Bo Burnham – Memphis Flyer

“I hope this email finds you well.” How many missives started like that in 2020? It was ostensibly expressing a wish that you were not infected with COVID, but it was also about mental health. Whether you were hiding from the virus in quarantine or dodging the maskless in your “essential” job, odds are pretty good you were not well — at least not emotionally. In January, 2020, the US Census reported 11 percent of people surveyed were experiencing depression or anxiety. By December, that number had risen to a whopping 42 percent.

Among those who were not OK was Bo Burnham. The comedian, musician, and director started out as one of the first teenage YouTube stars before graduating to standup, but he quit performing live after experiencing onstage panic attacks. His retirement from live performance may have been the best thing to happen to him, as he expanded his writing and directing. His 2018 film Eighth Grade is a masterpiece of adolescent comedy; I put it at number 16 in my best of the decade list.

Burnham spent the pandemic locked down in Los Angeles; to pass the time, he decided to film a comedy special, his first in four years. Inside is the product of a one-man band: Burham wrote 20 songs, designed the lighting, ran the cameras, recorded the audio, and did everything else. With the exception of the end, it’s filmed entirely inside a tiny studio apartment. In a sense, it’s him getting back to his YouTube roots, but with much more expensive equipment.

The 1918 influenza pandemic was a turning point in world history. It hastened the end of World War I, when 900,000 German soldiers came down the flu in a matter of months. But aside from Edvard Munch’s Self Portrait With the Spanish Flu, it produced very little in terms of lasting art. Even Ernest Hemingway’s novels set during the war omit mention of the pandemic that killed at least ten million more people than the conflict. That implies to me that people just wanted to forget about it.

COVID might end up being similarly forgotten by art. But at least we’ll have Inside. And frankly, I can’t think of any better way to record what what it felt like to live through 2020 than what Burnham has accomplished. Some of the songs come across as Tom Lehrer gone synth pop, or maybe something Weird Al would do if he wasn’t parodying other people’s songs. In other words, they’re catchy and funny, like the soon-to-be-immortal ditty “Welcome To The Internet”: “What would you prefer?/ Would you like to fight for civil rights/or tweet a racial slur?/Be Happy/Be horny/Be bursting with rage/We got a million different ways to engage.”

Like all great comedians, there’s more than just a lust for yuks at work here. Burnham’s lyrics are cutting, but they’re also insightful. He has an internet star’s confessional streak, and by the halfway mark of filming his show more or less in chronological order, his defenses are crumbling. Burnham turned 30 during lockdown, and spends the last minute of his twenties inviting us to join him as he stares bleakly at the clock, waiting for 11:59 PM to change to 12:00 AM. When he tries to record a bit about working on this special for a full year, he falls apart completely, storming off his own set.

You, like the artists of the Lost Generation, might just want to forget the whole thing (which is still ongoing, by the way) ever happened, but this show is not about wallowing in past pain. Inside is the first time I’ve really felt any kind of catharsis about the annus horribilis.

Bo Burnham: Inside is streaming on Netflix

Elsie Fisher as Kayla in Eighth Grade

FULL DISCLOSURE: Once upon a time, I was in eighth grade. So I may have some bias in my feelings about this film. Eighth Grade follows Kayla (Elsie Fisher) through her last week of middle school, complete with a one-sided crush, pool party, awkward sex ed video, and all the classic elements of a teen movie. It also investigates Kayla’s online persona and relationship with social media, which, in addition to casting actual young people in the parts of the teenagers, makes the movie feel shockingly accurate.

Half the story is told through the screens of digital devices, with Kayla’s entire life outside of school revolving around her laptop and smartphone. She posts video blogs of herself speaking to her computer’s camera, with monologues that are partially the sage wisdom of self-help memes (“You can’t be brave without being scared!”) combined with tongue-tied word vomit that is both familiar and painful to watch. Although Kayla’s video blog personality preaches confidence, it’s clear that she’s uncomfortable in her skin. The success of vloggers hinges on their performance of authenticity — “being real” while simultaneously appearing optimistic, carefree, and cool — which Kayla mimics, but ultimately fails to conceal her anxiety and awkwardness.

Teens today are six times more likely to experience anxiety and depression than they were 80 years ago, thanks to the impossible expectations of neoliberalism and social media. While my generation of Old Millennials used the internet to explore our identities and our feelings through online forums and blogs, we were almost always anonymous. We had been taught that it was dangerous to use our real names, and through our internet names and avatars, we were able to play with aspects of ourselves in a private/public way without the risk of social ridicule or the permanence of making a real-life decision about how we spent our time and who we spent it with. We could choose to sit at a different lunch table in the virtual world with none of the social consequences we knew at school.

The internet I grew up with officially died when Google bought YouTube and forced us to give up our anonymity, to use our legal names in place of our chosen handles. Now that social media encourages users to showcase their real lives, teenagers perform as themselves, all of them trying to mirror what they see as acceptable or cool according to the unending feeds on their screens. In Eighth Grade, Kayla is constantly scrolling, reacting, living on her phone. In her desperation to be cool and to be accepted, she creates an overly curated online persona, applying makeup along with a video tutorial, so that she can get back in bed and post a selfie captioned, “I woke up like this, ugh.” Like many of Kayla’s statements, these words are not her own, and by utilizing memes rather than speaking in her own way, Kayla can bypass the chance that she will be judged or ostracized in case her personal thoughts are deemed “wrong.” The scrutiny, from herself and everyone around her, is constant. The performance never ends.

Kayla is probably becoming an interesting person, but most of what we learn about her is surface level. I wanted to see a little more of Kayla’s off-screen home life, but maybe she doesn’t have one. Even in her room, typically a teenager’s safe haven, Kayla obsessively interacts with an internet audience that rarely responds. She’s never truly alone. So who would Kayla be if she were performing only for herself? If she ever does get close to solitude, Dad barges in with his dorky jokes and exasperating “I love you’s.” Her replies to his attempts to communicate range from stone-cold to downright mean, mirroring the popular girls’ reactions to Kayla. The parallel hints at a larger cycle of violence, in which young people respond to traumatic experiences of growing up by enacting cruelty on each other and themselves. At school, the students participate in active shooter drills (with special thanks to the drama club) but there are no lessons on communication, compassion, or consent.

The movie never pushes too hard in any one direction, but rather orbits smoothly around its protagonist. The new frontiers of dating and sexuality are approached with caution, and thankfully, we’re spared most tired teen movie tropes. The storytelling feels gentle and supportive, with small doses of blood, fire, and tears, because it just wouldn’t be a coming-of-age story without the hard stuff. Director Bo Burnham’s well-rounded approach presented a full picture of a modern middle schooler. I’m glad he didn’t go further to tackle the reality of adolescent girlhood, considering he’s never been one. Other directors could take a page out of Burnham’s book in that regard.

ACTUAL FULL DISCLOSURE: Once upon a time, I was a dorky eighth grade girl with acne, anxiety, and exactly zero friends, just like Kayla. I also played cymbals in the school band, and if I’d had a smartphone, laptop, and wifi, I probably would’ve been just as internet-obsessed as Kayla. I related to her immensely and low-key cried through the whole movie, not only because of the genuine representation of teen girl loneliness, but also because I realized I was still holding so much pain from my life as that person, in that body, and watching this movie was a healing experience I didn’t even know I needed.