Can't Handle This (Bo Burnham Rant)

Finally having a chance to see my favorite comedian perform live was utterly thrilling, and it was even better than I’d hoped. He knew how to keep the energy up, how to play off of himself and build up a comedic lexicon, kind of an ecosystem that we could keep returning to and exploring.

I was having the time of my life in that cramped mezzanine seat, sweating and basking in the colored lights and the anonymity of uproarious laughter, that is until he asked us “what is this show about?”. He crouched down to the level of the audience and began to talk to us. 

“It’s about performing,” he said. He brought the house lights up for a few minutes so he could just sit and talk to us, and though it didn’t magically melt away the facade of performance, it removed one more barrier.

For a moment, we–at least I– saw him as a person with some words to say instead of as a famous comedian. This was the denouement of the show; it may have been political or "personal" before. It may even have hinted at some underlying insecurities, but now, there was no going back. It was no longer "just" comedy; no, it had morphed into something entirely new, something intimate and haunting, something that left me in tears.

WHAT.

Bo Burnham, has that power over people. His body of work is extensive, starting when he was still a teenager in the late 2000s. In his more recent content, Bo has increasingly shifted subject matter and tone to a more personal and vulnerable place. Even when his material was solely for entertainment purposes, when it was much lighter (and much more offensive in retrospect), it absolutely got me through the tough times I had in middle school.

And as I have grown, so too has Bo, his material evolving, coinciding with my needs and emotional development. It's funny that the only real para-social relationship I've ever had with a "public figure" has been one with a guy who hates that kind of thing. Bo himself deals harshly with the topic of para-social relationships- he was talking about this before it was a hot buzzword that YouTube personalities loved to decry.

- Uh, I'm giving you attention, girl that's wooing. Are you, are you happy now?
-I love you!
-You love me? That's very nice. You love the idea of me, you don't know me, but that's okay. It's called a parasocial relationship; it goes one way and is ultimately destructive, but please! Keep buying all my shit forever!

(this is impromptu crowd interaction is from "what." in 2013)

The marked turning point in Bo’s work comes in 2013 with his first Netflix special what.. At this point, he’s 22 and has already written a couple albums/shows, but what. is different; it is the anguished expression of a trapped man. Bo engineered what. to be a technically intricate meta-commentary on his own career. It's tied together by audio clips, disembodied recordings which at first glance can make his own self loathing seem like more than that– like it is justified, even sanctioned by the divine. He opens the show with a robot voice over the sound system which introduces Bo, insults him, and tells us:

He's isolated himself, over the last 5 years, in the pursuit of comedy
And in doing so
Has lost touch with reality
You're an asshole, Bo...
You think you know better than everybody
You will die alone
And you will deserve it
But in the meantime
You might as well tell those silly jokes of yours
See if that helps

These harsh words from robot God are obviously an externalization of Bo’s internal monologue, but to an extreme degree. I’ve seen self-deprecating comedy even to the point of self-hatred, but this feels different. It's this vitriolic self loathing that when bounced back at you from someone as talented as Bo Burnham–from someone whom you idolize– causes mixed feelings. I personally took a lot of comfort in the realization that this man who reminded me so much of myself and who is everything I wanted to be had the same insecurities as I did. The resigned nature of the last sentence is a condemnation for Bo, and we see that even in this very moment, his ambivalence about his career is materializing before us; comedy is just a futile way to mask his problems. It is incredibly rare and brave to admit this sort of profound existential dissatisfaction to the very people who are paying to see him do the job he resents. Later on in the song he adds:

You used to do comedy when you felt like being funny
But now you're contractually obligated
So dance, you fucking monkey

Again, Burnham makes it even clearer how comedy is not serving him as well as it once did and how he resents the direction of his life. It is no longer up to him; Bo feels like a marionette in the hands of his label and his audience and all those who benefit from his success. His discussion of performance itself will be radically expanded on in Bo’s later works, but these almost throw away lines are the seeds.

To be honest, what. is a chaotic show; underneath all the meticulously planned work, you can feel Bo struggling and stumbling in a greater sense; it feels like he is still finding his voice and style. However, Bo’s decision to produce what. in the way he did was a good one; it was his stepping stone to bigger, better things. With what., Bo made his material so unique–larger than life, meta, abstract; his meticulously choreographed blocking, lighting, and sound cues were a departure from previous material. Gone were the days of just him and a piano.

Bo really went out on a limb with this extravagant big budget show. Maybe he felt he had to because of business interests and contracts–this was his biggest special, and an offer from Netflix is not to be taken lightly. Regardless, it was a very bold show, and even if it wasn’t ultimately what he would settle on as his style, it was worth it for him to experiment. Don’t get me wrong, I love what., but his next work is much more cohesive; after it, he is able to find a balance of theatricality and honesty; he goes big without losing his focus. Plus, his later works seem more brutally honest than self-loathing per se. Or at least it doesn't get annoyingly self-pitying.

MAKE HAPPY

His later work's even more streamlined and honest without the motley glamour of what. His show, Make Happy, available on Netflix, is the one I saw him perform live, and it marks a noticeable turning-point in his career. Bo has always kept a certain self-awareness to his work, but instead of merely self deprecation (i.e. in his 2009 song “Welcome to Youtube”*), his new material demonstrates that he has learned and grown as a person.

*Before YouTube I was just a skinny white kid
That thought he was funnier and cooler
Than he actually was
And now, well not much has changed
But I have a shitload of money

In a 2018 interview on NPR, Burnham says “I don't defend my 16-year-old comedy at all...I have a lot of material from back then that I'm not proud of and I think is offensive and I think is not helpful”. He isn’t all talk; Bo’s other material is no longer the “shock-jock” humor he used as a teenager.

In Make Happy, Bo continues to use his classic brand of word-play and retains his mode of musical performance, but he also shifts the content majorly with the addition of more personal and political material. Such material ranges from his song “Straight White Man” which extrapolates all the woes of having the most power in American society, to his serious talk with the audience about performance, to that jaunty tune which is sure to put a smile on your face: “Kill Yourself” (which is actually an anti-suicide song). 

 

And then there’s his incredibly vulnerable “Kanye Rant”. Inspired by a bit that Kanye West performed on his Yeezus tour, Burnham ends the show by “ranting” his problems into autotune. Though they start out light-hearted like his hand being too big to fit into a Pringles can, he soon talks about something I have never heard another comedian– or even any performer– talk about with complete honesty: his relationship to us, his audience. Take the following lines:

The truth is, my biggest problem's you
I want to please you
But I want to stay true to myself
I want to give you the night out that you deserve
But I want to say what I think
And not care what you think about it

Here, Bo confesses his ambivalence towards his audience in simple, honest language. Speaking directly to the audience, Bo Burnham is able to connect with us on a level that pure stand-up rarely can. He lets us know truthfully that being watched for a living, even being watched in general, tires out the soul, and he must constantly think and rethink his every move. He continues:

A part of me loves you
Part of me hates you
Part of me needs you
Part of me fears you

The way he sings this is drawn out and melancholy. It's grief. We have to let the words sit in our bones, ringing there in their auto-tuned artificiality. He can’t stand it, but he needs the validation of others. He is scared: scared of judgment and of not being heard or understood, but most of all, scared of us. And in this moment, we are scared of him too– of his honesty and fear. This part of the show is like watching a train wreck. In telling us his ambivalence toward us, Bo both erects a barrier between himself and the audience and tears one down. He doesn’t trust us– but he trusts us enough to tell us that he doesn’t trust us? When I saw him perform this at the Wilbur theater, it was almost impossible to process; I’d be thinking about it for days to come.

EIGHTH GRADE

Bo’s next work is completely different in style and form, yet it thematically resembles Make Happy. In his coming of age story Eighth Grade, a breakout indie film which he wrote and directed, Burnham recreates the particular brand of awkwardness and insecurity which defines middle school, reaching out through his characters to touch his audience. Kayla, a girl about to graduate middle school, is the quintessential generation Z nobody. She has a YouTube channel, with probably very few subscribers, where she advises her viewers to “just be yourself” and other sappy anachronisms which she does not herself live by.

Kayla has serious anxiety, a subject that Bo Burnham himself has spoken on both in content and in interviews. In Eighth Grade, Burnham says in one interview, he wanted to create content that was not solely based in his own experience, aiming to “talk about all the things—performing, anxiety—for people that don’t have an audience” and choosing to come at a story from a perspective that he has not experienced: an adolescent girl.

Yet, he also incorporated pieces of himself into Kayla like her trouble navigating social situations; and her performance anxiety, though contextually different, is the same at its core whether you are an adolescent girl or a then-27 year old male comedian. Further, Burnham’s maturity shows through again when he admits that “part of this movie is me going back and, like, trying to forgive myself for what I was expressing [in my younger comedy]”. 

 

 

I saw Eighth Grade in theaters shortly after it premiered, and yes, I cried in the theater. I was not only crying because the movie was so well-done, so incredibly real and poignant, but also I think a part of my emotional reaction was because I was so proud of Bo Burnham. I know he doesn’t even know I exist, but I couldn't help but feel like a proud parent–look how far my baby’s come. It felt like the culmination of so much time that both of us had invested in him.

Bo Burnham’s evolving variety of projects are all worthy of praise and of examination; it is clear how much effort he puts into everything he creates. Because of Burnham’s remarkable craftsmanship and vulnerability, his work is able to reach many people from different walks of life and touch them deeply. The way he uses extreme honesty to breach topics of performance, his relationship to his audience/career, of anxiety and depression, and of his own deep insecurities breaks down barriers. This relatability and radical honesty, the paradoxical way he shows trust in us through expressing his distrust is why Burnham’s work is so important to me and to countless others. He reflects what we feel back to us in an articulate and entertaining way that is both funny and thought provoking. I can’t wait to see what he does next.

Sources:

Burnham, Bo, director. Eighth Grade. A24, 2018.

Burnham, Bo, director. Make Happy. Netflix, 2016.

Burnham, Bo, director. what.. Netflix, 2013.

Reichsman, Ethan B., and Bo Burnham. “Hyperconnected and Lonely: A Conversation with Bo Burnham.” The Harvard Crimson, 5 July 2018, www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/7/5/bo-burnham-interview/. Accessed 7 May 2019.

WHAT HE DID NEXT

It's been a while since I first drafted this essay. What did he do in the following years? I'll talk about Inside next!

Stay tuned for part II.