Postponing Again: A Review or Something

I’m in the process of moving. I’m learning that means way more than packing up boxes of life. The apartment and job applications alone are dizzying.

Early this month, I watched Bo Burnham’s Netflix special Inside. Later, I passed an article about explaining the special without admitting to ones own mental illness. I initially felt annoyed because that’s not the point of Inside. I think seeing every moment of personal upheaval through the lens of mental illness is reductive. The article seemed more like away to talk about Bo’s work without actually addressing its content or themes.

This moving thing has me feeling every emotion through this last month. I’m cycling through my regular depressive swings at breakneck speeds. The joy of leaving a bad situation mixed with the anxiety of newness can do that.

I read a criticism of Inside that proposed Bo Burnham’s self-awareness was a tricky way of making offensive jokes. I couldn’t figure out what they were saying or meaning, because the text (Inside) doesn’t support their claim. We’ve had decades of comedians with privilege refusing (in their art) to acknowledge their status in society. Bo Burnham acknowledges his state of existence along side which he admits his insecurities. There’s a rawness of being in his work that looks to address not criticism, but modern concerns. As curated as all content is, Inside refuses to be overly curated or overly pretentious. It looks for a sort of sincerity.

I think how to art should be at the forefront of every artist’s mind, especially those of us who look like or have the ancestry of colonizers. The more I write, I realize my writing has to be sharply aware of my privilege and Bo Burnham has to do the same.

I used to, up til fairly recently, put dumb down statement on my personal Facebook page figuring my relatives and acquaintances would be more likely to accept the point if I stripped racial components and gun control language out of it. I stopped because playing to their ignorance wasn’t a function to convince; it was a function of appeasement.

Inside doesn’t playdown to its audience and it doesn’t pander to it either. Bo Burnham’s ability to use introspection to pull out a common feeling with common anxiety is extraordinary.

This moving thing is creating dishes and laundry and setting back writing deadlines. But I need to move. I should have moved along time ago. If you can leave your place of birth and childhood, you should do it at all cost. Do it before the drowning echoes of familiarity and drones of cyclical insults to your person suck you dry.

This is where I’m at. I will get out the next On Page 42, but for now this is what I have for my few readers.