Bo Burnham owns up to his “Problematic” origins in comedy special Inside
Nestled between all of the Netflix special’s jokes is a potent reflection on the comedian’s career and a call-out for his own missteps as a teen
TV Features Comedy
Bo Burnham’s newest Netflix special, Inside, teeters on unfunny in its realism and careens towards becoming an exposition on depression during quarantine. The 30-year-old comedian channels the visceral feelings of being stuck indoors over the last year, maneuvering through comedy’s own role in making us feel better during this time. He covers white fragility, a well-known CEO by the name of Jeffrey Bezos, and the endless nightmarish rabbit hole that is the internet. However, nestled in between all of the jokes about white women’s Instagram accounts, sexting, and FaceTiming his mom, is a potent reflection on the comedian’s 15-year-long career, and a call-out for his own missteps as a teenager.
Robert “Bo” Burnham began his career in musical comedy when he was 16, from his childhood bedroom in the suburb of Hamilton, Massachusetts. It was 2006—YouTube had only been live for one year—when teenage Burnham uploaded “My Whole Family…”, a four-minute song about his family questioning his sexuality, while running the gamut of derogatory slurs. His second video jokes about his current love interest, an 83-year-old woman, who dies at the end, where he then jokes about falling in love with a toddler. This early “pubescent musical comedy” got him a record deal with Comedy Central by the time he was 17. At 18, he recorded his first 30-minute-long special for the network, the youngest person to ever do so. His first EP, Bo Fo Sho, was released in 2008, kicking off album recordings, stand-up tours, and subsequent comedy specials, 2010’s Words, Words, Words, 2013's what., and 2016's Make Happy.
Inside takes us 15 years after the comedian uploaded his first video. Burnham glares at the younger version of himself projected on the wall singing “My Whole Family…” Watching Inside and his early work side by side, so much of Burnham’s performing self is the same. He sits in front of a keyboard at home, writing piano ditties that he hopes make people feel something, if not laugh. He holds the same hunched posture and spills the justifications behind every song before playing them. But in Inside, his mannerisms sit on an exhausted, adult face, as he arduously reflects on his career and pieces together the special on his own.
Following the long overdue stare-down with himself, he moves into “Problematic,” which pokes fun at the current cycle of celebrity call-outs and apologies, while ’fessing up to the blatantly unfunny, homophobic, and misogynistic jokes he said in his early career. He projects a sacrificial cross onto himself, begging viewers to hold him accountable for his wrongdoings as a teenager in the public eye.
“A tiny town in Massachusetts, overwhelmingly white, I went to church on Sundays in a suit and a tie, then spent my free time watching Family Guy. I started doing comedy when I was just a sheltered kid I wrote offensive shit, and I said it. Father, please forgive me, for I did not realize what I did, or that I’d live to regret it.
Times are changing, and I’m getting old, are you gonna hold me accountable?”
He then apologizes for hiding behind his youth, as many celebrities do when called out for being complicit in racism, misogyny, and the like. Throughout “Problematic,” Burnham recognizes that the first step to being a better person is acknowledging mistakes and owning up to them instead of trying to bury them and act as though they never happened.
This comes at a time in comedy where comedians find themselves reckoning with the fact that not every joke they’ve made has been in good taste, and that the racism, misogyny, ableism, and homophobia peddled out by comedians is no longer taken lightly. Comedian, actor, and producer Seth Rogen recently addressed the idea of “cancel culture” in comedy, saying, “To me when I see comedians complaining about this kind of thing, I don’t understand what they’re complaining about. If you’ve made a joke that’s aged terribly, accept it,” moving on to discuss the ever changing landscape of comedy. In a recent interview, Katt Williams dismantled the gripes with so-called “cancel culture,” reframing it as minimizing harm to marginalized communities, simply saying, “If you want to offend somebody, nobody took those words away from you… Look, if these are the confines that keep you from doing the craft God put you to, then it probably ain’t for you.”
With “Problematic,” Burnham echoes another point Williams made: “Growth is part of being an adult.” The comedian rings in his 30th birthday on camera for the special, a milestone that for many means, “it’s time to really grow up.” When The A.V. Club interviewed him in 2009, he said he talked about sex often because “sexual things are funny,” with the self-awareness that “when you get too old, it just becomes creepy and dirty… It’s fun to see a little kid play with things that are so out of his head. It’s morbidly entertaining.” Bo Burnham knows he’s too old to make crude jokes about having sex with women, he knew that at 19.
If Inside represents Burnham’s return to comedy, it’s also his moment of reckoning with the people who were the targets of his early jokes—women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community. After taking five years off from stand-up, he comes back older, much wiser, and with some necessary apologies. He’s no longer the 16-year-old suburbanite immersed in a world of comedy ruled by white men saying jokes without thinking about who’s at the other end of them. If Burnham wished, he could delete the YouTube videos and every syllable of problematic jokes with them, but he knows that’s not the solution. Internet sleuths would dig all of it up anyways. He chooses to be a better version of himself and address it head-on, in typical effective, self-deprecating fashion.
205 Comments
Nothing wrong with confronting your old material but when you have places like the AVClub whose business model now seems to go through a celebrity’s past like a lawyer looking for anything that they did that you can hashtag and make a career destroying scandal out of, don’t you think less people will want to risk admitting to past mistakes? An artist evolving is great but when there’s someone on the sidelines who profits off their shaming, that’s problematic too.
“Growth is part of being an adult.” so when a white man does it it is good but when Ellie offers an apology for something she doesn’t owe anyone an apology for, that is bad. Cool. Nice double standards in the AV club ranks this week.
I don’t understand this comment. AVClub wrote an article on her acknowledgement. Nothing in that article indicated that it was bad?https://www.avclub.com/ellie-kemper-finally-releases-statement-on-veiled-proph-1847048817
I think characterizing her statement as “finally…” was a bit leaning.
Wrong business model. AVC isn’t really doing the lawyer thing. Someone else does that, and if it’s “interesting”, they’ll do a story on it, as will hundreds of other sites.
Also, don’t blame the internet. The 24-hour news cycle and its voracious appetite for content started long before AOL reached critical mass.
You work for them or something, Chief?
There have always been National Enquirer style gossip mags but they didn’t pretend to be anything but that. AVClub feels like they’re commenting on something they’re deeply a part of without bringing that up. Or maybe they’re so vain they don’t see the song is about them.
You’re in the wrong aisle. CNN is your go-to example here, not a tabloid.
Ask Gawker how that worked out.
Well yes, but the internet (particularly social media sites like Twitter) made it possible for any old cyber sleuth to rake through old stuff and start the next hashtag. Used to be you had to get a job writing for a tabloid rag or at least back in the pre-social days, a site like TMZ.
And you’d have needed an ENG team with tens of thousands of dollars in equipment to cover Tahrir Square. Or a full distribution network to circulate pop culture snark at the back of a satirical newspaper.This interminable central-casting bitch fest about a now fully mature and irreversible epistemic shift in language and communications technology is so fucking pointless, while at the same time such an innate part of online conversation that it’s like the internet’s appendix, and you’re welcome, A.V. Club, for my small part in boosting the site’s participation metrics.
Still two completely different business models.
he’s said multiple slurs in all of his specials, it’s not digging into his past. why are you defending someone so hard who also apologized for that?
What about this article read as “career destroying” to you?
I know this site’s been trending this way for a while, but this week especially, it’s stopped feeling like an entertainment site, and started feeling like a visit to the morality police, so I might have remove to my bookmark and stop visiting for the first time since 2001. That’s okay! Things change. I guess I just miss when AVClub was moral *and* funny at the same time.
(Except for the 1-2 remaining good writers)
And at least one of those doesn’t technically work for the site anymore.
I think I’m done too. Tried to make a clean break before, after the Kinjapocalypse and writer exodus, but the site still filled a niche in my life. Lately though, I just feel like I’m getting lectured by a bunch of snotty kids whose claim on the moral high ground is tenuous at best and outright disingenuous and malicious at worst, and whatever charm used to exist here feels long, long gone.
All of these fuckers have their higher than thou stance on every fucking subject that comes across their lap desk. What I wouldn’t give for someone to dig up some old dirt on these writers and expose them for the worthless shrills they are. Nobody is without regret, it is how you face your past indiscretions that make you the person you are. If you keep pretending you were woke your entire life and never said anything problematic, then you probably have a lot of people to apologize to.
It’s ass-backwards is what it is. You’re supposed to do the purges and struggle sessions and gulags AFTER the revolution, not before
but her you are. Clicking and commenting.
The only reason these people think they have the moral highground is because they’ve done fuck-all with their lives, so they’ve never exposed themselves to any sort of potential moral quandary. Rather than come to terms with the fact that they lead a sad, meaningless existence, they portray it as moral superiority. It’s insecurity masked as purity. Hey, that rhymes.
I love the taste of projection.
Oh snap!
this just sounds like you were/are a sh*t person and feel bad when people apologize for the things you’ve done yourself
They were just reporting on a song HE wrote. Whats your issue?
You’re not alone, friend.Lots of happy memories commenting on week-to-week episode recaps of all the great prestige TV shows. I’ll miss all the thoughtful discussions. Same with new music reviews, which are mostly non-existent at this point.
Hell, on watch throughs of old shows I still come back to comment and read the reviews (Mad Men and Halt and Catch Fire both have great reviews on here, and had great commenting communities, same with The Americans).Now….
Yes, I do the same! And happy to hear someone else appreciates Halt and Catch Fire as much as I do! It’s nice to still get notifications from time to time for upvotes or comments from others on old posts of mine from those reviews. Wish it happened more often!
This page is a good page. The Ellie Kemper one was not.
Bye!
This article seemed to upset some people enough so that they feel the need to announce that they won’t be reading this site like anyone gives a fuck.
These comments seemed to upset brontosaurian enough so that they felt the need to announce that like anyone gives a fuck.congrats on being a loser.
Not an airport, no need to announce your departure folks.
All you’re really saying is “Don’t criticize something that doesn’t bother me.”
Nobody’s asking you to care. But I’ve been reading and commenting on this site for a long, long time, and I do feel a bit obligated to say goodbye. Honestly I find their decline rather sad, and leaving here feels sad, too. I’ll miss talking to some people here.
I GOT NOWHERE ELSE TO GO *sobs*
In other sectors they call it user research or feedback and will set you back a few grand, they should be glad they do it for free.
losers who will still definitely be reading this site
It wasn’t for Katie, Ignatiy and Dowd, I would have stopped visiting this shitshow ages ago.
I may be on an island here, but I love Jesse and I hate how he never gets included on the“people who are too good to still be here” list.
He’s my favourite, I particularly appreciate his participation in the comments sections. He really kicked some ass in the comments of a ScorseseMarvel article (by another contributor) recently too.
I like Jesse too! He’s a really thoughtful reviewer. I guess there are quite a few good writers left on this site but it’s a shame they’re not front-and-centre any more.
Yeah. I like Jesse H, Tom B, and Mike DA too.
Vago and Breihan make it worth it, too.
On one hand, I understand that white media is going through this (for them) intense reckoning/accusation-evasion mode in which they have to seek out and repent their part in The System, which no doubt leads to a melancholy, sombre tone, which even if they wished to correct it is being produced on a shoestring budget that does not admit of extensive re-drafting. On the other, it’s maddening that everything has to be filtered through the lens of moral judgement by people self-appointed for that task. The obvious consequence, it seems to me, is to stop reading criticism. There are very few critics of substance anyway. As Trevanian once put it, there are critics and then there are reviewers of varying levels of diction. I don’t need it. I used to want to read it, because I loved movies, books, and shows so much. But now I can’t even get that. I can only get what some scuffling j-school pieceworker thinks about the ethical virtues of the artist.
It almost reads like parody, a Gen X’er making fun of Zoomers. Such much tut tuting
Um, don’t let the door hit you?
An article about a guy having his own reckoning is the one that feels like the morality police to you…?
Right? How does someone else acknowledging problematic things about their own past threaten you? Why is this the thing that is driving some people over the edge?
Seriously, if you’re going to storm out of here there are so many better ways to do it. (Including not trying to get attention for it.)
lol, piss off
Thank Christ, one less person whining about the PC police.
I’m super PC! I’m just not sure the tone of voice this publication takes now is the best advert for PC. For me it’s a tone-of-voice problem, not a problem with the points-of-view. And the increasing vapidity of the analysis.
you sound like those people who wouldn’t vote for bernie cause he was “kind of stern”
Ah so you’re tone policing than…
I love how there’s a buzzword for every type of perceivably objectionable behavior now. It’s not that I object to anyone’s opinion, it’s that I don’t even understand what they’re saying, and I’m not going to bother googling some made up term to find out. We had names for objectionable behavior before 2010, people! Stop trying to impress people with your command of fancy new nomenclature. Because, as James Carville will tell you, the vast majority of the country doesn’t use that terminology (Ex: LatinX…”Surveys of Hispanic and Latino Americans have found that most prefer other terms such as Hispanic and Latina/Latino to describe themselves, and that only 2 to 3 percent use Latinx.”) and may not even understand what you’re talking about.If you, and I don’t mean this to pick on the specific person I’m replying to, are carrying such a big fucking torch for showing folks the right way to be, perhaps try speaking plainly and without trying to use some recently minted two-word combo, or compound word, recently added to the PC glossary.“Gate keeping” “Tone policing” “virtue signalling”….it’s like that episode of Friends where all the girls read the same New Age book and start speaking a silly made up buzzword language. “Be your own windkeeper, Rachel!”
then* 😉
Some of us like entertainment stories with more substance, like this one. I wasn’t aware of Bo Burnham’s earliest work being problematic, so much of this was news to me. Oh, and AV Club isn’t an airport, so you don’t have to announce your departure. 😉
Some authors here have definitely disappeared up their own asses and the tabloid feel of the place has been getting stronger and stronger (and god knows I’ve been ranting about it), but I don’t think it’s possible to write an analysis of Bo Burnham’s Inside without talking about the intersection between anything-goes comedy and moral responsibility. It’s a major theme of the work, and he’s one of the biggest people in the industry at the moment.This is exactly what I want more of at the AV Club: intelligent pop culture analysis that meaningfully engages with media and places it in a larger context.
A comedian puts out an (apparently) thoughtful analysis of his career and past. A pop culture website covers it. That’s a bridge too far for you? And there’s a reason that issues of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc have come to the fore: those issues are pervasive and systemic. We just had racists storm the capital. Shit, we just had an openly, sincerely, bigoted president. Weinstein and Cosby, lords of the entertainment industry for decades, are now in jail for their crimes. What sort of crappy website would ignore these issues?
Wait, racists stormed Canberra? Odd way to to say “elected”.This has been a service informing Americans that they’re not the only ones on the internet.
MAKE AV CLUB FUN AGAIN
What did it for me was the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp divorce. I got no particular dog in that fight, but I noticed that when Amber looked like the victim AVC had an article almost every single day toward that narrative. Evidence comes out that she’s not such an innocent angel? This site abruptly drops its coverage completely.
this site was never good, but the shift to full cultural grievance-farming is a new low. I don’t think anyone actually likes it, but it’s an easy way to promote products without offending the sponsors. can’t we just get back to sperging over children’s entertainment??
it’s really funny how much this website just plays the comment section like a fiddle. i’ve come all the way around and love these kinds of articles now.
Church.
This real sincere writing was a fucking…
It was like seeing my mom explain jokes to a youth pastor who doesn’t know what Netflix is while a gay college freshman mumbles mean tweets under their breath and also they can’t read.
There’s no morality here, just an elaborate fucking stage play that borrows words from things that have a sense of morality.
If we want complex evaluations of things, they probably shouldn’t come from the people who are happy to see Bo fuckin’ Burnham finally take personal responsibility for being a comedian.
He was projecting the cross shit and telling basic jokes and dis bitch is like “yes. yes. yes. put him on the cross and I will forgive him but put him on the cross. Yes.”
God. Fuckin. Dammit.
This ain’t cancel culture.
This an ugly fuckin’ mutant that only wants to recognize other ugly fuckin’ mutants.
Oh, are we at the airport? Are we declaring departures now?
Any time an article block quotes a line from a stand-up special or a comedy song or something as if it’s some official statement it’s immediately a turn-off from me. It’s just stripping away all context and meaning to re-contextualize a small piece of something as part of whatever narrative the writer is trying to present.
It has truly become the AV 700 Club.
His time would be better spent shaving those ugly pits.
Just watched it this morning. Buried in the “White Woman’s Instagram” bit is the most overt nod to the overall theme:
“I can’t believe it
It’s been a decade since you’ve been gone
Momma, I miss you
I miss sitting with you in the front yard
Still figuring out how to keep living without you
It’s got a little better, but it’s still hard
Momma, I got a job I love and my own apartment
Momma, I got a boyfriend, and I’m crazy about him
Your little girl didn’t do too bad
Momma, I love you. Give a hug and kiss to Dad” Of the few (and that isn’t a knock, at all) things I took from it, one theme was that the Internet has occasional moments of real, genuine feeling, and most of the people expressing that feeling just want to feel less alone in the world. It just generates a toxic soup that poisons the entire endeavor (or seems to).
that part took me from laughing and smiling, to having chills up and down my arms in awe of what he had just done. it really takes talent to lampoon something while still recognizing the humanity of the person you are poking fun at.
Yep. It’s fascinating in a way, as you’re seeing one of the earliest “content creators” reflecting on the toxic and terrible thing that has become. And he does it in an incredibly thoughtful way. Caught me completely off guard, multiple times. I was not prepared for this, and I mean that in the best way.
I thought the joke was also that this genuine sentiment is also a recognizable IG trope and deeply out of place in the context
Works on that level as well.
Bingo: that part of the song really stuck me in the same way. I also think it was a smart way for Burnham to undercut his own snarky song by displaying genuine pathos and empathy smack in the middle of a parody. That’s a difficult line to walk, and he does it very deftly here.
Yeah, like…I did *not* expect the AVClub to sleep on this one.
At that point in the song the frame widens, I think, to indicate that genuine sentiment is being presented, but then narrows again when what’s being said falls back into cliche and performative emotion.
Good call. He also changes the aspect ratio during this bit. As it starts it goes from instagram square to fullscreen as it displays genuine sentiment and then as it becomes more perfomative about how well she’s doing it returns to instagram square.Also Welcome to the Internet and That Funny Feeling are the same song.
Bo Burnham comes across as a nice enough guy that I’m going to feel bad when I find out he ate, like, a bunch of people.
Smart move to basically be the one owning the narrative rather than reacting to a Twitter callout from randoms. Which makes me curious as to why he hasn’t been on the receiving end of one of those (or maybe he had and blew over).I always thought this guy was just Tosh O’s little brother who was really into musical theater but Make Happy was very good. Looking forward to watching this.
Be warned, Inside is very good but only tenuously a “comedy” special. It’s more of a depressing arthouse film about living during a pandemic lockdown.
There are definitely some outright comedy moments (White Girl’s Instagram, The nested reviews), but there is a pervading sense of darkness throughout. I kept thinking of Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette, and both specials’ positioning as a form of comedy while having long stretches of serious material with no punchline.Was it just dark comedy with a lot of scene setting? I would certainly refer to it as a comedy special, but maybe it’s actually an essay film? A lot of great comedy specials are basically essay films.
It’s very good. It’s like he’s burning his old self down to emerge from the ashes (of his old self and the incredibly bad 1.5 years past) anew.
Not being problematic enough, then? I guess the bar is higher than sexist jokes and lower than attending a ball with a problematic history. Why anyone wants to be famous is truly beyond me.
But literally projecting a cross on to himself is a bit on the nose, don’t you think?
I can’t really jump into someone else’s psychology, but maybe this line of thinking is not so much reflexive on some future reckoning, and more a result of the hopeful maturation that people can do as adults. It could have elements of both.
Good old Bo, another of those brave souls pushing against the restrictive, traditional cliches of comedy, like “telling jokes” and “actually being funny in any way whatsoever”.
Oh go watch some then, like Netflix isn’t full of the tiresome “jokes” routines
I’ve been anxiously awaiting an AV Club review of Inside, and this is all that’s posted about it? A superficial take on a single, relatively minor song, that doesn’t seem to fully understand the broader themes of the special or this song’s place within it?
Yeah, this review doesn’t really touch on any of the pathos, themes, etc. It’s worth a watch.
The author seems to think that the cross projected onto him is meant to be taken literally, as if it wasn’t satire meant to examine the melodramatic apologies that follow a celebrity being “canceled.” And this coming from a blog that started as a supplement to The Onion…
That said, I’m glad this post exists so I can see what people are saying about the special. It’s definitely one of the more interesting viewing experiences that I’ve had recently.
I was wondering if this even was the review. Cuz… yeah, it’s not much of a review.
Yeah, this article sucks. “Inside” was excellent. This take on it is…pretty shit.The writer accurately points out how central “white fragility” is to this special, that part’s true: it’s about how self-important and nearsighted white people are when they have the luxury of ennui, how pandemic isolation fed into this tendency. (“Why do you fucking white people always turn every sociopolitical crisis into a platform for your own self-actualization?!”)How is it not obvious how this theme plays into “Problematic”? It’s not a genuine statement of contrition, it’s an absurd and hyperbolic exercise in personal vanity, obsessing over your own past as if the world thinks you’re as important as you do. He literally likens himself to Christ on the cross because he “dressed like Aladdin when he was 17, and he didn’t darken his skin or anything, but it feels weird in hindsight.” It’s not an apology anthem, it’s absurd satire of white guilt and fears over cancel culture.
I think your take is much closer to what Burnham was going for with this song than this article’s breakdown. He’s isolated in his room during quarantine and is face to face with his depression, some of which seemingly comes from strong feelings of regret from things he’s done in the past: and he has a desire to express this in the special. But he simultaneously recognizes the self-obsession and privilege he has to even have the ability to put out a special, carte blanche on Netflix, so his whole “Like A Prayer” bombast in this song shows the absurdity of a celebrity like him throwing himself at the mercy of public judgment for his teenage jokes, as if he committed mortal sins making his silly piano joke songs.
Yeah, the apology is clearly the shot of him being disgusted watching himself. It was a more powerful apology than some explicit, overt verbal statement would have been. The song that follows is satirizing those exact statements and attempts to play the victim or martyr that can happen when celebrities go too far with those apologies. Anyone coming away from watching this thinking that Burnham isn’t ashamed and embarrassed of the more awful shit he put out when he was still a literal kid is really missing the point.(PLUS in the song he literally days he wrote offensive shit, said it, and regrets it, and then pointedly notes that his youth wasn’t an excuse.)
The reactions from the sites I expect it most form have been laughably terrible. But hey, another YA movie to tackle or a mediocre Flash episode is more important.Nothing but an average blog
I definitely interpreted that song as being more about the never-ending need for public figures to scourge themselves for past jokes and missteps, and the near religious fervor for people having completely unproblematic pasts.the fact that this over the top and goofy imagery was interpreted at face value… is genuinely concerning.
Have you seen how this site and its sisters have dragged Ellie Kemper through the mud for being a well off white woman who grew up in Missouri and did wealthy white woman in Missouri things? This is some pretty blatant sexism on AVC’s part. Patting the self aware man on the back while they encourage the KKKeper nickname by purposefully misrepresenting that whole ordeal.
yes, and I’m thoroughly pleased that so many different people are incensed over this dogshit.
Kemper waits about a week to respond to an event in her past and the AV club literally says “Finally.” Burnham waits about 15 years and the AV Club says he is “begging viewers to hold him accountable for his wrongdoings as a teenager in the public eye.” Such bullshit.
I mean, honestly, it’s mostly just random. I wouldn’t chalk it up to sexism as much as the writers here having no actual principles and just being tasked with coming up with some lightning rod ‘take’ about everything. This is just where they ended up on these two topics. If a Twitter thread went viral a week ago about Burnham’s past, this article would absolutely, 100% be critical of him and his apology.
It is somewhat random, but also completely shitty and deserving of being called out for what it is. There is no reason to drag Ellie on this topic and not even touch the fact that it is still happening and hundreds of people attended in 2019, all of whom nobody cares about because they’re not on TV. https://www.laduenews.com/society/veiled-prophet-ball-2019-pt-i/collection_502907e4-9ab5-562d-a7b3-50d9b8bf33bd.html#7
I haven’t seen it but that’s the feeling I was getting even from the description.He projects a sacrificial cross onto himself, begging viewers to hold him accountable for his wrongdoings as a teenager in the public eyeWhen people see that and think, “Oh, good for him for owning up for his mistakes” then satire is truly dead.
Yeah, I haven’t seen the special and I’m not a fan of Burnham, but, uh, literally invoking martyr imagery while ‘owning up’ to past mistakes feels very tongue in cheek, but nuance is not this site’s strong suit in 2021 where the median IQ of most of the staff seems to be 79.
if you like any kind of experimental or art-house cinema, I highly recommend the special. it’s a really thoughtful exploration of what it is like to be a human in 2021 with some incredible shot composition and editing. it was the first and only (so far) thing I’ve seen from him and I was blown away.it’s also nothing like the garbage bullshit mentioned in the article.
Maybe I’ll check it out. For what it’s worth, Eighth Grade was one of my favorite movies of that year so it’s possible he isn’t as annoying as his ‘musical comedian’ shtick would suggest.
I avoided his work precisely for that reason, because twee musical comedy is not my thing. this is very much not that.haven’t yet seen eight grade, but I’ve heard that the same themes of “offline vs online” and “authenticity vs artiface” he explored in that movie continue in his special.
Both are worth watching in my opinion, I will be keeping an eye on his future work as well. Glad he was able to grow as well as he has and not turned into another unwatchable hack.
I thought he was annoying as shit in his early YouTube days, but his recent work has been stellar. This is no exception, the transparency of his mental health was very welcome and the lighting design was top notch.
I remember reading a tweet-thread years ago arguing that art that requires a non-literal interpretation is inherently elitist and problematic, even racist often. I remember thinking at the time time how silly and fringe that person sounded, and now I just laugh…
I remember reading a tweet-thread years ago arguing that art that requires a non-literal interpretation is inherently elitist and problematic, even racist often.Dude, I found out the other week that math is racist, so I’m not surprised art is in trouble.
I think it’s a mix of both. A lot of Bo’s work, at least in my opinion, is less literal than it’s interpreted. Clearly a lot of the imagery/lyricism in this song (being crucified, begging for forgiveness, demanding someone to hold him accountable…) was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. To me, it read as a critique of celebrities self-flagellating in order to avoid being “canceled.”
But I also think that he does feel a disconnect to his past work, or maybe even some shame about it. I mean, who didn’t make questionable jokes in their youth…but imagine having that sort of stuff be the springboard for your whole career? I think what has separated Bo Burnham from other comedians (and what has made him into one of my favorite performers generally) is his ability to mature from his past work without ignoring it or excusing it away. If he was still writing songs like “My Whole Family…” it might be different. It also helps a lot that (as he mentions in the song) he’s never done anything illegal or particularly “wrong” aside from making a bunch of stupid jokes when he was younger. By all accounts, he actually sounds like a pretty cool and genuine guy.
So, essentially: The whole thing is clearly not as sincere as the AV Club interpreted it. And I don’t even particularly think that he has anything to apologize for because he’s always been tongue-in-cheek; a lot of the “problematic” lyrics referenced in the article were also clearly satirical. But I do think in a less severe and self-indulgent way he is definitely moving on from all that Youtube-era stuff.
I think there is an interesting discussion to be had about what he’s apparently trying to do here (Haven’t watched it yet). Is he mocking or agreeing? The cross imagery makes me thing it’s more of the former but…tbd
I was shocked to see that the AV Club apparently took that completely seriously. Buncha slack-jawed morons over here.
This special is a lot of things: Cute. Pretty looking. Clever. Not dangerous. Emotional. An NPR Hard On. Horny for the Capitol Steps. But comedy? Ha ha ha. No.
It’s funny, not pure stand up hilarity, but that’s not what it’s going for.
Not all comedy is jokes, not by a long shot
is it funny like the Nannette lady was supposed to be? Because several years and attempts later I still have no understanding of the concept of “comedy” being bandied about in relation to that person/special/juggernaut , and I KNOW COMEDY!(/s)
Uh oh, it’s the comedy police y’all.
nestled in between all of the jokes about white women’s Instagram accounts
This thing where white male comedians poke fun at white women for being problematic is kinda funny when there’s no shortage of problematic young white male social media stars who could use a good punch in the face.Michelle Wolf still does the best bit on punching up I’ve seen in a while.
I can’t believe I waited a full week for a full avclub take on that special and this is what we got. Inside dealt with so many different themes, personal struggles, and existential questions – it feels weird to use “Problematic,” a song that felt mostly tongue-in-cheek, as a benchmark for the whole show. I mean, asking if he should burn his Aladdin costume? It’s such a fruitless and empty exercise, and that’s his point, right? In the next verse, he apologizes for the lyrics from the previous verse, saying that he shouldn’t make excuses for himself – and this being a self-contained song (and not a week-long celeb response to bad PR), he could have easily rewritten it, right? To me, the special as a whole made a point that he didn’t want to do that stuff anymore, by the very nature that it didin’t have that stuff in it. But apologizing for past behavior? Yeah that wasn’t my read on it so much.
This article doesn’t have a letter grade. It isn’t the “review”. It’s an essay about the topic the essayist wants it to be.
oh, thanks for the clarification! this is a bad ESSAY.
your first problem is dedicating your life to what a website has to say about something. there are so many other articles about the special.
This song deftly threads the needle of expressing Bo’s genuine regrets from his past, and his fear of eventual public retribution, while also parodying the overwrought, prostrate pleas for public forgiveness from celebrities when their past insensitive statements or jokes are brought to light. Not an easy thing to do, but this is about as close as somebody like him could have done.
This has so many mistakes I’m not surprised it’s from the AVClub, his jokes when he was a teen were mostly not “problematic” and the target wasnt gays blacks women etc. When he asks for forgiveness he is performing and he even revealed that he doesn’t even really think that, also he never said he would like to delete the earlier videos.Hope the clicks were worth selling your soul once more to the morality police
Can the Kinja engineers develop a way to block certain commenters? I’m getting tired of the “AVClub isn’t as good as it used to be” or “AVClub should have written it this way” responses. Every article has at least one circle-jerk of these self-congratulating know-it-alls. Just stop it. You are boring.
Seriously, what do they want a refund?
Can the Kinja engineers develop a way to block certain commenters? STORY TIME!Kinja was one of Nick Denton’s babies, back in the Gawker days, and the lack of blocking functionality was a feature, not a bug. Because if you can just block assholes, then you won’t ENGAGE with those assholes in the comments. That means fewer clicks, and Denton NEEDED them clicks, so he engineered the most troll-friendly commenting platform he could think of to ensure repeat engagement.TL;DR version: the reason why Kinja doesn’t have a block feature is because Nick Denton is a fucking hack who should never again be allowed near a media outlet of any size, shape, or form.
> Nick Denton is a fucking hack who should never again be allowed near a media outlet of any size, shape, or form.Yes to this. Regardless of Peter Thiel’s shittiness as a human and the bullshit way in which Gawker went down, Nick Denton is an asshole.
Just goes to show ya: if you’re trying to swing on a 500-lb gorilla, DON’T FUCKING MISS.
Why are people not allowed to talk about the decline of this website and what it has become? Why should we have to shut up and not have our voices listened to about what we see as a major decline in a website that we loved? The editors seemingly don’t care to engage the mostly negative (and valid) feedback that is posted on most articles these days and the blame should lie with them.Maybe there would be less of these comments you dislike if any of that feedback being provided by their current community was either acknowledged or given any sort of a response, instead of everyone pretending that things are fine.
This special was intermittently clever and sometimes funny (internet song, video game stream), but really irritated me with its smugness. I know the narcissism was largely unavoidable (and also the point), but even 90 minutes of Burnham’s self-impressed post-post-ironic preening is too much.Also, I found the contrast between the ostensibly shabby DIY production and the actual, very polished result kind of jarring, diluting some of the authenticity for me.
There’s a bit of acting yes. He wasn’t really imploding if he was able to do the layering of images, sounds, and sharp editing all by himself. It was, in that sense, overwrought. However it does feel like he made a tremendous amount of stuff and got it to flow properly. I think Burnham showcased the range of his abilities (which is really the point, as one of his self-lacerating remarks told us) and if it was easy to do, there would be others doing equally good solo stuff.
Also, I found the contrast between the ostensibly shabby DIY production
and the actual, very polished result kind of jarring, diluting some of
the authenticity for me.
I find this interesting mostly because it dovetails with a sentiment I saw a lot during the pandemic whenever a celebrity did Zoom interviews, which was “why are they just using shitty webcams in an ugly living room, don’t they know how to make a camera look decent?”And the answer is of course they know how to make a camera look decent. They’re keeping everything ugly for the presumed authenticity it brings.Bo Burnham is a professional. He started out making his own YouTube videos, he’s done multiple comedy specials that rely heavily on complex audio-visual production, and he wrote and directed a feature film that won plenty of awards. Taking his apartment and making it look professional and polished as all hell is perfectly authentic for his skill set.
To be fair, most “celebrities” are actors. They normally have whole teams of people handling things like lighting, hair, makeup, etc. They have no clue how to light a scene or make their home look production ready. Hell, asking them to install meeting software and click into a virtual meeting is more than they’re used to.
Not compared to professionals who specialize in those positions, but at least most of the actors I’ve worked with have a working understanding of various lenses (helps for knowing when you’re in and out of the frame), lighting (it’s hard not to learn something about lighting given all the attention paid to it on set aimed directly at you), audio (it’s not hard to figure out where mics are supposed to go when they’re always either pointed at you or hidden on you), etc. And while high-end actors have teams taking care of everything for them, most of them didn’t start out at the top and have probably had to do their own makeup at some point in their careers.At a minimum, just about every actor with any experience I’ve met has understood basic three-point lighting and knew which lenses flattered them.
Agreed on getting them to install some software, though.
If this is your experience then that’s interesting but that’s very far from the truth from the actors I’ve been on set with. They are predominantly hapless and egotistical, and must be carefully managed like children. Very rarely do they pay any interest to the jobs the rest of the crew are doing. Pretty much as you’d expect.
I love how at no point in this article do they comment on whether his special was good…or bad…or worth watching.They used the special to talk about what they wanted which is BS scandal crap from 15 years ago and apology blah blah garbage
I saw the word “unfunny”
It was…unfunny…but I also don’t think it’s a “comedy” special…I loved it though..I couldn’t look away…visuals were great, the 1 man choreography and lighting was fantastic and many of the songs had deep thoughtful, sometimes funny lyrics Its an odd genre…not comedy. but to say it’s unfunny don’t watch is unfair…it’s a hell of a special…something or other. Worth the watch
“Unfunny” isn’t fair and is me being snarky. I never found Bo Burnham “funny.” Nor do I find Gallagher or the Love Guru funny, but Mike Myers definitely thought he was making a comdedy. A better question is “is it intended to be funny?”Spoken word is a thing. I was a big fan of Henry Rollins when he did that. And I think “one man show” can be an excellent descriptor.
We cal it cabaret in Holland, what Bo does is a whole genre over here. Singing, joking, and then going into serious shit cause life isn’t just games.
Make Happy was borderline not comedy too, though not to this extent.I thought Inside was wonderful.
You seem to be under the impression that the AV Club is a site for pop-cultural analysis and reviews, but really it’s a gossip column.
So you’re just trolling on everything article now? That sounds fulfilling.
Hi, Bronty, sweetums! I see you’re still spreading your…special…brand of lacklustre bitterness and endless desire for validation around!
But we’re all so glad you could turn up! I’m still not paying you rent for living in your head, by the way.
Also, I’d stop criticising people in the comments. At least they’re here for the content of the website and have actually read the contents of the article and thus are contributing to the comments, whereas you are merely all over here whinging about the people commenting on the article’s content (or lack of content, if we’re being specific). Which begs the question, if you could block all the comments you hate and build the echo chamber you so desire, what would you do all day? Far as any one can tell (or care about), this is the only thing keeping you going.Without me, your life is meaningless! Well, more meaningless.Now fuck off. Adults are talking.
It’s an essay / analysis, not a review, which is why it’s not under the reviews section.
“Snark without substance” is basically AVC’s business model.
So? Its a big part of the show, and worth discussion.Do you really need everything you read tell you “Thing good, watch it,” or “thing bad, skip it” with no room for deeper discussion or nuance?It would seem so.
You say “owns up”But ignored the show, didn’t review it, didn’t really get it, or care to go into any depth about it But you focused on “owning up” I used to recommend you to friends, this website is just a gossip rag now
Seriously? That’s your review? “Inside” tore me apart like no other work of art has in the past… I dunno… decade maybe? Longer? I honestly can’t think of anything that’s effected me more on an emotional level, and your take away was “I’m glad Bo apologized for being an asshole.” So disappointing.
So, it’s Kosher for you guys to use the term white as if it’s a slur all by itself, and be generally mean and insulting to everybody in the orbit who isn’t up to date on exactly what the Democrat Party platform happens to be, that week—and you get to do this, nauseatingly, often, while maintaining your own sense of security and offense—but someone, anyone, else must scour the bottoms of their career, and their life, to extract all the information that comes up red to you Morality Police.When will you, for example, “have to do” a big, life-Ending apology tour for everything you’ve ever done? I would be satisfied if you just stopped doing it.But I guess that’s the difference, between you guys and me (and People, like me): You want people destroyed for things in their past, no matter what-ever they do today, and I just want you to stop, now. And be good in the future.
When is the AV Club going to own up to the problematic choice of giving a platform to a misogynistic bigot like Steve Harvey?
If you’re going to talk about Inside, talk about more than one song.
Wouldn’t defend any of Burnham’s jokes from when he was 16, but 16 year olds say shitty things, and to put that on him — from a time when he couldn’t legally drink or vote and still lived with his parents — is too easy. The systems that elevated a 16-year-old saying shitty things (who gives a teenager a record deal and a TV special) and that encouraged him (who keeps putting Family Guy on the air) are the culprits. You don’t have to say “it was different then” or try to get a free pass to recognize there are different levels of culpability involved.
Not every joke has to be in good taste. Has there been any discussion of the New Yorker strike on here? That seems important to me. But at least Bo Burnham has come clean. I can check that off my concern list!
He absolutely did not own up to it. Most of the song is apologising for wearing an Aladdin costume where he explicitly states it was just the costume and not brown face. It’s such a limp attempt to appear like he’s owning his past with out reckoning with anything truly bad he might have done (whether public knowledge or not). Ellie Kemper did much more in relation to something she shouldn’t even have to apologise for.
ughhhhh -_-
There needed to be a Bojack Horseman episode where Princess Caroline tries to find something socially/culturally insensitive in his past so he can further improve his standing amongst the baying twitter hordes via unnecessary contrition. “You didn’t once play an Arabian horse?”
I feel like the bridge of the song really sums it up, however:And I’ve been totally awful
My closet is chock-full of stuff that is vaguely shitty
All of it was perfectly lawful
Just not very thoughtful at all and just really shittyWhat, precisely, should Bo Burnham be owning up to? SHOULD he burn that Aladdin costume? What does it take to “make amends”? That’s what he’s grappling with in the song, I think – albeit with a comedic edge.
Something actually problematic. Otherwise this song is just him humblebragging about not actually being problematic.
imagine watching a comedy special only to see whether or not they adequately ate crow for past sins that you’re not even aware of them actually committing. if missing the point is an art form, hang this in a museum.
I’m not watching a comedy show for that reason. The Bo Burnham special had nothing I watch a comedy special for (funny jokes), unfortunately. But I am reading an article that praises him for doing that, when he actually did the opposite.
it’s always great to read takes from people who insist on proving that they don’t really get what’s going on
Something actually problematic. Otherwise this song is just him humblebragging about not actually being problematic. I…you seem to have missed the point, though?One point was not that he’s trying to actually “come clean.” The point is that every last one of us has done inordinately shitty (and perfectly legal) things to people, and that it comes into focus when you attain a bit of celebrity. And while I don’t sympathize much with that aspect, I like the implications of the overall piece.We’ve ALL done shitty things. We’ve all lashed out, or treated someone badly (when they didn’t deserve it, to be clear), we’ve all been selfish. And anyone who tells you that they haven’t is a fucking liar.
“I…you seem to have missed the point, though?”No, I get the point. The point is just unimpressive, not worthy of praise (and *gasp*, borderline problematic). Just a heads up for the future; people can *get* points and still disagree with them.If Bo Burnham’s response to Me Too was “Institutional sexism affects everyone, even me. I have a since to confess, I once gave a box of expensive candies to a woman who didn’t want it” we’d recognise he’s either a) lying, b) downplaying his own behaviour so he can get the cred of being progressive without actually having to own up to his past or c) cluelessly doesn’t get it.So what is it in this situation, is he lying, saying “everyone has a problematic past” but downplaying his own so he can pretend to own up to it but not really, or cluelessly doesn’t understand the issue but still wants to make it about him?
Mathew… everything you think is problematic, from cultural appropriation to Halloween costumes, is a problem so minor that normal people don’t even have time to notice it, or it pales in comparison to their real problems.That’s why it’s so relatable and funny to the average person to mock you. You’re all invariably highly privileged, well-educated (and usually white) people who don’t have enough serious problems to understand what is a serious problem and what simply doesn’t matter.
I think this reply will be deleted by the mods… But could someone explain why Aladdin is ‘problematic’? It depicts an Arab from a few hundred years ago – no one dresses like that anymore. What is the ‘cultural appropriation’? I’m Irish but I speak a bit of Arabic and have lived in Jordan. No Arab person that hasn’t become Americanised by the internet would give a flying flute about this. I understand the concept within American society, especially for black people, but otherwise it represents the base ignorance of Americans attempting to good.
I think it’s significantly less vain then you are making it out to be. I didn’t get the vibe that he was putting all that much of himself into the song or actually asking for any kudos. It thought it was him making fun of the people who aggressively self-martyr for their own ego. Which is why he crucified himself with the cross of light in an 80’s training montage.It’s from the same detached observational perspective as “White Woman’s Instagram”
The article says he’s owning up to it, he never claimed he did anything of a sorts.
My current theory is that anyone who managed to come back from being cancelled was never really cancelled in the first place.
Kevin Spacey?
oh my lord he wore an Aladdin costume nevermind burn him alive please
Kemper did basically nothing but release an apology she didn’t even write herself, and she has a LOT to be sorry for. What the fuck are you talking about?
That was the point haha, he’s making fun of you over-serious dunces
What is wrong with wearing an Aladdin costume? Please explain. I am lost on this one!
Both you and this article are misinterpreting that song. It’s not about bo owning up to his past. Its commentary on the way celebrities rush to “own up” to their past while minimizing their actions, as well as how the public rushes to condemn people who’s actions weren’t really that bad.
Yikes. There are a couple of levels of irony you’re missing here.1) This performative display to hold him accountable is a joke about how nobody has tried to cancel him yet, so he’s being a “martyr” and performatively cancelling himself so people can see what a “great guy” he is.2) The actual things he did wrong are clearly not that big a deal, but he’s playing them up like he did some unforgivable sins, and he wants you to nail him to the cross for it. Hence the jesus imagery.That you missed this all and just said: “Wow, Bo Burnham is woke now. We stan. This is why cancel culture is good.” is… it’s something.
Burnham, Burnham, Bo Burnham,
banana-fana fo-furnham,
mee mi mo murnham …
… Burnham!
Whatever world you inhabit, where the key takeaway from Bo Burnham’s show was his ‘problematic past’ is not one I wish to inhabit. This is nothing but mind-rotting regurgitation from the meanest, lowest barrel of the Twitterverse.
So instead of just covering the whole fucking show we’re zooming in on the “apology”? Man, priorities. I thought it was more a reflection on how apologies in cancel culture are almost masturbatory self sacrificial in nature if anything else, the whole “I’m sorry thing” is way overblown here. He’s talking about an Aladin costume ffs.
all this for a drop of blood thanos but instead of a drop of blood its just “one joke from the aggressively boring INSIDE by bo burnam”
Inside as a whole feels like Bo Burnham’s complete submersion into Metamodernism, oscillating willdly between earnestness and cyncism. His work always had elements of that, but ut always expressed itself as detachment or superposition, while inside feels it flings between the polar states of cynicism and earnestness more. Inside feels like Bo repeatedly building up cynical walls to protect himself, then earnestly demolishing them and “exposing” his own vulnerability, then cynically attacking his attempts to be earnest, then reacting earnestly to the cynisim, then repeating to the point of absurdity.
I’ve taken the liberty of drafting some future headlines for the AV Club and other Gizmodo Media Group properties:Thing Person Did As A Teenager Now Considered ProblematicPerson from Time When Everyone Was Super Racist Found to Be RacistEarth’s Atmosphere Comprised of ~78% Nitrogen, ~21% Oxygen MixFire HotYou’re welcome.
the things…were always bad. people were just too marginalized to say anything and when they did no one cared just like you still don’t now. like wake up.
They wouldn’t objectify fire like that, the headline would be “Fire Flawless”.
What if the fire was Jon Hamm’s penis?
don’t care for his comedy but eighth grade and the specials he’s directed for jerrod carmichael and chris rock have been amazing.
“This site is so bad now I’m never coming on here again!”*refreshes*
Thank God you guys didn’t review Bo Burnham’s Inside, you might actually have to give something an A for once
“If Inside represents Burnham’s return to comedy, it’s also his moment of reckoning with the people who were the targets of his early jokes—women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community. After taking five years off from stand-up, he comes back older, much wiser, and with some necessary apologies.”
I’d like to see the age where you’re compelled to apologize for *comprehensively* over-explaining a satirical song, mistaking satire for sincere contrition, and your unbelievable notion that there were necessary apologies to make over “targets of his early jokes” as though that’s a thing that actually happened outside of the satire you’re *still not getting.*
The apology was part of it, because here you are trying very hard to claim victory for holding Bo accountable for…things.
Also, you’re very certain that hilarious bit where he’s glowering Shining-style at his younger self is….a documentary about how Bo is so ashamed of the behavior you’re trying to overblow *right now right here.*
Bo’s targets weren’t those things, they were his parents and himself.
That’s what those videos were. Fucking hostage videos made by a child trying to escape a bad situation.
This Netflix special was about a lot of things.
You claimed at the start that it was struggling to be funny.
The.
Fuck.
You.
Know.
About.
It.
So…You guys gonna write a review or what?
This joke sailed over the author’s head… it couldn’t be more heavy handed (crucifixion imagery), but the author still didn’t realize it’s mocking the self-seriousness and lack of perspective defining the kind of person who thinks what a person wore at Halloween 15 years ago is a dispositive indicator of their moral character.
I’m really getting fatigued by the whole ‘Someone with more talent and insight than I will ever possess expressed themselves, but let’s see if they got it right this time’ screed by the most paint-by-numbers dullards who are lucky to have been born on the right side of the social justice tracks, and couldn’t make someone smile, let alone tell a fucking joke to save their lives.
I feel like a kid in Freshman Lit could do a better job unpacking the single song addressed in this article. I can hear the point flying over this author’s head. Isn’t a sense of irony required to write for AV club, or do you just get points for pearl clutching these days?This special was a lot of things. I won’t be surprised if everybody doesn’t love it. But this article borders on a level of stupidity that makes me feel like it should never have been published in the first place.
man does this review suck. holy hell. I don’t even feel obligated to write a ‘used to love the site, now I’m done’ message – before you would at least talk about content and give a dipshit thumbs up or down related to that. i could at least wind down with a bit of plot analysis of breaking bad which pretends that show is a screenplay rather than a visual medium. now the review of breaking bad would be: “definitely shows the dangers of bald male authority.”
and dude, guess what – bo is really hard on himself, I just listened to “my whole family thinks I’m gay” and it is fucking hilarious and not the least bit offensive.
the review says “My Whole Family…” is “four-minute song about his family questioning his sexuality, while running the gamut of derogatory slurs.”What the fuck are you talking about? There is not a single thing that could be construed as a derogatory slur in the song, and certainly not the ones you make people thing of with this phrase (things like ‘fag,’ ‘homo’ etc.) Look at the lyrics yourself.the fundamental joke is about being unable to admit you’re gay. see the final verse:
My whole family thinks I’m queer.
That is all I ever hear
But I’ve been as straight as a ramp,
If you dont count Bible camp.
I think it would be a stretch to call it a review. Sure, it might have started that way, but if it did, it went off the rails enough for them to not chuck a rating to this and call it a review.
You’re certainly right it’s labeled “reaction.” Hard to say it earns that name either, though, if the reaction is supposed to be to Inside.
Haven’t been on the AV CLUB since the switch to Kinja years back. But looking for reviews for INSIDE led me inadvertently to this sad article/opinion piece or whatever the hell this is. This article gives no insight, angle or even an interesting take on the song, let alone the special. That the author royally misses the point of the whole song was in itself entertaining, I have to admit. If the AV CLUB has been a sinking ship in the past it truly is the corpse of the Titanic by now.
Jesus fucking Christ I’m so done with the AV Club’s bullshit. Your exhausting screeds about everyone’s misdeeds go nowhere, offer no insight and contribute nothing but clicks for your Amazon affiliate links. Your endless tsk tsk-ing and pearl clutching do nothing to make any material change for anyone on earth. You are the problem. You can’t just spew irrational garbage and hide behind politically astute buzzwords. You make things worse.
Please please let me know what the gay slurs are in that song from when he was 16? That make up the gamut?