Bo Burnham: Inside
NETFLIXAs the international pandemic - which has dominated the lives of everyone for what feels like an interminably long period of time - starts to hopefully very slowly wind up, what can be made of this era? Is it an artistic write-off, or is there value that can be mined from it? It is a question - that amongst many others - Bo Burnham tries to answer in his new special, Inside, and certainly not one he would be able to answer decisively. However, the existence of this special holds in itself a certain value unique to the time, place and medium it occupies.
Simply put, Bo Burnham: Inside is a work of such intense genius and artistic merit that it - and Bo himself - deserve to be talked about for decades, and the special will likely remain forever criminally underseen. It is a masterwork from a modern-day comedian so good that it turns all conventions about what makes good content on their heads. David Lynch has previously said that the plight of the tortured artist is a myth; that to create great art, one needs to be able to see clearly, as though from the outside looking in. It is a mantra from another genius that usually holds up; Inside, however, is inextricable from both the macrocosmic global situation and Bo's more microcosmic personal issues, relatable though as they are, and throws this entire line of thinking (from of one of the best contemporary artists working in any medium, no less) into question. It is underproduced and yet...not.
Additionally, if one had told pretty much anybody, not least filmmakers or critics - even earlier on in the pandemic - that one of the best pieces of art to ever be made would go directly to Netflix and be filmed like a YouTube video, they would have laughed you out of the door. The inability for this work to be pinned down only aids it further. Netflix's marketing strategy for this proves it; unlike advertised, its sprawling, cross-medium impact is not really a comedy special, but nor is it a movie or YouTube video. Like Twin Peaks: The Return and a very limited number of other projects, mostly also masterpieces, Inside occupies a liminal, intermediary space that defies both logic and precedence but not artistic quality. It manages to balance comedic muses on sexting and white women's Instagram pages with loneliness, self-reflexivity and more. It defies interpretation but invites it too. It could only exist on streaming yet exists outside of its usual remit. It is both life-affirmingly uplifting and suicidally depressing. It demands to be seen and discussed, yet even Burnham ponders whether these very things will actually happen in the special itself.
Ironically, Inside may age terribly. Perhaps its mix of tragic nihilism and offbeat comedy will not resonate in a post-Covid world, and maybe the incomprehensibly varied scope of the thing will prove not to carry over into the future, whatever that may look like. Nevertheless, it does not matter; in fact, it may make the final work even better. Its rough edges are what makes it truly special, Bo's real-time declining sanity only serving to accentuate the high points and sharpen the pain of the lows. What it has managed to do is to, against all odds, capture both the cultural zeitgeist of such a monumental worldwide change and the exponentially declining mental health of just one man, all from inside a few hundred square feet. Whether anything can be made of this going forward, or whether it will be lost to time, that is okay. It does not diminish the quality of what is the first unmissable release of the decade so far.