‘inside’ depression: a FRTLD (failed-review-turned-literary-diary)
This is a discussion of Bo Burnham's Netflix comedy special Inside. It contains spoilers.
TRIGGER WARNING: Themes such as mental illness and self-harm.
An unused keyboard in my living room, circa March 2019
I enjoyed Inside. I think it's clever and funny and very artistic, but I mostly like it because of the continuous sense of melancholy and anxiety throughout the film. That part especially resonated with me, as I tend to enjoy anything that features sustained melancholy and anxiety. I find it relatable to some degree. In the case of Inside, however, I found it relatable entirely. There aren't many things we watch that we find 100% relatable. Mostly when we like something and see ourselves or our lives in it, the relatability falls somewhere between 50-75%. There are things in the piece that are still new to us. There was nothing new to me in Burnham's film, which would normally sound like a complete diss but that's far from the truth.
Disclaimer: I like to watch/read things once and then discuss them. I find that my feelings are the most raw and accurate after the very first experience. So, I've only seen this film once. I ask for your forgiveness if you've seen it and I’ve left out an important piece to you; my intention is to express my feelings. That is all.
PART I - THE CONCEPT
Here lies the protagonist on the floor, amidst a scattering of wires of his own creation.
INSIDE
The film is set in Bo's home, in a single room where he plans on recording and producing the entire project for a year. He gave himself a very robust set of circumstances, even considering the restricting nature of a worldwide pandemic and national lockdown. For some reason, he chose to make it more restrictive by limiting himself to one room. At first glance this seemed very illogical, until a random memory flashed in my brain and I realized, 'hey, I've done that before.’
The scene: the year is 2019. It’s Spring. I live with 2 millennials in an apartment that is smaller than the first floor of my mum's house. There are 3 rooms, and I live in 2 of them; the kitchen-living room open space and my bedroom. I'm 18. I'm rewriting Project Red, my first real book, and I want it to be perfect. I write at a small white desk in my bedroom whether morning or night, breakfast or dinner. I am inside.
This may or may not resemble recent events in your life. That is fine.
Returning to Burnham's comedy special, which I will henceforth refer to as the 'Failed-Upbeat-Comeback-Turned-Harrowing-Video-Diary' (or FUCTHVD for short), the idea of completing a project in isolation is not so strange anymore. In the opening of the film, Bo is sitting in a chair and staring intensely at an unknown source, then proceeds to kickstart the film with the song ‘Content’. This song is the core of FUCTHVD because it sets up the tone immediately—that of persistent melancholy and anxiety, as stated above—and also gives us a glimpse at the Bo that we will eventually come to know by the end of the film; the long-haired, slightly haggard, dissociative version. It’s short and sweet, and ends with the film’s title name that gave me a sense of anticipation and dread at the same time. ‘This will get dark,’ I think to myself. I’m excited.
And I have reason to be. The rest of the film is chock full of colourful imagery and sharp wit, and music that has the capacity to make me both laugh and feel deeply moved at the same time, sometimes to a degree that conflicts the mind as it is subject to both ends of an emotional spectrum; happy and sad, then arrogant and deeply, horribly, terrifyingly anxious. You may have noticed that I’ve used that word a few times already. Anxiety. Nervousness. Unease. Maybe you’ve seen the film and understand what I mean, or maybe you are waiting for a concrete explanation of this feeling in a comedy context. How can a humorous musical filmed in the comfort of one’s own home have any place for fear and misery? It sounds almost contradictory. It is contradictory. It makes little sense, but the sense it does make is there and very real.
Part II - Making Sense
The film’s poster says it all. Though we are inside we are not comfortable. There are numerous wires obstructing the room, and while the setup for the main equipment appears reasonably put together, the edges of the poster foreshadow a chaotic reality in the background. This reality is later revealed after the film’s halfway point, when we see a shot of the room at large with a shirtless Bo sitting in the centre, seemingly unfazed by the chaos around him. The magnitude of mess is nonsensical. The environment is not ideal and only serves to complicate the goal of completing the project, but the protagonist’s mental state has rendered him somewhat indifferent and numb to this fact. I am starting off with this description because it is a fairly standard one. The most recognizable and stereotypical image of depression is a person sitting in their own mess, caged in by an inability to perform self-care and engage with positivity. At my little white desk in my little apartment, this is precisely the cage I found myself in not long ago, and so I was not surprised to see it on-screen. Here, it seemed, was another standard representation of mental illness that says a lot without saying much.
But whatever. I’ve seen that before. So, what makes ‘Inside’ so special and contradictory and blah blah blah?
Well, it’s the music, of course.
Could i interest you in everything, all of the time?
Image Source: Screenshot I took of ‘Welcome to the Internet’ from Bo Burnham’s Inside.
This song quickly became the most popular track from the comedy special, and rightly so. During my initial watch it was this song in particular that made me realise this would become one my new favourite films. At once, it inspired a sense of joy so strong I felt nauseous and overwhelmed, which is how I usually measure my favourite things. The thing is, I could easily explain the significance of ‘Welcome to the Internet’ and the precise parts and wordplays that struck a chord within me, but I doubt that’s very necessary when you can watch and listen for yourself and know exactly what I mean. And in the case that it inspires absolutely nothing in your mind, body, and spirit, then I would only be wasting my time explaining. I will instead direct my energy to the array of music in this FUCTHVD, and how it perfectly depicted a terrible time in my life that I had thought was very unnatural and unique until this 30-year-old American man released a movie that told me ‘you’re actually not unique at all’.
It’s cheesy. I know. But I’m going to say it anyway: the light you experience in your darkest moments is nothing you’ll ever be able to explain, and something that cannot be felt again. I will now return to my Spring Depression of 2019. I wrote one of the most emotional scenes I’d ever written at this time, and it has survived my recent edits, and remains in Project Red to this day. At the time, I was unaware that I was directly projecting my feelings into a fictional scenario, and having them said aloud through another’s dialogue. The words were as follows: ‘I am trapped and all alone’. In hindsight I should have realised where these feelings and thoughts came from, but self-awareness was never one of my strongpoints. And so, with these feelings dominating my every waking moment (which was most of the day and night as I had very little sleep that period despite rarely leaving my room), I often listened to music.
I would describe my taste as eclectic, I guess. I hardly stick to one or two genres. In that period, however, I found myself listening to the same songs over and over again, and the same two albums repeatedly. It was also music that I never usually listened to. It was very far from the my usual rock, indie and classical preferences. With no small amount of cringe I will reveal that this music was Ariana Grande’s pop album Thank You, Next and Tiny Meat Gang’s Locals Only comedy rap album. I didn’t listen to anything else for months. My experience of listening to this music ranged from in the dark of night as I danced in my pajamas, or the few instances I dared step outside and take the bus to town. I went nowhere without listening to the spacey chords of ‘NASA' and ‘Needy’, and I am almost certain that I listened to ‘Stay Safe’ at least three times a day. I couldn’t get enough of the beat in that song. To this day it awakens pure glee within me at the sound of those opening bars.
‘Stay Safe’ by tmg
TMG (Tiny Meat Gang) is the musical duo of Cody Ko and Noel Miller, known for their comedy content on YouTube.
Yes, glee. That’s what I felt at the time, listening through my wireless headphones at a potentially damaging volume, practically surviving off of the hormones released whenever my favourite songs would come on again for the 2ooth time. It was just as well, for my eating habits had gone to shit. One meal a day, two on a good day, and for the most part eating only Rice Krispies cereal and whole medium pepperoni pizzas from the nearest takeaway. I look back and I think ‘ew’ but at the time it was ‘yum’.
FUCTHVD. The main character, Bo, is often observed in little clothing as he makes abstract and emotional dance moves to his sync-pop tunes and sings along to haunting harmonies. You can see it on the screen—he is happy. In these moments the main character experiences a light that we cannot explain, and it is present in most of the performances. Of course, as this is still a film and not necessarily a documentary, we cannot assume all parts of the narrative to be completely true. However, for the purposes of this essay I will assume the protagonist exists in a reality where all things depicted on-screen are real reflections of his experience. Whether fully clothed or only in his underwear, our main character comes alive during his musical performances where he’s on his feet, sometimes dancing. The different colours of light in the dark room seem to be manifestations of his emotions, as they light up an otherwise dark and messy room, a room that is stifling at other points in the film.
This room is only ever welcoming and alive during performances like ‘30’ and ‘Bezos I’ and ‘Bezos II’ and ‘All Time Low’ and ‘Shit’, all of which feature flashing light, an energetic Bo, and upbeat tempos.
This room is only ever welcoming and alive during performances like ‘30’ and ‘Bezos I’ and ‘Bezos II’ and ‘All Time Low’ and ‘Shit’, all of which feature flashing light, an energetic Bo, and upbeat tempos. But it was the climactic section in ‘30’, at 1:47, that caught me off guard: “And now my stupid friends are having stupid children, my stupid friends are having stupid children…’ Insulting friends is a common expression of envy and resentment to those we perceive as doing better than us in life, but it’s not the envy that necessarily resonated with me. This line is sung multiple times, at first with a bare backing track, the vocals emphasised by sustained notes and a somewhat aggressive deliverance, and then later with strong percussion and vocal harmonies. I immediately understood the confessional nature of this section. The child-like anger and sadness was expressed through a fun and soulful melody. Art in this instance is a means for our main character to relay some of the dark feelings of his depression. To let off steam. Whether this steam is indeed let off or if acknowledging it at all only brings it to the surface to be felt tenfold—this is unclear, and not important. What’s important is the ‘shittiness’ of this line (for lack of a better word) and the way it is expressed through art. For me, at my little white desk, I expressed a lot of ‘shittiness’ through some pretty epic magic scenes and colourful imagery. I confessed my anger and resentment in the form of outbursts of flame and destruction in my book, and it became my primary means to do so. When I listened to Ariana Grande in the dimness of my bedroom and watched the screen lights of my phone flash across my ceiling and reflect in my mirror, I harmonised and confessed my anxiety for my walls alone to hear.
Anxiety. I mentioned it again. From the lyrics and songs peppered throughout Inside, there seems to only be a sense of misery, not anxiety. This is true. In the words and in the music, anxiety is completely absent. There is no fear when Bo performs his music perfectly, nor when my 2019-self wrote a chapter down without reservation. None. But what about when there’s no music? What happens when the piano is put away, and the laptop is closed shut?
Believe it or not, this post was supposed to be short. Like two pages max. I didn't meant to go this deep into an 87-minute Netflix comedy, but… Screw it, I've come this far, I might as well dive in deeper.
PART III - ‘NOOO!’
Image taken from Inside on Netflix.
I think it needs to be emphasized that in the semi-fictional world of our main character Bo-the-comedian, everything is meant to turn out great. While the circumstances of the pandemic are never explicitly stated, the viewer is free to assume that it is the reason for Bo's being inside. However, despite the awkwardness of that reality, we are led to believe several times throughout the film that the main character expects a very positive, very fulfilling experience as the year (and film) progresses. In ‘All Time Low’ he openly admits this in a mini monologue where he reveals that in January 2020 he “got better” after 5 years of struggling with severe anxiety. He makes light of this dark irony again at some other point in the film that I vaguely remember but I think was definitely said. I think. But even without words, we see with our own eyes that the early lockdown Bo with shorter hair had a much calmer aura, at his piano and setting up the room for the upcoming year. He is drastically different from the Bo we come to know by the end of the special, in voice (which becomes lower and more exhausted), in facial expression (more brooding and irritable), in physical appearance (he has lost weight). There is no verbal mention of the negative future, and only a nod towards a great comeback, a climactic reach in his career, and a sense of mental and spiritual fulfilment. These things do end up happening, but not in the way that's expected. The only mentions of the difficult future are shown in post-production via editing: through ominous music over a bright-faced Bo's monologue, and carefully placed images and shots from a later version of Bo, interjected in the transitions or the background of a lighter note recording. One such scene is when early pandemic Bo reprimands the act of suicide, only for the later version of Bo to watch this clip with bleak eyes and contempt, so far removed from that version of himself that the words now ring hollow. Depression has taken root in his mind and body (for it is also a physical disease), and the consequences are severe enough to affect something as simple as a playback of an earlier clip.
REFLECTION
A seemingly depressed Bo watching footage of an upbeat version of himself.
This, for me, is the origin of the line ‘Noo!’. I recall it in two instances. 1. The introduction in ‘Content’ and 2. in ‘30’. Both times, Bo references his depression, however brief. Both times, the ‘nooo’ is squeezed in quickly, barely fitting into the notes preceding it and following it, as though inconveniencing the overall grandeur and efforts of the music. This sound is high-pitched and whiny, and you cannot help but notice how different it sounds from the rest of the song. It feels like an intrusion, and the voice doesn’t seem to belong to Bo at all. Or at least, not the one who is performing with precision and perfection. Not the Bo that is in complete control of the performance, from every sound and harmony to the colours and angles on screen. That sound is someone else, something that should not be revealed at this time. I cannot stress enough how out of place this ‘no’ is. Despite all the efforts of our main character, despite the trials to perform everything without fault as we are shown in some clips that reveal a haggard Bo re-recording a line that sounded the exact same to our own ears yet was not good enough to his… Somehow that ‘no’ managed to worm its way in. It managed to make itself heard, and now the viewer, the listener and outsider, is made acutely aware of that dynamic. We would have been none-the-wiser to that suffering creature, the depression and fear that lives within the glowing performer, but here it is, not once but twice, emerged through a tear in the carefully constructed armour, and now we know.
There is no hiding it now.
Although we are there as the camera, watching the events of Inside unfold, we are never truly inside Burnham’s head.
Although we are there as the camera, watching the events of Inside unfold, we are never truly inside Burnham’s head.
We get glimpses. A line about how ‘shit’ he feels. A scene where streamer-Bo plays a game in which the avatar can only break down crying or play piano. We never hear him say the words ‘I am a perfectionist, I want this special to be great, I want to do my best, I want this to be a film that makes up for my 5-year absence’, but they are heavily implied in every scene. There is a growing pressure throughout the film to make us laugh, to make us feel something, to move us in some way or say something witty. There is a deep desire in each song to entertain the viewer as much as possible, and from what we see this desire, this pressure is never satisfied. No matter how beautiful the melodies, or gut-wrenching a joke can be for its truth, the main character never expresses joy at the products made. There is no self-validation. There is no satisfaction. There is no relief from the drive to do better. There is no release of energy after an explosive performance. There is only more work, more editing, more recording, funnier jokes, deeper social commentaries, brighter lights, more pressure, more pressure, until four little words are uttered in the preface to ‘All Eyes On Me’.
“I am not well."
Our main character weeps. This is my favourite scene. I don’t mean that in a sadistic way, of course. In fact, it was heartbreaking to watch, but that is why I appreciated. Those four words are a heavy realization for our protagonist. To admit one's poor mental state is no easy feat. Our brave comedian who has enough talents, smarts, and luscious hair to conquer even the most stubborn naysayers is at an all time low, unable to see his own worth in a moment of utter vulnerability.
It's all very dramatic, and that is good. Depression and anxiety are so dramatic, in fact, that the sufferer often sees little reason to keep pushing forward to the other side. The side of good health and peace. Often, the sufferer does not believe there is another side at all. The villainous illness has mastered the art of concealing the light from its victim, and so even on the edge of recovery the sufferer may not see the progress made, nor the path ahead to peace. To utter the words 'I am not well' is to confess that the villain is 'winning'. That you, the hero, the brave protagonist, do not know the way and are at the mercy of your opponent’s cruelty. It is a moment that all who have faced such darkness experience with great shame, a humbling moment. Sometimes referred to as 'Rock Bottom' or the 'Lowest Low', this moment of solitude and misery is no small matter. It is here that some brave warriors do not make it back out, and remain lost in the dark forever.
But it is important to remember that the light, the other side, is there. This story is old and has been told many times; the light is there. Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it's gone. You must brave the dark and trust that there is something beyond the shadows, because there is. Our Bo continues to record and sing, knowing there will be an end despite believing its endlessness. The message is small here, but it was impactful to me. I sympathised as he sobbed into his hands, and recalled a moment in my Spring Depression of 2019 where I let all my pressures and fears build to a crescendo, and my body seemed to react before my mind knew what it was doing. The moment where one weeps and confesses how lost and alone they feel in the face of mental illness is something that you never forget, and I appreciate the courage it took for Bo to keep it in the film and let it become part of the narrative.
Because it is a crucial part of the narrative. It is not a breaking point, it’s a change in the storyline. A climax. A beginning and an end all at once.
THE END
Are you feeling nervous? Are you having fun?
It’s almost over, it’s just begun.
Don’t overthink this, look in my eye
Don’t be scared, don’t be shy
Come on in, the water’s fine.
‘All Eyes On Me’, from Inside
This film has no ending.
I mean, as far as endings go it's virtually non-existent. It just kind of… finishes? There’s an insinuation that Bo ventures outside after the last scene, but this isn’t shown. There is also no footage to show that the main character’s health improves, or that he ended the project in a satisfactory way, or even a sentence of closure uttered before the credits. There’s just a black screen and the names of the production crew, which was mostly Bo. My theory is that Bo simply didn’t finish the project and published it without an ending, perhaps foreseeing that this was part of a longer story that would span more than a year. Perhaps the intent was to make you think that mental illness does not have a happy ending, or something equally as dreary and untrue. Regardless of the reason for the lack of ending, I think it works because it can dually function as a beginning.
The special doesn’t need a conclusion, because it also serves as an introduction to another storyline. It’s the prequel for a version where health and peace are maintained in Bo’s life. Even when I look back at my 18-year-old self who experienced a scary decline in health, I do not see that period as having a concrete ending. After my declaration of not being well—in the form of sobbing in the car on the way back home—the story wasn’t over. It was just a catalyst to a better chapter. The years that followed involved self-growth and a journey of mental health that was to one day get me an official diagnosis and a treatment plan that is currently keeping some of that darkness at bay. I did leave that bedroom and that apartment, but I didn’t have to then for it to be significant now. Maybe that’s abstract thinking, but somehow it gives this FUCTHVD a sense of realism that doesn’t seem so bad. The last lines of the film are ‘any day now’, which kind of echo the same thing. Any day now and the new chapter will begin. We might not know when but we surely have to stick around to see that ending. Burnham is seen watching his own clip in the very last scene, and instead of criticizing himself or re-recording, he looks content with the clip he watched, cracking the faintest smile. Almost as if acknowledging the start of something new.
At least, that’s the way I see it.
Thus concludes this post that nobody asked for, a failed-review-turned-literary-diary (or FRTLD for short).
—Desree
A rough selfie of me, outside.
CIRCA SPRING 2020
Unitedgmh.org provides GLOBAL support for those suffering with mental illness. If you've been affected by the topics in this post, please reach out.
BONUS SECTION:
WHITE WOMAN’S INSTAGRAM
“An avocado
A poem, written in the sand
Fresh-fallen snow on the ground
A golden retriever in a flower crown
Is this Heaven?
Or is it just aWhite woman,
A white woman's Instagram,
White woman,
Behold one of my favourites from the special.