the sincere and the cynical become so blurred and intertwined that it is impossible to discern, and you could easily read both into everything. After all, the idealized IG posts *are* just someone sharing something that they find enjoyable, and who are we to laugh at them for it?

 

ATL is low key my favorite song on here. I’ve never heard a panic attack so accurately described in song form before.

Literally, would point someone to that song to have one described to them if they didn’t know how a true panic attack feels.

Did not think it would be possible for bo to put out something sadder than Make Happy, but he did it and I fucking love it. This is the special that finally got it wife to appreciate how great bo is.

Absolutely, the best piece of art to come out of the pandemic thus far.

 

SO GOOD! Been playing the hell out of the album now too. It's been so fun to make covers of the tracks and even make a remix of all eyes on me because I loved it so much.