Review of Bo Burnham's Inside

Nearly 30 years ago, David Foster Wallace wrote, in the context of the cultural impact of irony in television:

The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit ‘I don’t really mean what I’m saying.’ So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it’s impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it’s too bad it’s impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today’s irony ends up saying: ‘How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean.’ Anyone with the heretical gall to ask an ironist what he actually stands for ends up looking like an hysteric or a prig. And herein lies the oppressiveness of institutionalized irony, the too-successful rebel: the ability to interdict the question without attending to its subject is, when exercised, tyranny. It is the new junta, using the very tool that exposed its enemy to insulate itself.

What do you do when postmodern rebellion becomes a pop-cultural institution? For this of course is the second answer to why avant-garde irony and rebellion have become dilute and malign. They have been absorbed, emptied, and redeployed by the very televisual establishment they had originally set themselves athwart.

So here’s the stumper for the U.S. writer who both breathes our cultural atmosphere and sees himself heir to whatever was neat and valuable in avant-garde literature: how to rebel against TV’s aesthetic of rebellion, how to snap readers awake to the fact that our televisual culture has become a cynical, narcissistic, essentially empty phenomenon, when television regularly celebrates just these features in itself and its viewers?

These words retain their resonance today, no longer only for television, but pervasively across all media. The ironic affect has become so entrenched that it has even transcended TV shows, movies, music, TikTok, and other obvious forms of culture: It is now beginning to infect advertising and packaging for such mundane products as oat milk.

What purpose does this self-aware irony serve? Oatly ads, by expressing their knowledge that they are ads, pre-empt and disarm any criticism of their brand. They are saying: We know you hate ads. We know you have hesitations about consumerism. But don’t worry, we feel the exact same way! Just as Jesus died on the cross to absolve us of our sins, so too do we thus absolve mankind for his sins under capitalism. Now c’mon, stop moping around and try this delicious oat milk latte!

They say all of this with a wry smile and a wink. Relieved of guilt, we buy their products and chuckle at how clever their marketing team is. Or perhaps not; but given that the point of the ad has been rendered impossible to pin down, wrapped in so many layers of irony, we can only at best but shrug and move on.

What are you, some kind of a racist?

The killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020 was followed by mass protests against the police. It was an awakening for many to begin to inspect their personal privilege, whether along the lines of race, gender, sexuality, or otherwise. Eager to prove their righteousness, many people, especially those that fit in the categories of male, cis, straight, or white, began to volunteer to confess their sins at the public confessional. Seizing upon this tendency, the comedian Ziwe began hosting interviews on Instagram Live with celebrity guests, pressing them on their allyship or wokeness by asking them such questions as the number of black friends they had, or the number of black authors they’d read. Inevitably, the guests would flub a question or two and then face a week of public humiliation on social media.

Coming off of her success on her IG Live show, Ziwe now has an eponymous talk show on Showtime, where she continues to interview and humiliate white people in increasingly absurd ways, like having Phoebe Bridgers to read aloud from cards with things like “I apologize for all racism” and “I famously love all black people especially an iconic black woman named Ziwe” printed on them.

Irony — we meet again. What is Ziwe’s point, exactly? There is no discernible point. Phoebe Bridgers apologizes for all racism, and she knows, and Ziwe knows, and the audience knows, that this is all absolutely useless and meaningless. (Or do they know that? I’m not so sure.) The setup is constructed so that if you do ask, what is the point?, you will be responded with, what, do you not apologize for all racism? What are you, some kind of a racist? The game is rigged; no one can win this game.

A rigged game with a pre-determined outcome has no meaning, confers no lessons, makes no change. Nothing. This is what the George Floyd protests of the summer of 2020 have been reduced to in this corner of popular culture. “Racism” has been quasi-defeated via some kind of clever technicality, but no progress has been made in actuality. (And if we look at voting patterns of POC in recent elections, it may actually be the case that the left has lost ground outside of white liberal demographics.)

This same tendency can be clearly seen in the first half of Bo Burnham’s recent Netflix special Inside, which begins with several songs whose lyrics implicitly allude to the social upheaval of the past year, and his place in it as a privileged white man. In “Comedy”, he mocks himself for thinking that he can change the world through comedy. He mentions that white men like himself have had the floor for hundreds of years, so ha-ha, isn’t it so hypocritical that he still has the floor now? In “How The World Works”, Burnham’s sock puppet berates him for insisting on seeing every socio-political conflict through the lens of his own [white, male, cis, straight] self-actualization. By now the rhetorical move should be obvious. Say it with me now: The ironic pre-emption of criticism only serves to allow the subject to evade that criticism. It renders the work pointless and useless. But of course, Burnham has adeptly pre-empted this criticism as well.

I stopped watching at this point.

The New Sincerity

The next day, my partner encouraged me to finish watching Inside, telling me that the second half was much better than the first. So I did finish watching it, and it indeed was much better. In the second half, he begins to address his real reason for filming his special: to address the fact that he has not been performing live for 5 years, due to experiencing panic attacks while on stage. The anxious, depressive vibe of the show finally became clear. The special was about how he had shut himself away from the world, and his struggles with his mental health. As Burnham began to express his own experiences, rather than his observations about the social justice context of our time, his songs began to take on much greater meaning and depth. It began to take on a much more poignant character as the story of someone’s mental descent and isolation, all the more relevant and relatable given the isolation that most of us experienced during this past year. Burnham alludes to the never-ending pandemic in his bittersweet final refrain in “That Funny Feeling”:

Hey, what can you say?
We were overdue
But it'll be over soon
You wait

I found the song “All Eyes On Me” to be particularly powerful. The song’s refrain exhorts the audience, like a dance track, to get their fucking hands up and to get up out of their seats, which serves at the same time the purpose of Burnham pushing himself to get back out into the world. But it is difficult in the face of the state of the world, and in the face of his apathy:

You say the ocean's rising like I give a shit
You say the whole world's ending, honey, it already did

The song rises and falls in mania and depression, echoing Burnham’s psychic state.

Wallace concludes his essay:

The next real literary “rebels” in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that’ll be the point. Maybe that’s why they'll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “Oh how banal”. To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law. Who knows.

Perhaps Burnham felt more free to express himself in a more genuine way after having completed his cultural duty as a white man to point out his own privilege before he can talk about anything else. But I think that this “requirement” is absurd. Anyone can and should express their own feelings and experiences in art without having to preface it with some disclaimer about their privilege. It weakens and muddles the work. This is not to downplay the importance of serious social justice issues, but not all things have to address all things. And when serious things are addressed, they should be addressed with seriousness and sincerity, with deliberate strategy, and without ironic deflection.