​You're really  analyzing media at a time like this?




    William Shakespeare once famously stated that “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women are merely players.” If you’ve spent any time in or around a theater, you’ve likely heard this quote, or seen it plastered on coffee mugs, cross stitches, and t-shirts. This social rejects’ “Live, Laugh, Love” is often lauded as a battle cry, a love letter to the universal art of theater. However, it brings up an interesting dilemma: if truly all the world's a stage, and all the people of the world are actors, then where is the audience? Bo Burnham’s 2021 Netflix special Inside answers: the audience and the performer are one, a single entity in engaging in constant creative auto cannibalism, caught in an endless internal cycle of create and critique, make and make fun of. Bo Burnham shows us his artistic ouroboros through the camera and the spotlight, representing different aspects of him and his audience. 

    Throughout Bo Burnham’s entire discography, we see him represent his audience through various characters, take for instance We Think We Know You, the final song of his first Netflix special, what, wherein various members of his “audience” share their (unsolicited) opinions as he plays their disembodied voices like a piano. In Inside there is no physical audience, however, we can still feel its presence. The Inside audience is largely represented by two technical aspects, the camera, which is very clearly observing, and the spotlight, which seems to judge. Bo has effectively split his audience down the middle based on how they engage with his content. The camera represents a younger, vulnerable (and likely mentally ill) audience. The opening song shows Bo Burnham addressing the camera and saying “I made you some content, Daddy made you your favorite; open wide.” (Opening).  Beyond the obvious comedy of the line, Bo is casting himself in a parental or mentor role. We also frequently see him take care of the camera, such as cleaning it before the “Killing Yourself for a Year” monologue. Much of the show is directed towards a younger audience; That is How the World Works is styled after a kid’s television show and Welcome to the Internet is an older person describing the internet and its intents and functions to a younger listener. This audience is also the one Bo Burnham is expecting Inside to resonate with. We see this as the camera slowly gets closer to Bo’s face as he begins Get Your Fucking Hands Up. Bo is inviting this element of his audience into a vulnerable and emotional moment. This audience also appears to be the part of the audience Bo feels he has the greatest influence on, as seen by the fact that at the climax of Get Your Fucking Hands Up, Bo physically grabs the camera and holds it mostly so that it is looking either at his shadow or literally looking up at him. The camera represents the facet of Bo Burnham’s audience that Inside was truly made for and that he feels a responsibility to take care of and “guide” as much as a comedian can. 

    The spotlight represents the harsher, more critical element of his audience. The spotlight is unrelenting, seeing Bo at his most vulnerable but showing no sympathy. The most obvious example of this is after Get Your Fucking Hands Up wherein Bo blinks up at a bright, brutal spotlight while crouched over the piano, naked. It continues to shine on him even as he leaves the house, realizes he is frightened, and struggles to go back inside. The spotlight also coincides frequently with a laugh track, even when the moment is not necessarily a comedic one. The spotlight and the laugh track represent the part of the audience, who, quite frankly, will not get Inside. They are relentlessly judging Bo, looking at him but not seeing him and simply waiting for a moment that they can laugh at. This is the audience that Bo is critiquing in songs such as We Think We Know You (what)  and Pringles Rant (Make Happy). The spotlight in Inside represents a harsh and unrelenting aspect of the audience that Bo (rightly) feels judged and vulnerable in front of. 

    However, the camera and the spotlight are not simply the audience. They are also representative of Bo himself. Throughout the show, Bo is shown performing routine maintenance on both himself and the camera such as brushing his teeth as well as cleaning the lense. Additionally, as said earlier, the camera is a young figure and we know that the themes of growing up are strong in Inside. He presents the inherent birthday angst in Turning 30 and refers to himself as a kid in Inside Again. He is frequently shown sitting with the camera as both face a mirror, self-reflecting, indicating that both his literal self and camera are “him”. Lastly, around the release of Inside, Bo changed his social media profile pics to the image of the camera. Throughout Inside and Inside’s promotional material, we see Bo treat the camera not only as a representative of the audience but as an aspect of himself. 

    The unrelenting, all-seeing, ever-judging spotlight is also a representative of a Bo: a representative of the internal critic. Throughout Inside, we see Bo consuming his own content as an audience member via the infinite reaction video or simply as an editor. “Streamer Bo” is shown playing his own life in the form of a video game. He provides running commentary with an uncaring detachment and little empathy for his video game self, a character locked in a room with little other option than pressing A to cry. Bo is critical of himself, constantly watching and providing little understanding for his past self, much like the spotlight. It can be easy to see the lights as an external force or something Bo has little control over, however, throughout Inside Bo has taken great care to show himself setting up the lights. In essence, nobody put that spotlight on him, except for him. The last image is of Bo, sitting in a theater, smirking at the recording of him struggling to get back inside the house. The spotlight not only represents the part of the audience mercilessly criticizing Bo, it represents a constant internal critic. 

    Using the spotlight and the camera as symbolism, Bo explores how he perceives himself and how he perceives other people perceiving him. Inside is a study of how the performer-audience dynamic can become internalized, leading to the watcher and the watched becoming one entity. Especially with the pervasive rise of social media, as individuals start to view their lives and themselves not as real people, but as sources for content, this internal voyeurism can have detrimental effects on the performer’s sense of identity and mental health. But, damn, it is fun to watch.