Bo Burnham takes us ‘Inside’ his lockdown special

Above : “Bo Burnham: Inside” is the perfect post-pandemic comedy special. (Photo/Netflix)

Movie review : “Bo Burnham: Inside,” written, directed and performed by Bo Burnham. Streaming on Netflix.

Over the past several years, one term regularly comes up in a couple of the social groups that deign to have me as a member. It’s a tenet that most of us have a hard time defining. You may be familiar with it: It’s called post-modernism.

As someone who earned a lowly C grade in the only philosophy course that he took as a college freshman, I’m clearly no expert. So, let me quote the Merriam-Webster dictionary. It defines post -modernists as those who gained prominence in the 1980s and ’90s by adopting “a radical reappraisal of modern assumptions about culture, identity, history, or language.”

Chief among those reappraisals, in terms of popular entertainment anyway, are persistent skepticism and, in particular, an emphasis on irony.

From that shallow standpoint, at least, it’s easy to understand the work of Bo Burnham . Having earned fame as a teenager by posting videos on YouTube , Burnham showed a talent for songwriting, acerbic commentary and self-referential, typically self-deprecating, humor. As a measure of just how talented he is, as of last March Burnham’s videos reportedly had attracted some 300 million views.

When he was just 18, Burnham – who is now 30 – became the youngest performer to tape a half-hour Comedy Central special. In addition to writing and directing the critically acclaimed 2018 feature film “Eighth Grade,” and then starring alongside Carey Mulligan in last year’s feature “Promising Young Woman,” Burnham has released three more comedy specials – the latest being the 87-minute Netflix special “Bo Burnham: Inside,” which debuted on May 30.

It is that latest special that made me consider again the concept of post-modernism, at least in its most simplistic terms. Because while the topics that Burnham addresses are mostly serious – the overall message being a commentary on the dark, emotionally charged feelings caused by the COVID-19 lockdown – the tone of Burnham’s work is never far from laugh-out-loud funny.

Thus we see him at work, over the course of a year, struggling to create the special – alone in his studio, the only obvious markers that time has passed being his lengthening hair and progressively scraggly beard.

Oh, and his continual comments about how concerned he is that he may never be able to finish, not to mention how much that very thought depresses him. At one point he says he is “ATL,” which he then explains means “all-time low, not Atlanta.”

Explaining, of course, is one of his tendencies. Having grown up during the digital age, Burnham is like most of his generation – accustomed to living through social media. And so he explains everything he is thinking to those of us presumably watching. Yet his explanations clearly serve a dual purpose: While he shares with us his thoughts about the world and the many issues confronting it, Burnham delivers his concerns with an obvious wink. At one point, for example, he actually uses a sock puppet to run down a Howard Zinn view of American history. A sock puppet.

Early on, he questions whether in this day and age a 30-year-old white guy has anything important to say. And then he goes ahead says what he’s thinking anyway. Or, rather, he sings it in tunes that deal with such issues as sexting (“sexting is just sex”), how while he is alone and struggling to be creative his friends are creating families (“All my stupid friends are having stupid children”), how living your life in the public eye is the essence of absurdity (“Instagram white woman”).

In between well-aimed shots at Amazon founder (lyrics NSFW) Jeff Bezos , Burnham tackles our obsession with the Internet itself, especially during the past year’s lockdown. “Welcome to the Internet,” he sings, where you can access “anything and everything all of the time.” Where, he adds, “Apathy’s a tragedy and boredom is a crime.”

And while none of this may seem particularly funny, at least in how I’m describing it, it’s to Burnham’s credit that he makes it so – even in his special’s occasionally dark moments, in the sequences involving not-quite full nudity, the tossing of equipment in apparent frustration and in his many and varied uses of the F-word.

Smart people from the beginning of time have spent long periods alone, working out their personal struggles by creating scientific theories, inspiring philosophies or great art. Some all at once. Those who were less emotionally stable tended to go in a different direction. Remember the Unabomber?

The pandemic forced much of the world into a year-long seclusion. “Bo Burnham: Inside” is an exploration of how hard the lockdown has been. It’s a clever meditation on how one guy with a particular talent for offbeat comedy found a way to survive.

How did he so? By finding a way to laugh in the face of desperation. And by inviting us to view his life through a post-modern lens, laced with a healthy dose of irony.