Daddy Made You Your Favorite: A Review Of Bo Burnham's 'Inside Outtakes' (What? He DID Make Us Some Content)
Last night, out of the blue, Bo Burnham announced that he'd be releasing some previously unseen footage from his acclaimed Netflix special Inside, to celebrate the anniversary of its premiere on the platform.
This, of course, caused Bo Burnham fans (myself included) to go absolutely wild.
Though none of us should really be surprised by this at this point, the hour-long video, titled The Inside Outtakes, stands more like something between a behind-the-scenes video and a sequel, because each and every clip in this carefully-edited reel adds more context and clarity to the themes already so eloquently touched upon by Inside - especially those that were aimed at other artists.
'The Inside Outtakes' is a letter from Bo to his fans, showing his process in a way that highlights all the mistakes and missteps he made, as well as just...all the practice.
It feels specifically geared towards other artists: While Inside reads as a very polished, finished piece that only a man of prodigious talent could make, The Inside Outtakes reveals all the weird, awkward steps he had to take to get there.
Every time he shows us himself messing up and stopping, or leaving the camera on too long, or laughing inanely to himself in an empty room with no backup music, it's like a reminder: Yes, sometimes making art feels weird and stupid and insane. That doesn't mean you're not doing it right. Keep going.
Probably the best example of this are the clips he included of all his practice runs of some of his best songs. For "Problematic," "Shit," and "Welcome to the Internet" we got to see a very cleverly-edited representation of his process: In a tile layout, he plays every single practice video he has of these songs, dropping them off the screen as soon as he messes up and turns off the camera - slowly revealing the finished product behind all the practice ones.
Allowing us to see his frustration and his mistakes is a gift - painful as it may be for someone like Bo to pull back the curtain and show us how many times he "got it wrong," in reality what he's doing is showing others like him the tenacity it takes to finally get it right.
Of course, this encouragement also comes with his standard warnings, as Bo continues to war with his own psyche (as he has seemed to since that "Left Brain Right Brain" sketch in what. all those years ago,) he also seeks to remind would-be content creators that the internet is an invasive creature - and that fame and attention, while a tempting drug, can also be a soul-sucking one if you're not incredibly careful.
There are several more critiques of content creation - the thing that Bo does, and, in a broader sense, the very thing that I'm doing right now by writing this - most of which take place in his bits "The Dump" "Golden Age of Content" and "ICU (Inside Cinematic Universe)."
Interestingly, though he's critiquing the literal thing I do for a living ("The Dump" sketch hit EERILY close to home), I didn't feel personally criticized by any of them - moreso, I felt an unsettling sort of agreement.
That's because the main thing Bo is trying to warn against are the double-sided risks of even venturing to have a public presence on the internet. On one side of the coin, if you are going to be totally yourself, you should be ready to have your actual personality critiqued by strangers - something most people, especially kids who are as young as Bo was when he started posting, do not fully consider before it's too late.
And, on the other, if you are going to put on a persona, you had better be sure you're ready to maintain that persona whenever you're in public for years to come. (And as far as the "or what?" on that statement, we don't need to ask - the answer is the mental breakdown and ensuing five-year hiatus that lead to Burnham making Inside in the first place.)
What this all really is is a critique of the commodification of literal personality under late stage capitalism - in other words, content creators (who could be entertainers, journalists, or even just people with a hobby) are now literally expected to sell their own personas as a product for others to consume in order to make money as we continue our "endless and pointless climb towards a terrible and dense nothing" full of content that it somehow seems both everybody and nobody asked for.
(Welcome to the internet indeed.)
It feels dystopian in a way that it's incredibly difficult to describe verbally - tying your ability to be accepted socially up in your ability to make money off of that acceptance - but the sketches really do the trick.
(It's also hilariously ironic that, despite the fact that I know the "ICU" bit was a joke to make fun of Disney and Marvel, I also know that if he followed through and did even one of those things, fans would eat it up. Personally, I'm really pulling for Girl Socko.)
Of course, content creation isn't the only thing that The Inside Outtakes touched on - there was also much more to be said for the ongoing theme of the ridiculousness of the everyday that we first saw in Inside. Regular arguments about a couple stealing each other's dumplings; being afraid of spiders; wearing jeans; only Bo could write a sketch about making the saddest peanut butter sandwich in the world and also have it be an obvious commentary on how we're living through a new Gilded Age.
(Seriously, all those Incredibly Professional Shots of Bo's Depression Meal are a better metaphor for the second Gilded Age that we're currently living though than almost anything anyone wore at the Met Gala this year. The whole world is serving us that sandwich and trying to tell us it's gorumet with fancy lighting and angles.)
But honestly, the best example of this theme of the true depth of the banal and everyday parts of life comes from "The Chicken."
This song - especially placed at the end of the special, right after the Kanye-Rant-esque stylings of "All Eyes On Me," the supposed ending - feels like a direct callback to "Are You Happy?" the song at the end of Make Happy in which Burnham waxes poetic about the very nature of happiness. His fans know that song came at the very beginning of the mental decline that eventually led to Inside - so seeing and hearing the parallels in "The Chicken" is especially poignant.
OF COURSE Bo Burnham would take the oldest and most famously pointless joke in the world - "Why did the chicken cross the road?" - and actually make it mean something. Of course he would.
Because the thing is, on the face of it, the fact that the chicken crossed the road to get to the other side is simple. We know that. On paper, it's very direct. But when Bo zooms in on the chicken, giving her silly problems and silly dreams about walking to Memphis and becoming a dentist, we already have more of an answer than we did before.
It's another depression metaphor: The chicken is tired of her life and wants more, and she knows it exists, but she's afraid of risking what she has to get it - afraid of crossing the big road which, as Bo reminds us, is actually very wide, scary, and perilous for a chicken. Pulling yourself out of a bad spot and giving yourself a better life is just...way, way harder than it sounds. (And after quarantine, I think we all know that.)
But the most beautiful part of this is, after all these years, after all the pain we can now plainly see that he's gone through...Bo is still optimistic about the fate of that chicken. Even though she got scared and stopped in the middle, even though it seemed like it may be impossible for her, he would still rather believe that she got to the other side.
Because - and this is probably one of the biggest pain points in his life - deep down, despite all the doom and gloom he feels about the world, Bo Burnham is still an optimist. If he weren't - if he weren't willing to hope that recklessly - we wouldn't have these specials in the first place.
So, from one more-than-slightly-disturbed content creator to another: Thank you AGAIN, Bo. Thank you for being brave enough, not only to continue making brilliant comedy, but also to pull back the curtain and show us your process - even the most difficult, silly, awkward parts. Your brilliantly composed solidary means more than you could ever know.
(Also, not to be a rabid consumer here, but I'm gonna need these songs on Spotify ASAP, because "Living In The Future," "Feel Good," and "Little Joke Song" are all absolute bops, and I want to play the Spider song whenever I see a spider in my apartment forever from now on.)
