Bo Burnham’s Inside: the first ever meta-modern masterpiece
Bo Burnham’s new ‘comedy special’ Inside is:
-a shockingly articulate exploration of mental health in the pandemic era
-a truly disturbing look at an artist’s perfectionism and social isolation in pursuit of an abstract goal
-an uncommonly precise & evenhanded critique of internet culture
-a true masterpiece of reflexive cinema (or is it musical theater? what the fuck is it?)
-just a fucking great musical experience
All of that is true imho and has been discussed to actual death, so I’m going to focus on something different: I am hereby declaring Inside to be the first truly Great (yes, capital G for emphasis) work of art to appear in the meta-modern tradition.
It is truly 100% ironic and 100% sincere.
Most artistic expressions anchor on one side of that spectrum or the other. There wasn’t a single sincere moment in Seinfeld, nor was there even a hint of irony in Downton Abbey. I love both, but they belong to previous eras of content creation (post-modern and modern, respectively). Works of this new/upcoming era will have an increased emotional and intellectual range as a consequence of being fully ironic and fully sincere simultaneously (for context, I’d tentatively classify Broad City, Bojack Horseman, and most of millennial TikTok as being meta-modern in scope).
As a young-ish millennial, I use irony to distance myself emotionally (and socially) from shit I find ridiculous while still granting myself permission to engage with it on some level. Example: when I turned 22, I blasted the Taylor Swift song on repeat in my dorm room for like 6 hours, and it’s ok because I was doing it ironically. My peers inferred the irony from my appearance and demeanor (lol), which made it (borderline) acceptable behavior in my social context. But here’s the thing: I liked it. The material was emotionally resonant for me. I was sincerely having a moment with that song (ok, 6 hours worth of moments), all the while mocking it mercilessly. That’s meta-modernism. It transcends the harsh insincerity of post-modernism by reintegrating a shred of human feeling without losing its self-awareness.
But T-Swift’s 22 is NOT itself a meta-modern work. At face value, it’s a sincere coming-of-age anthem. It can also be read as pure irony by assholes like me who want to enjoy it without identifying as actual fans. And the listening listening experience for said assholes can become meta-modern in scope if they’re experiencing irony and sincerity concurrently (this can be confusing for the uninitiated). But in order to qualify as a legitimate meta-modern work, a song must be aware of it’s own absurdity. 22 most certainly is not.
This is the genius of Bo Burnham. Each and every sincere expression of feeling and/or insight is couched within so many layers of irony that one cannot possibly accuse him of being sentimental. The work is fundamentally self-aware not only of its own absurdity, but also of the absurdity of artistic expression in general (not to mention existence altogether). This gives young and/or cynical viewers permission to lower their defenses (aka to inhibit their own irony shields / defense mechanisms) and to relate openly with the content without feeling like chumps.
“It’s ok… I recognize that life is fundamentally an absurdist nightmare,” he says (I’m paraphrasing), “and here’s how that makes me feel.”
That second clause is what’s missing from Seinfeld and Curb your Enthusiasm, and the first is what’s missing from Downton Abbey, 22, and every sad boi acoustic guitar song ever.
Example: the song White Woman’s Instagram, originally my least favorite from the special and arguably the most problematic (are white women a disadvantaged group? I mean, yes… and no?) contains perhaps the clearest example of a whiplash pivot from ironic to sincere and back to ironic. At the 2:16 mark (of the song, not the special) he takes a break from mocking the absurdly upbeat performative content of most people’s IG feeds (notice I’m saying people, not women) to read a hypothetical caption in which a girl expresses sincere affection and grief to her deceased mother. Instantly, we’re seeing white women portrayed as genuine, open hearted, vulnerable, and kind. And we’re seeing Instagram portrayed as an open space for authentic human expression. Bo even highlights/symbolizes this shift visually by moving us gradually from the 1:1 aspect ratio of IG back to the 16:9 aspect ratio in which the rest of the ‘special’ is shot. Then when the girl starts talking about her apartment and her boyfriend, and we feel the performative self-aggrandizement that is endemic of IG creeping back in, our aspect ratio begins to shift back to 1:1. Crucially, Bo refrains from mocking that particular hypothetical women, and in fact there is no punchline to that segment of the song whatsoever. Instead, Bo jumps immediately back into the previous vibe with a line about goat cheese salads and backlit hammocks. This sequence is brilliant for two reasons: 1) in an instant, it both humanizes and redeems the group we were just making fun of, 2) it’s evocative of the actual lived experience of scrolling Instagram (and Twitter, and the internet in general), in our slog through over-idealized bullshit is punctuated by brief moments of inspiring and/or wholesome human connection, and 3) taken as a whole, it articulates a nuanced take on IG (an important part of our world, let’s be honest) that is equal parts ironic and sincere.
In conclusion, thank you Bo for giving us such a brilliant and workable example of what is possible in this era.
Here’s some info about metamodernism:
