7: Bo Burnham Inside Outtakes - Why Being Yourself Is So Scary

All eloquence aside, being genuine is just — hard. People deemed “successful influencers” usually need to exist within a nuanced gray area space— an odd intersection between entertainment and impact. And of course, with most things in life, that influence that one holds can be a positive or a negative. For instance, an influencer can promote brands who are only trying to commodify social justice movements by using their stances to virtue signal and gain public support, which in the end encourages people buy their products. Or an influencer can use their platform to simply spread information without the guise of trying to sell anything. Despite the intentions—the action, as Bo would say, gives us this “funny feeling”.

However, I do believe one can you can exist positively within that intersection of entertainment and impact, as that is essentially what Bo Burnham does. He entertains us with witty recreations of real life phenomena but the impact doesn’t come from what he’s trying to sell us, per-say. In the end, while watching his specials, we have the choice to realize issues & try and change, or we can simply take in the content, let go, and laugh for a while.

In Bo’s outtakes, he talks about sharing dumplings, being too spooked to squish spiders, and other mundane everyday things. His songs made me smile and reminds me that there can be music in everything. It’s corny to say, and I mildly cringe and laugh at myself as I see the words type across the page, but the outtakes, mundane as they were, made me genuinely feel warm that Bo valued the little things in life enough to perform them. Seeing the celebration of the mundane gave me a hope and a reminder that not everything in art has to be so romanticized. Artistic representation is usually reserved for either traumatic moments, or grandiose showcases of love or affection, but Bo’s outtakes remind us life can also just be simple, and there is beauty in that too.

 What We Discuss: 
- The difficulties of fame. The dark side of being a public figure with your past on display. Although you may grow and change as a person, your past permanently follows you.
- Bo’s celebration of the beautiful mundane things in life, showing us there can be music in everything. 
-The difficulties of performing for the camera. Modern day performance via social media & other forms of self expression (the sharing of vlogs, memes, etc.) is more often a representation of the performer and their own performative intentions rather than a representation of a character as a performer for the audience. 
- An analysis of Bo Burnham’s “Chicken song”.

Transcript

0:00 Hi! :) I'm back! With another Bo Burnham analysis video? And i am just as shocked as you are *giggle* because I did not see this drop coming... I did not see it coming at all. And I'm so glad you decided to adventure with me today. On Reese Grey analyzes where we look at creations and experiences and art, media, music, and even video games; to explore exactly why we think the way we think question what we believe and learn something new.

0:30 The outtakes were released by Bo Burnham for the one year anniversary of his Netflix special "Inside". and just came out last week! So, I'm not tardy to the party on this one. Shocking. The outtakes included a few new songs, some behind the scenes, but there is quite a bit of new content! The outtakes focus a lot on the process of making his special, which sounds like it might not be that additive.... because so was inside, but the vibe was very different.

1:00 Bo talks about sharing dumplings, being too spooked to squish spiders, *spider song clip* and other mundane, everyday, beautiful things in the outtakes. Opposed to how performance can affect someone's mental health. And the mundane feeling, the familiar feeling that these outtakes gave me... made me smile and know that there can be music in everything. And it's corny to say that! But it makes me feel warm that he valued the little things that happen in life enough to perform them.

And seeing the celebration of the mundane gave me hope and a reminder that not everything has to be so romanticized. Not everything has to be so so bad or so so good... life can just be. And there's beauty in the everyday things that happen.

2:12 And I think this comes coupled with the fact that a lot of people watched this a year ago. Watched inside the special on Netflix for the first time, around in 2021. And took it as sort of a commentary on how it feels to be stuck inside and forced to communicate over social media because of the lock down. As the name "inside" suggests, and that's fair. But that's not what I personally felt was strongly represented. And the outtakes solidified that point of view, for me personally.

2:43 There's a type of loneliness that comes along with self-expression, in the form of performing by yourself straight to the camera. It almost feels insane. And you don't have to be a creator or performer on Bo's level, to empathize with that. Part of our everyday life is performing for others... in choosing what we want to wear, and choosing how we greet people. You know, it has... we're very mindful of our self. Instead of genuine and curious about ourselves and others.

3:22 How often have you rewritten a status or saved a post or a tiktok in your drafts not because anything is wrong with it... and wrong with what you created. But because you want to come off a certain way to people. You want to make sure that you're understood and represented correctly. And you want to make sure that what you put out there what you perform is correct or "right", and I think that feeling, that box that people put themselves in... can feel suffocating especially for more creative people like Bo Burnham. And lead you to feel alone with your thoughts and like you're not understood.

4:04 And he kind of rode that like mentality of societal pressure on who you should be throughout his entire career. And despite the many nuances that come from personal struggle, on a personal level with identity and expression because everyone's going to feel different about how they have to perform based on like, the culture of where they are, their own family values, religious values, a lot of different things.

But it feels so refreshing to see someone like Bo Burnham, who essentially grew up in social media fame in this industry since his youtube fame at 16 who is egregiously self-aware... and talks about the comedy of performativity on the internet. And we all perform, and I'm not just talking about you know, if you're the type of person who likes to express yourself over the internet or perform in theater like I'm not just talking about creators and artists themselves.

5:04 Anytime you leave a youtube comment, or post a meme to facebook, when you share a reflection of you and your thoughts and your beliefs or personality... you're expressing yourself in a way that you hope to present yourself as. As you're sharing a piece of art, be it a meme or a post or a song with others to then talk about that art with, to enjoy together... and in sharing media even... it's calculated and performative.

5:34 And I think a lot of the time... words and phrases like performativity and things adjacently related to performativity like identity politics, have been villainized in popular media, for sure. But performing on social media isn't an inherently negative thing at all. And neither is the recognition that you believe in something, so you're part of a certain group, and ascribed to a certain identity. Which would be identity politics. Of course, we all believe in something. Of course, like we gravitate towards certain groups and interests. We're human. And to believe that you're above bias or above needing to perform for others... like you don't have a need for acceptance or a group or camaraderie ---is silly. And can even be dangerous if you lack that much self-awareness. Like, oh i don't get involved in identity politics. Oh i am not biased. Yes, you are. You know? And to recognize that, and to know it, and to strive to learn more and be better is part of being human. And you're always going to believe in something and to not recognize what you believe how will you ever learn and grow?

6:54 And I think that self-awareness is something that Bo really struggles with. Because he knows that, you know, he made out-of-pocket jokes about you know the lgbtq community and he apologized for it. And he thinks differently now, and learns and grows as every human being does. But I think having that permanent footprint and not really being able to leave it in your past is something that is really unique for this time. Especially when that type of content has been used to skyrocket him to the fame that he has now. So I think there's a lot of inner turmoil and guilt and reflection that he's struggling with, and dealing with.

7:46 But being genuine is really hard. Especially when successfully navigating being wildly influential in popular media, usually requires that famous person, group, or institution, haha. To exist in this intersection of entertaining people and impacting people. And this can be a good and a bad thing. Like brands commodifying social justice movements by using their stances to virtue signal and gain public support that makes people want to buy their products. Like denim jean companies standing against racism, or a fast food chain supporting the lgbtqia community. As Bo would say, it gives us that "funny feeling". Because, more than them standing for something, they're selling us something. That at the end of the day, that's what it is trying to get our attention for for our money. Bo Soundbite: "Why do I wear jeans? I wear jeans because jeans don't watch the news".

8:49: I really enjoy analyzing Bo Burnham's performances and the irony that comes with Bo essentially breaking the fourth wall. Not only by talking about performance in entertainment, but showing us the process of his own performativity and the silliness that is performativity, how important performativity is because it can help us express and it helps us wrap our mind around our own feelings, and it it is so beautiful and it can be something that's manipulated into being so scary like a brand who commodifies social justice by stating that they stand for something thus you should buy their product. It's just really hard to be genuine in both a brand sense and in a personal sense.

9:42 Of course you can exist between that commodification of mental health and culture and actual impact and positivity, because I feel like that's essentially what Bo Burnham does. He entertains us with witty recreations of real life phenomena but the impact doesn't come from what he's trying to sell us. In the end we have the choice to realize what he's saying and to laugh or try and change or to talk about it it gives us a springboard for conversation, and sometimes it's just also a way to to let go.

I really think that that sense of frustration of being genuine and then also having the job of performing in that relationship that a creator has with the camera the camera being of course just an extension of yourself and who you want to be for everyone else.

10:42 What i do love most about outtakes special was that it was mundane and it's what made the outtakes so beautiful because he managed to make me feel choked up with tears in this song about a chicken crossing a road. Soundbite: "The chicken must first cross the road"

A song about a chicken who is happy enough, who's a mother and a wife but dreams of being something more. Even if that's something more is moving to Memphis and becoming a dentist, it would be different at least, and something new to experience that she doesn't know... I think when you get into the routine of life you start to worry about essentially if you're spending your life right. I think that that fear is something that i can really empathize with. You just always dream of of something more... and you just want to run, like we all do. Sometimes when you want to leave the proverbial nest, even if it's not your first time doing something new you just kind of keep wanting to do it because you don't want to quote unquote waste your life.

12:00 But then i think there's this worry that once you do leave you never know what will happen like bad things can happen. And that risk that the chicken takes of leaving where she's comfortable and something that she knows in her coop with her family, at the risk of something being better is a choice that we make every day really. In a world of endless possibilities... it's so difficult to stay content. Not that you have to be, but i think even for people like me i'm a little afraid of staying still.

And i think stories like the chicken story that Bo sings about can be work in a few different ways. It can be a proverb or a cautionary tale like don't go out and cross the road because you never know what will happen. Bad things can happen. And then of course, they can. But if you choose to stay where you are, as well it can feel empty. Bo points out everyday situations and phenomena and and just strips them down to its core and it makes us feel familiar. No matter where you come from you can understand the feeling of "what if".

13:20 His song goodbye and the last full song of his full 2021 special inside, has the line "i'll see you when i see you you can pick the street i'll meet you on the other side". The outtakes give us his original special a brighter and more hopeful new meaning for me now in the context of his chicken song. He's willing to explore and cross that road to maybe meet some of us along his journey, despite the bad things that might happen. And i hope to think that i live the same, but sometimes i get scared too.

14:07 Thank you so much for adventuring with me today! I know this this is probably going to be a really short one, but these outtakes were so exciting, and i wanted to chat about them! But wait before you go wait! Make sure that you like and subscribe i hate saying that... or rate this podcast on spotify, so you can keep adventuring with me and we can keep this conversation going on mental health mondays, if you would like. On ReeseGrey.com r-e-e-s-e-g-r-e-y dot com go to the mental health mondays under the adventure with me podcast button and that will be a segment of the show where i'll answer any listeners questions anonymously about love, life, or a prior video essay here on Reese Grey analyzes.

Or you can even leave a comment in the you tube video which isn't necessarily anonymous, but hey--- if you have a burner account, go ahead. Tweet me, just kidding i don't know how to work twitter. But i am on twitter. And of course even if you want to submit anonymously you can leave any like an email or social media handle and i'll let you know uh when your question is going to be answered, and i'll give you the date and upload time, and all of that. Always with genuine enthusiasm, always anonymous, looking forward to hearing from you! I think that's it. All right, okay, love you bye :)