Text 3: Bo Burnham: Inside (2021) dir. Bo Burnham

Why it’s a Postmodern Text?
  1. It is a brilliant satire (parody / pastiche) on stand up comedy, musicals, social media, children’s TV, music videos, the audience, lockdown. (Jameson)
    • He even takes a swipe at the monetisation of children’s attention by tech giants. (Ecology)
    • It draws attention it it’s own constructed and contrived nature as ‘content’. Hugely self reflexive (Jameson)
  2. Burnham also challenges and questions many grand narratives directly, through parody and quotation. (Lyotard)
  3. Finally, he is even hinting at the internet as a hyperreality and that the audience are lost in the consumption simulation. (Baudrillard)

Watch the whole thing on Netflix and then watch some selected clips below…or just the clips below, but you won’t quite get it!

A parody of Instagram profiles, posts, ideologies and audience narcissism.

A pastiche of music video performances and edits.

A self reflexive parody of a reaction video.

The Internet, The Audience and Consumption…and club singer performances.

That sense of disconnected in a world of more and more images and less and less meaning. Also known as The Postmodern Condition

Some further reading

LYRICS FROM WHITE WOMANS INSTAGRAM AND WELCOME TO THE INTERNET

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