Comedian of the Year Bo Burnham Captured Our Collective Anxiety in 2021
The post Comedian of the Year Bo Burnham Captured Our Collective Anxiety in 2021 appeared first on Consequence.
Our 2021 Annual Report continues with the announcement of Bo Burnham as our Comedian of the Year. As the year winds down, stay tuned for more awards, lists, and articles about the best music, film, and TV of 2021. You can find it all in one place here.
There’s a moment of context in Bo Burnham’s Inside where things start to click in a different way, and the whole special gets cast in a new light. At the end of the first verse and chorus of “All Eyes on Me,” Burnham describes making the decision to return to stand up comedy after a four-year hiatus from the form. In a supremely ironic fashion, he made this decision in January 2020, finally deciding that he was ready to be vulnerable in front of an audience again — all before a global shutdown.
Hindsight is (clears throat) 20/20, but regardless, Burnham committed deeply to the idea of a new standup special and a re-entry into the form that elevated his career beyond viral sensation. But upon its release in late May of 2021, it was clear that this special had become something entirely different to Burham; this was new territory, a fractured, counterintuitive attempt at returning to comedy in the midst of deep anguish on both a personal and global level.
And yet, Inside is his most profound and vulnerable work. As our 2021 Comedian of the Year, Bo Burnham not only single-handedly changed the way we see comedy, but he reframed the experience of performing entirely. “Should I be joking at a time like this?” is an honest question asked repeatedly throughout Inside, and by the end of the special, it appears that Burnham still doesn’t know the answer.
There’s so much to be said about the way people immediately connected with Inside’s content, the way it became a metaphor for our quarantine experience and invaded the cultural consciousness so swiftly. But Burnham’s effort was so charged, incisive, and immensely personal, that those fraught qualities make our response to his work both inevitable and pointless.
For example, the existence of as many popular TikTok sounds and songs from Inside directly contradicts his message: As Burnham attacks society’s mass consumption of art under capitalism, the radicalization and existential dread created by the Internet, and the way the youth of today are set up for failure and collapse, our own mass consumption of Inside via the internet — which reduces this powerful music to a mere soundbite — is playing directly into his hand.
At the same time, re-contextualizing his work to accommodate our own feelings of isolation and misery is art working at the highest level — comedy as confession, music as an ever-changing, flexible medium. Burnham knew his audience deeply when creating Inside, and the way he points the finger back at us encapsulates the modern state of art. His performance of mental collapse reflects the cost of making art seriously and authentically in the face of existential anguish.
Why, then, is Inside so funny? Every joke song in the special has an added layer of seriousness, from the loneliness depicted early on in “FaceTime with My Mom (Tonight)” to the charged, synth-wave sarcasm of both “Bezos” numbers. Even the critical “White Woman’s Instagram” features a genuinely remarkable and authentic passage about mourning the death of a woman’s mother, sandwiched between performative “aesthetics” and sarcastic portrayals of individuality.
These songs feature typical Burnham punchlines, similar to his last specials, what. and Make Happy. On Inside, however, the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been, and Burnham’s usual charm and quick wit is drowned out and decomposed by the lack of live audience, the fatalistic dread he’s fighting, and the daunting task of creating a body of work through isolation. To put it differently, the environment and conditions he’s creating within are unsustainable, so the work can only be dismantled and collapsed to survive.
This is perhaps best represented by the second half of Inside, where his apathy and anxiety meet to form a climactic stretch of songs that define the project. “That Funny Feeling” — which landed at No. 15 on our Top Songs of 2021 list — is an earnest and powerful examination of both Burnham’s state of mind and the crumbling world around him.
“All Eyes on Me” is another highlight, demonstrating Burnham’s need for attention while simultaneously satirizing it. And the whirlwind “Welcome to the Internet” is a bewildering, morbid look at the medium which kickstarted his career but plagued his mental health.
These are some of the most daring, compelling songs he’s ever written, and the resulting attention put back on Burnham in retrospect feels rightfully deserved: Though the spotlight is blinding and that vulnerability comes with a cost, the level of detail and emotion displayed on Inside is so comprehensive that you can’t help but root for him.
Of course, Inside’s release was a resounding success for Burnham and Netflix. Days after its initial release, the original soundtrack was launched onto streaming services, giving fans the chance to revisit individual songs and moments in the show. Not only do Burnham’s massive streaming numbers this year reflect Inside’s relevance, they also prove that comedy consumers are hungry for content that shifts boundaries, adds nuance, and mirrors our collective state.
It wasn’t all so grim, either. Songs like both “Bezos” numbers are odd, hilarious synth experiments, and Burnham’s keen attachment to layered harmonies reflects some massive vocal improvements. Even through the dread of these songs, you do get the sense that Burnham is having some fun making them (for example, the hysterical “Shit”) — to the point where halfway through, he realizes that if he finishes the special, he’ll no longer have the outlet to create and explore within the medium. The jokes are consistently fraught, but the energy and enthusiasm he brings to these songs are in line with the biggest pop stars around right now.
As we left the lockdown behind this summer, Inside served as a reminder that this period of time we experienced was, in fact, traumatic, and the acceleration with which we create, consume, and destroy is taking a serious toll on our collective psyche. If there was ever a time for comedy to transform and accommodate our rapidly escalating world, it’s now. And if there’s a comedian to do it, it’s Bo Burnham.
Bo Burnham: Inside is streaming now on Netflix.
Comedian of the Year Bo Burnham Captured Our Collective Anxiety in 2021
Paolo Ragusa
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