WATCHED - Bo Burnham - Inside

I'd not come across him myself till this popped up on my radar via a Guardian review. The set up here is that he's working on a new show, as something to do whilst in lockdown. But as the lockdown goes on and on all his own personal demons come out of the woodwork, creeping into his songs, poems and monologues. 

Much of Inside captures something of the particular flavour of personal distress many have encountered during the pandemic. If you tend to deal with your problems by getting out of your head, sensory hedonism, or simply just going out. Then being forced to stay in and not meeting folk one to one can become like an unwanted meeting with the Dark Lord in a side alley. 

A lot of care is taken here over the staging, so its hard to tell how much here is genuine verite footage or carefully curated artifice.  But there are times when you sense that he is really freaking out a bit here, and not in a good way. Everyone, myself included, have had moments when you wonder quite why you are putting any of this stuff out there, what personal need is this post serving? Is this healthy self expression or just indulging in a narcissistic sense of self importance?

The song White Woman On Instagram caused a bit of controversy. Pointing fun at the superficiality of whats posted on Instagram, is in a way an easy target. Particularly for a man to take the mickey out of women. Whilst the casual sexism/rascism is certainly one way to view this, it also has the ring of truth too. Otherwise the arrow would have nowhere to land, its just not one gender or race that is necessarily prone to this. I've seen universally the type of things listed in the lyrics posted on Instagram. The carefully crafted perfect image and lifestyle that influencers, celebrities and wanna bees, put out there. It is all a bit of an unreal fantasy that is being peddled.

What you get from Inside, is an performer reflecting on his own work whilst it's in progress of being made. There is a telling segment where you view one monologue to camera, that you then see him commenting on, then another version comments on the comment until the cacophony eventually drowns out everything. Burnham's humour works best when it glancingly hits the target on the head, particularly of his own internet obsessed generation. Asking if you aren't performing online then what are you?

Currently available to stream on Netflix