Inside My Brain

This week I wanted to talk about Bo Burnham’s Inside. As such, this will be a different type of post and will probably be a shorter post than most. There are a few reasons I wanted to go with a discussion about Inside, the first being I just really liked it and I wanted to share. That being said, I highly recommend watching it but I don’t think this post will really spoil it in anyway. The other reason is that I am generally uncomfortable talking about what I think about different media because I feel like I don’t know these things well enough to talk about them. I want to try to get more comfortable with that and I plan on talking about other forms of media in the future. 

The first thing that really impressed me was the practical effects Bo Burnham used for different visual effects. The first of these being the disco ball at the beginning. I really thought that it was after effects but at the end he actually shows how he did it and I don’t know why but I just thought it was so cool that he was able to get that effect with just a headlight and a disco ball. My favorite effects are definitely in the song 30 where he used a headlight to create a beam of light and illuminate a spinning disco ball. It's just really cool what you can do with some lights and controls for them. 

I think one of the other reasons this really resonated with me too was because I just really love music, I am generally listening to some kind of music whenever I can. I was skeptical when I first watched it because it's a comedy special. How good could the music really be? That being said, I was pleasantly surprised. The songs are surprisingly good; they are catchy and have variety while still being funny and making a social commentary. This social commentary is what I want to get into now.

First of all, I want to address the obvious.  Yes, Bo Burnham is rich and in a much better position than most people. However, I don’t think that makes him incapable of seeing the injustices in society and making commentary on it. He even addresses this in some of the songs so it isn’t like he is unaware of the irony of a rich person talking about some of these things. An example of this is the song The Way the World Works. Bo Burnham is acting as an oblivious white person and is using a sock puppet, Socko, to represent someone who is more aware of societal issues. At one point Socko says, “Why do you rich fucking white people insist on seeing every socio-political conflict through the myopic lens of your own self-actualization? This isn't about you, so either get with it, or get out of the fucking way.” The connection to last week’s post, and one of the lines that resonates most with me, is  “Apathy’s a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.” The “boredom is a crime” part especially ties back into last week’s post because I think it really reflects the idea that you aren’t allowed to be bored anymore. There is always someone trying to push more content on you, like he says,

But look, I made you some content

Daddy made you your favorite, open wide

Here comes the content

It's a beautiful day to stay inside.

Everything is just at your fingertips now, quite literally. I’ve even found myself thinking, “Why do I need to go see it in person when I can just look at a picture?” I have really been trying to get out of this way of thinking because it just really isn’t true. There is something very different about seeing something for yourself and experiencing it in person. 

I think “apathy’s a tragedy”  also really speaks to the culture that we have now that makes you feel like you have to care about everything. Every cause, every new event, every little thing that happens needs your attention and needs it now. You can’t just not care about something because that makes you a bad person. I do think it is important to be involved and try to effect change as you can see from my previous posts, I just think expecting everyone to care about everything just takes it too far. There is a limit to what people can realistically take action on and make an effort with. This, however, is not an excuse to treat people like crap either though. It is not a defense for the people that say, “this is just all so complicated I don’t have time to keep up with this.” Yes, you do Karen, it's just pronouns, it's not that hard. 

This point is driven home in the segment he does on branding and brand representation. People expect brands to stand up and effect change, “It’s also a bit of a scary time because customers expect a lot more from their brands than they did in the past.” and I think that is completely fair. The bigger concern is making sure these brands are actually doing something about it and not just using these very real societal issues to boost their own brand name, 

The question is no longer, “Do you want to buy Wheat Thins?” for example. The question is now, “Will you support Wheat Thins in the fight against Lyme disease?” There’s no sugarcoating it. The world is… fucked up. And you’ve got a choice as a brand. You can… hide and bury your head in the sand and hope it fixes itself, or you can roll up your sleeves and get to work, and sell Butterfingers.

Don’t get me wrong, it is good to get these corporations to want to effect change, it is one of the best ways because they have a lot of sway due to their money and subsequent political influence. It is just also very important that we are actually holding these brands accountable. 

I believed that I talked about the influencer culture in a previous post and “White Woman’s Instagram” definitely addresses this at least a little bit, particularly in the actual movie. I say this because I think the visuals tell a more complete story. All the photos tell a story of a perfect life until he gets to the more serious section of the song and the cropping goes away and you see the mess around him in the room. This is a good reminder to people that you have to take everything with a grain of salt. People are only going to post the best of their life online. This is why I think Instagram is so toxic for society. It really paints a picture of everyone’s life being so perfect and can really lead to people feeling like their life just doesn’t stack up. 

Finally, the thing that hit closest to home was the monologue below,

I’ve been freaking out for a long time, thinking I’m never gonna finish this special and be working on it forever. And recently, I’ve been feeling like, “Oh, man, maybe I am getting close to done with this. Maybe I’m gonna finish it after all.” And that has made me completely freak out because if I finish this special, that means that I have to, um, not work on it anymore.

And that means I have to just live my life, and so I’m not gonna do that, and I’m gonna not finish the special. I’m gonna work on it forever, I think. So, yeah, I’m gonna work on this forever, and I’m never gonna release it. 

I think things like this come up in various stages of life. Graduating high school, graduating college, retiring, the ending of any really big activity that has become a large part of your life. I think this hit me particularly hard because of how much time I had been pouring into the fence. When I work on something for that long, the thought of it ending can be scary. I don’t really know why because it has eaten up so much of my time. But it has been what I have been doing with all of my free time for the last few months and the thought of just having time and being done is paralyzing and I think that’s why I haven’t made the final push. I don’t think it is coincidental that I finally decided to make the last push once I had another big, time consuming project lined up.

I think that is as far as I am going to go with this. If you have watched Inside let me know what you thought in the comments below. Also, let me know if you enjoy this kind of post. I definitely like having a chance to really sit down and think about something I watched and I think I would be open to do this again. I hope to see you next week! Have a good week and go out and do the thing!