It’s a Beautiful Day to Stay Inside

A review and meta-analysis of Burnham Burnham’s latest special, “Inside.”

A recreation of a shot from Bo Burnham’s Inside, done alone to try and understand Burnham’s creative struggle // Photo Credit: Holden Predmore

by Holden Predmore

The screen fades in from black, revealing an uncluttered room with a keyboard in the center. A door in the background opens, first letting in the light, and then Bo Burnham, the sole creative behind the 2021 Netflix special “Inside,” steps through. The door closes and the show begins.

During the first song of the special, “Content,” Burnham sings to the audience “I’m sorry I was gone, but look I made you some content.” From the very moment the special starts, Burnham tells the audience that he is making this art for them.

It does not take long, however, for this relationship between Bo, the content creator, and his art to be seen in a different light. The second song in the show, “Comedy,” shows Burnham questioning whether he “should be joking at a time like this?” He reflects on what is happening in the world, with BLM protests taking place in many major cities, depression and anxiety rising, and what’s that other thing? Oh, yeah, the COVID-19 pandemic. All of these were happening while Burnham was making this special.

In the song, Burnham goes on to joke that he is “healing the world with comedy,” but it is just that, a joke. Burnham presents a big question in this song, essentially asking what purpose this special has, but he doesn’t answer it in the song. The question lingers: should Burnham be joking at a time like this?

Despite that unanswered query, Burnham continues to joke throughout the rest of the special. “Comedy” itself is quite funny, and “FaceTime with My Mom” makes me laugh every time with its perfect description of watching your parents struggle with technology over anything more complicated than a phone call. The film also features many skits that show Burnham’s comedy and directorial vision isn’t only for music videos.

It isn’t until the track “Look Who’s Inside Again” that ideas about what this art means get brought back into focus. Burnham laments “trying to be funny and stuck in a room,” but ultimately relates his experience creating Inside to his childhood.

Burnham became a viral YouTube celebrity as a teen, and in this song he references that point in his life, singing “when you’re a kid and you’re stuck in your room, you’ll do any old shit to get out of it.”

Compared to the two songs from before, this song introduces a new idea for what Burnham’s purpose might be for making Inside. Instead of creating for his audience, or in some attempt to improve the state of the world, maybe Burnham is creating because the COVID-19 pandemic has locked him inside, and what else is there to do?

The idea that Burnham creates simply to alleviate boredom feels like it makes sense, and based on what Burnham has said so far, it would be a very reasonable conclusion. However, so many other parts of the special make it hard to really think Burnham is doing this because it is the easiest thing for him to do.

While the majority runtime of the special is filled with songs and skits, the special also includes parts when the camera is just left running while Burnham works on the film, in a way no audience would normally ever see. While the songs and skits do occasionally deal with darker issues like depression and capitalist reality, the filmmaking stays lighter by comparison. It is these behind-the-scenes moments when the lighting and camerawork feels the most honest to how Burnham really feels.

It is in those moments of stillness, of quiet reflection, that I see my own experience of self-isolation most accurately reflected. In the special, these moments feel like a reminder that even for someone who does create something complete and published for the world, they still have times when that creative process is not fulfilling. Finding something to do, something to work towards, is not always enough to keep the fire inside burning.

At this point, the film is nearing its end, and it feels like the question posed right at the beginning still hangs without an answer. Burnham starts with the idea that he created Inside for us, the audience, but just as quickly points out that his comedy will accomplish none of the things we want, like social justice or an end to the pandemic. He then considers the idea he is creating for himself, but the film makes it extremely clear that, at the very least, creating “Inside” did not alleviate the stress or depression he felt at the time.

So, what are we left with?

“L’art Pour L’art” or “Art for Art’s Sake” is an aesthetic movement birthed in 19th-century Western Europe, primarily France. The core concept at the heart of Art for Art’s Sake is that art does not need to serve a purpose or achieve something greater than simply being art.

Looking at Inside, at first it seems that the special does not fall into this category at all. More than a couple of the songs and jokes are explicitly political (we cannot forget Socko, a stand-in for marginalized people in a society that feigns acceptance for anyone while maintaining and enforcing an underclass of people) and other parts of the special explore what this pandemic and making this special has done to Burnham’s psyche.

In “All Eyes on Me,” Burnham tells a story about how in January of 2020 he thought, “You know what? I should start performing again… and then, the funniest thing happened.” It’s subtle, but this revelation reframes how we might understand other parts of the special. Burnham wanted to go do live shows again, but despite the world conspiring to stop him, he still tried to create something in spite of his new circumstances.

Burnham had something he wanted to create, but more importantly that he wanted to share. COVID-19 ripped away any chance of sharing this in-person, at least anytime soon. Creating isn’t something that can be done on a whim, it takes time, resources, energy and so much more. As Burnham himself sings in the closing song of the special “Goodbye,” “Does anybody want to joke when no one’s laughing in the background?”

I think Burnham is creating because he has something he wants to make, and despite external circumstances taking away his motivation, Burnham decided making art was motivation enough. Sure, this special won’t make the police stop profiling people of color, and it won’t help Burnham on his personal mental health journey. Despite that, Burnham created something. He found meaning in that act by itself, art for art’s sake.