From Spotify, this is dissected, long-form musical analysis broken into short digestible episodes. This is part seven of our- Okay, so I know I've been saying this is going to be a seven-part series this whole time, but there's way too much to talk about, so I've added two additional episodes. Hope that's okay. Alright, let's try this again.
This is part seven of our now nine-part series on Inside, a music comedy special shot and performed by Bill Burnham over the course of a very unusual year. I'm your host, Cole Kushner. Last time on Desect, we observed Bose rapidly declining mental health, doing part to being stuck inside, trying to complete inside. Songs like shit and all-time low-described depressive symptoms and panic attacks, while the interlude scenes showed Bose clearly distraught and exhausted.
Inside then moved into one of the special's musical pillars, Welcome to the Internet, where Bose personified a circus-like ringleader pitching the Internet's infinite attractions. Immediately after Welcome to the Internet, Inside continues into a brief interlude scene. We see a close-up of Bose in the dark wearing some kind of headlamp that extends across his forehead. He's holding a microphone and talks to us directly while moving in place somewhat frantically.
So I've been freaking out for a long time thinking that I'm never going to finish this special and I'm going to be working on it forever. And recently, I've been feeling like, oh man, maybe I am getting close to done with this. Maybe I'm going to finish it after all, and that has made me completely freak out. Because if I finish this special, that means that I have to not work on it anymore, and that means I have to just live my life.
And so I'm not going to do that, and I'm going to not finish this special and I'll work on it forever, I think. While Bose's declining mental health, how does feeling like the special he's making was holding in hostage? Here Bose reveals now that the finish line is in sight, the thought of actually completing the special triggers a new mental spiral. It calls to mind the closing lyrics of Lukus inside again, when Bose saying, Well, well, Lukus inside again, went out for a reason to hide again.
Well, well, buddy, you found it. In our analysis of these lines, we discussed how after his special make-appe, Bose abandoned performance due to recurring panic attacks on stage. This was his excuse to go inside, to hide from the world. Then COVID-19 gave him a new reason to hide again, which ultimately led to the creation of the special.
And now that he's almost done with it, he realizes he'll be forced to go back outside and re-engage with the world. And the mere thought of that triggers anxiety and panic. So he's already looking for a reason to hide again. He'll drag this special on forever if he has to.
Narratively, this adds an additional layer of tension to the remainder of the film. Whereas before, we were rooting for Bose to complete the special, and thus hopefully alleviate him with the mental exhaustion, stress, and dissociative side effects of prolonged isolation, watching himself and being overworked. Now, after this monologue, we're not sure what to root for. Bose seems screwed either way.
He's imprisoned in a cycle of staying inside and going outside, each leading to severe anxiety and panic. After Bose monologue, inside hardcuts to its next song, Bose 2. So, yeah, I'm gonna work on this forever and I'm never gonna release it, so I'm not talking to anybody right now. I'm just talking to myself.
So, yeah, who fucking cares? Fuck you, and goodbye, and let's keep going. The hardcut from Bose frantic monologue to the sudden eruption of Bose 2 creates a disorienting effect, which is only heightened by Bose's appearance, as he's dressed in what's called a gillysuit. Gillysuits are a type of camouflage clothing designed to resemble natural elements like foliage, most commonly used by hunters or military snipers.
Of course, Bose looks absolutely ridiculous in one, sitting behind his keyboard obsessively singing Geoffrey Bezos over and over. At first blush, we think Bose finally reached his breaking point. He's like some crazed, isolated assassin, holed up in his cabin in the woods, whose unhealthy obsession with a celebrity figure has ballooned to the point of possibly harming them. It doesn't help that projection on the wall behind Bose is a red laser light show of what looks like pentagram-inspired designs.
But also coming off Bose monologue we just heard, the camouflage suit might be symbolic of its desire to hide from the world forever. Of course, the song Bose 2 is a callback to Bose 1, which I'll remember seem to personify capitalism rooting on Geoffrey Bezos as he ascended up a ladder of economic dominance. As if capitalism was a game to be won. Now in Bose 2, Bose sings, congratulations, and you did it, implying that good old Geoffrey came out victorious.
He won capitalism. Hooray. Like we discussed in our analysis of Bose 1, Bose's sarcastic applause here feels more like an indictment, especially coming off the heels of Welcome to the Internet, as Geoffrey Bezos seems to represent one of the ringleaders of the Internet that sold the world on its vision of the future, which just so happened to make him a historic amount of money in the process. And if Geoffrey Bezos represents the pinnacle of capitalism, the one who mastered the game more than anyone else, what does that say about the validity of the game itself?
As quickly as the punch of Bose 2 strikes inside, it just as quickly retreats, almost as if Bose is too exhausted at this point of the special to sustain the energy required for such a song. There's a hard cut to Bose sitting in the dark, staring blankly into the void. Then we hear the sounds of an audience laughing, which triggers Bose's face to morph into a weird, delusional, disturbing smile. Man, you guys are a great crowd.
Give it up for yourselves for coming out by the way tonight. Give it up. It's important to live comedy. It's weird times.
It's crazy. These are some pretty crazy times, but it's nice. During these crazy times that we can get together, we can laugh. This brief, strange scene abruptly cuts to another, where we first see a close-up of what appears to be the outside of the house during the very early morning hours.
We see the shadows of tree foliage on the wall and hear the aggressive sounds of tripping birds. This shot then dissolves into a wider shot of the interior of the room, where we realize this tree's shadow is just another projection on the wall. Bose sits on a stool in the center of the room and is under where holding a mic. We hear a crowd and laughter, and both thanks to them for coming out to his show.
Notably, Bose here says thanks for coming out tonight, yet it's clearly morning time. Bose is fully out of his mind. He's lost all sense of time. He looks like he hasn't slept in weeks.
He's not even getting dressed anymore. He's hallucinating an audience, someone to finally laugh at all these jokes he's telling. And the outside foliage is inside. Everything about this scene is inside out.
You know, I've learned something over this last year, which is pretty funny. I've learned that real world, human to human, tactile contact will kill you. And that all human interaction, whether it be social, political, spiritual, sexual, or interpersonal should be contained in a much more safe, much more real interior digital space. That the outside world, the non digital world is merely a theatrical space in which one stages and records content for the much more real, much more vital digital space.
One should only engage with the outside world as one engages with the coal mine, suit up, gather what is needed, and return to the surface. Fittingly, both comments on what he's learned this year, that physical human interaction will kill us, presumably a nod to the COVID-19 pandemic. He goes on to describe something akin to a post-apocalyptic scenario where all human interaction takes place online. And the physical world is merely harvesting ground for digital content.
It's a monologue that would make both the ringleader of the internet and Jeffrey Bezos very proud. Both notably cause the digital world a much more real, much more vital space when compared to the outside physical world. This continues the motif of things being inside out in the scene, as both is satirically pushing to re-prioritize and replace the outside world with the inside world of digital content. The scene also seems to call attention to the ways in which the pandemic forcibly accelerated the conversion of our lives to the digital world, a future we've been headed toward for a while anyway.
During lockdowns, we had no choice but to interact with each other exclusively online by way of screen to screen digital contact. People started working from home. Students began taking classes on Zoom. If foreshadowed our future, digitally together, physically alone.
The way most of us felt as a result of this was not good. Both character throughout Inside feels like the dramatized result of living in this future we seem destined for. Notably, Bo presents this lesson by saying, I've learned something over this last year, which is pretty funny. And when he goes on to describe his structure as a joke and evokes laughter, but a simultaneously evokes a funny feeling, a recognized strangeness that triggers our intuition that something's not quite right.
This simultaneity of funny thus makes for a perfect thematic segue into Inside's next song, that funny feeling. I can't really play the guitar very well. I'm more sane, so, you know, apologies. The Inside Out motif continues into this next scene, where we first see a shot of a bright light on a stand while we hear the crackling of a campfire, as if the sound was being created by the artificial light.
We then see Bo sitting on a chair with an acoustic guitar. Behind him is the projection of a dull, colorless forest. The trees are dead, what appears to be the aftermath of a fire, as they contain no leaves and very little branches. Bo then addresses us as if we're sitting around this artificial digital campfire with him, apologizing for his bad guitar playing and singing.
The display is a very kind of insecurity and self-awareness he revealed in the reaction to the reaction skit, where he gets ahead of potential criticism by criticizing himself first, even though he admitted doing this as pointless. But even if this vulnerability is inherently performed, Bo is, after all, still filming himself and likely said these words before each take. His preamble sets the stage for what is thus far Inside's most vulnerable song. With gentle humble guitar strums, both things of her is composed of brief impressions of images and ideas, moving from one to the next as if scrolling through a social media feed.
He begins stunning AK resolution, as if taken directly from an ad or product sales pitch. It calls to mind the ever rapid evolution of technology, where state-of-the-art products are considered extinct in just a matter of a few years. It's this kind of technological acceleration mixed with consumer culture that keeps the wheels of capitalism greased. Within a context of Inside, the lyric feels like an interrogation of her desire to simulate real life on a screen.
No amount of pixels is enough. The idea that will continue to blindly chase a more accurate simulation until we can no longer distinguish between it and reality. Next, Bo sings meditation app. While it's become somewhat commonplace to use apps for guided meditation, the concept of a meditation app feels inherently paradoxical.
Our phones are designed to consume as much of our attention as possible. While meditation is an ancient practice designed to clear the mind of distractions and become in tune with the present moment in order to achieve heightened spiritual awareness. The two things are philosophically at odds, and thus a meditation app feels a bit like drinking to cure a hangover. There's also the possibility this opening line is meant to be heard together, as in stunning AK resolution meditation app.
This adds additional irony to both references, as the point of a meditation app is to have our eyes closed and meditate. Thus, it shouldn't need to be an AK. Next, Bo sings in honor of the revolution, it's half off at the gap. Capitalism recognizes no sacred boundaries and routinely transforms social movements into one weekend only spending sprees.
It also absorbs current movements like Black Lives Matter, as it's only a matter of time until corporations use a newly nationalized holiday like Juneteenth for their latest discounting strafeganza. The strangeness continues as Bo sings Deadpool's self-awareness. Deadpool is a Marvel superhero who constantly breaks the fourth wall by calling attention to the fact that he's aware he's a fictional comic book character. Bo is actually commented on Deadpool several times in past interviews, using it as an example of how entertainment and big corporations tried to relate to their audience through self-awareness, satirizing themselves before anyone else can, thus pretending to be one of us.
How do you talk about a moment that is already a parody of itself? How do you talk about something that is already so silly? How do you make fun of a culture that old Spice commercials make fun of the culture, Geico commercials make fun of it? I can't tell the difference between the things and the satire of the thing anymore.
So I just felt like, man, that sort of ironic, winking game is sort of dead. SNL used to parody commercials, right? And with all their parody commercials. And then the commercials realized that those were funny.
And now commercials feel like SNL parody commercials. How would you parody a Geico commercial? How would you parody an Axe body spray? They're making fun of the fact that when you put on Axe body spray, 20 girls jump on you and yet people buy Axe body spray.
It's so weird. It's like, it's a real, and it grosses me out deeply when I feel like, this is gonna be hard for me. I shouldn't say this, but I'm never gonna work anything. I'll never be asked.
Like, Deadpool is so deeply troubling to me. Because it's like a billion dollar corporation winking at the audience and everyone's just totally cool with it. It's like, it's a $200 million movie with a guy being like, here's the trailer for my stupid movie, watch it, you idiot. And everyone's like, yeah, he gets it.
I'm like, does he? Does Deadpool get it? You know, that makes me look at stuff and go like, man, like, irony is, and that's like, toothless. Bo completes the first verse singing, the backlash to the backlash to the thing that's just begun.
This feels in part like a thematic callback to Bo's reaction to the reaction skit, where the speed of the internet has transformed cultural events, actions, and opinions into instantaneous reaction fodder to feed the internet's insatiable demand for content. So often now, do we find out about things, not by the thing itself, but through someone's reaction to the thing? Those reactions set off more reactions, a chaotic feedback loop akin to what we saw in Bo's reaction to the reaction skit. And as we've heard Bo talk about throughout this series, the omnipresent audience of the internet has ingrained itself into our psyche and distorted the way we think and feel.
It affects the way we experience, the way we think about experience, the way we express experience, all of which can lead to what we are seeing Bo experiencing now and inside, paralyzing anxiety and dissociation. Following yourself through your own experiences, you're sort of out of body all the time, you're disassociated. You're in a situation, but you're already thinking of how that situation is going to be perceived when presented to the world digitally. You're anticipating the backlash to that perception, maybe even before you've even had the experience.
It's that weird sort of Hall of Mirrors strange meta thing that, you know, makes you not want to leave the house, makes you not want to ever open your mouth. And it makes you not embodied, not in yourself, not in your mouth, which is very similar to anxiety. While the brief impressionistic references of this opening verse might seem random, there's an underlying similarity that unifies 8K resolution, meditation apps, holiday discounts, billion dollar self-aware corporations and reactionary feedback loops. They all feel a little funny.
There it is again, that funny feeling, that funny feeling, there it is again, that funny feeling, that funny feeling. Bo captures the odd feeling of being alive in the 21st century in a crystallizing seven word refrain, there it is again, that funny feeling. Throughout Inside, funny has been a recurring motif ever since the song comedy laid out Bo's central concern of whether or not he should be joking at a time like this. Since then, we've seen Bo's struggle with his attempts at being funny in a room by himself, performing to no one, while also continually reckoning with the idea of trying to find humor in a world that already feels like a parody of itself, in a world that feels inside out.
The phrase that funny feeling feels like a kind of conclusive statement as a result of this journey, as it captures the two textbook definitions of funny, one which causes laughter and one which causes concern, as in, I feel a little funny. As Bo surveys the world around him and examines how he feels about it, he struggles with whether it's funny or funny, whether it's humorous or gravely concerning, whether he should laugh or cry. We've seen this at play throughout Inside and its constant metamodern oscillations between its funny songs and the more concerning interlute scenes that portray Bo's declining mental health. As much as he might attempt to make light of the strangeness of the modern world, Bo can't seem to shake that underlying funny feeling it's causing inside of him.
Much more on that, right after the break. Welcome back to Dissect. Before the break, we heard Bo establish the throughline between the seemingly random absurd oddities of the current moment, unifying them all under the umbrella of that funny feeling. The song then continues with verse two.
Bo continues scrolling through the timeline of odd modern observation singing, the Surgeon General's pop-up shop, which seems to allude to the United States for-profit public health care system, highlighting the ubiquity of capitalism even in arenas of public health and matters of literal life and death. With the line, Buegles take on race, Bo calls back to his own inside marketing firm skit, where he satirized large corporations personifying themselves in order to align with social movements, garnering positive PR and brand awareness in the process. It's another odd observation of capitalism's unavoidable ubiquity, which continues into female Colonel Sanders. This seems to nod to a real 2018 ad campaign in which Reba McIntyre became the first woman to play Kentucky Fried Chicken's Colonel Sanders mascot, breaking the glass ceiling of fried chicken ads.
It's another example of a brand feigning social progressiveness. Most often years after it's become socially acceptable, and thus low risk. Not to mention the execution is usually just weird and ultimately unhelpful. Bo continues singing, easy answers, Civil War.
Both are common phrases we normally don't think twice about, but within the context of the paradoxical structure of that funny feelings lyrics, we're forced to recognize the irony in each. The implication seems to be that answers are rarely easy, and Civil War, well, the phrase is almost comedic when you really think about it. Civil means orderly, while war implies disorder and destruction. Both encloses out this verse with one of the more potent lyrics of the entire special, the whole world at your fingertips, the ocean at your door.
Both are phrased as if part of a brochure, recalling the sales pitch and text of welcome to the internet's a little bit of everything all of the time. It acknowledges the completely new reality of interfacing with the internet and its infinite resources with our literal fingertips, an entire world on demand. Meanwhile, the contrasting the ocean at your door seems to clearly point to climate change and its effects on rising sea levels, and it's the juxtaposition of these ideas that creates the irony. While the digital world continues to grow bigger, stronger, and more immersive, the physical world is a decay, and it feels like our immersion into the former is making a lot of us apathetic to the ominous future of the latter.
This is the first of what will become a handful of illusions to climate change in the song, which seems to explain the visual setting of a dead, burned forest Bo has created for this performance, opposed apocalyptic near future. The image of Lonely Bo in this setting, combined with his melancholy delivery of this ironic juxtaposition, feels especially potent. The sober revelation of the dissonance between the unprecedented advancements of modern life and the emptiness and loneliness many of us are feeling as a result of them. With a world of information out of fingertips, we should in theory be more educated and concerned than ever about things like climate change.
Yet the same tools that provide unprecedented information are the very tools that desensitize us to it. And so we scroll on, hurling towards Doomsday, meaming our way through the apocalypse. The live-action Lion King, the Pepsi have time to show. 20,000 years of this, seven more to go.
Carpool, karaoke, steve, oki, logan, paul. A gift shop at the Gun Ranger, man. Shooting at them all. Bo continues verse two by citing the live-action Lion King, the 2019 photorealistic remake of the classic Kidsville.
Despite its impressive animation feats and A-list voice acting talent, the general consensus seemed to be that these incredibly realistic looking talking animals felt a little funny, as did the general notion of remaking an arguably already perfect kids movie. For some, it was a clear cash grab, one of many attempts by the entertainment industry to regurgitate past hits for seemingly no meaningful reason other than profit. Of course, it worked. The movie grossed over a billion dollars, which makes it all that much harder to swallow.
Live-action Lion King seems thematically tied to Carpool karaoke, a reference to the popular segment of James Corden's late night show where he rides in cars with celebrities lip-syncing songs. On the Team Human Podcast, Bo talked about celebrity lip-syncing as a disturbing example of regurgitated non-entertainment. The Limp-Sick battle is stupid. I can at least say that right?
We can all not go crazy. And it's rehearsed. And it's just the most incredible version of Backwash in terms of culture that we're literally getting celebrities to lip-syncing to other songs. It's just the most 2018 or 21st century weird meta version of non-entertainment as entertainment.
But apparently it's just so weird. Tucked in between his lines about the Lion King and Carpool karaoke, Bo sings 20,000 years of this seven more to go. 20,000 years seems to be a reference to when Paleolithic humans arrived in the Americas, which is estimated to be about 20,000 years ago. Meanwhile, seven more to go is another reference to climate change, specifically the year 2027, which is when some scientists believe will cross the threshold for dangerous irreversible global warming.
It's another reference to humanity's impending doom, laying side-by-side with odd pop culture entertainment, creating irony and mirroring how today the frivolous and urgently significant exists simultaneously. Logan Paul laying side-by-side with global annihilation, and both are presented and absorbed with seemingly no differentiation on our timelines. This thread continues with a line, a gift shop at the gun range, a mass shooting at the mall. This juxtaposes the strange relationship between capitalism and the 20 billion dollar gun industry, where weapons are treated and sold like most products in America, because capitalism does not discriminate when profit is involved.
The symbolic irony of a small gift shop in a gun range, where you can purchase souvenirs in the form of guns and ammunition, contrast with a larger gift shop, a mall, which itself transforms into a gun range due in part to the wide accessibility of guns in America. It's another example of an omnipresent terror, mass shootings, existing simultaneously simultaneously with a mundane, a truly tragic irony. Getting poor hugs turn to service, going for a drive, and obeying all the traffic laws, and grand theft auto-fi, full of gordafobic, losing focus, cover blown. A book on getting better, hand delivered by a drone.
In that funny feeling's final verse, the irony that dominates the majority of the song begins to give way to emotion, how all this irony is affecting our collective psyche. Bo Singh's full agoraphobic, losing focus, cover blown, a book on getting better, hand delivered by a drone. According to the Mayo Clinic, agoraphobia is a type of anxiety disorder in which you fear and avoid places or situations that might cause panic and make you feel trapped, helpless, or embarrassed. This anxiety is caused by a fear that there's no easy way to escape or get help with the anxiety intensifies.
Most people who have agoraphobia develop it after having one or more panic attacks, causing them to worry about having another attack and avoid the places where it may happen again. The fear can be so overwhelming that you may feel unable to leave your home. Within the context of the song, the reference to agoraphobia may relay a future universal diagnosis, that the omnipresence of terror and impending doom, for instance climate change and mass shootings, will result in a general fear of the outside world. We'll begin to engage with it as one does a coal mine, suit up, gather what is needed, and return inside.
But within the context of Bo's personal journey here on inside and his life, the reference to agoraphobia feels much more immediate. We know that Bo is struggling with anxiety and panic attacks, specifically triggered by performance, which is why he quit performing after 2016 to make happy. Five years later, Insights opening scene found Bo walking into the same room he exited at the end of make happy, signaling his return to performance. And despite the absence of a physical audience, we've been witnessing Bo's anxiety playing out in real time.
He's let the outside inside. And as we discuss with the lyric, come out with your hands up, we've got you surrounded. Both feels there's no escape. The anxiety triggers are everywhere, from the impending doom and the ironic oddities of the outside physical world to the isolation, force performance, and ironic oddities of the inside digital world.
What makes matters worse is that the dividing line between these two worlds are blurring, as our interior world increasingly homogenizes with the exterior world. It's that feeling that things are inside out, that the walls are closing in from every angle, giving way to quote, full agoraphobic. And as Bo implies by the following line, a book on getting better, hand delivered by a drone, the problems and the potential cures seem unavoidably bonded together, like tobacco companies selling nicotine patches, resulting in a feeling of hopelessness and confusion. This association fully out your mind, Googling derealization, hating what you find.
Bo's final verse continues to drive home the emotional result of living in a world drowning in irony to the point of surrealism. He sings total disassociation, fully out your mind, Googling derealization, hating what you find. When you google derealization, the first result is a WebMD definition that reads quote, Derealization is a mental state where you feel detached from your surroundings. People and objects around you may seem unreal.
Even so, you're aware that this altered state isn't normal, unquote. Meanwhile, disassociation is a term that refers to a general detachment from your thoughts, feelings, memories, and surroundings caused by a break in how your mind handles information. It can affect your sense of identity and your perception of time. Of course, like a self-help book being delivered by a drone, there's irony in the fact that Bo's derealization hates what he finds.
Google has become so ubiquitous in modern life that we made a brand name, a verb, and now Bo's reading a description of how he feels on the same digital device and internet that hosts the mountains of absurd content and ironic spectacle that has some second-guessing reality in the first place. We've witnessed Bo slowly dissociating and becoming out of body over the course of inside, seen in the mini-subtle and then more overt imagery about being mere, doubled, played like a video game, and more. But here we get a formal acknowledgement of his condition, and he strategically places this realization at the end of a song-long list of ironic observations of the modern world, pairing together source, symptoms, and diagnosis in a single track. Bo also seems to do something very clever during this moment with his guitar playing.
For the first and only time, Bo stops strumming, instead letting single chords ring out. This feels to me like a musical reflection of the dissociation he sings about, the sudden detachment of voice from music, leaving Bo singing into a decaying void. Total disassociation, fully out your mind, Googling derealization, hating what you find, Bad on a pair in summer air in early fall, The quiet comprehending of the ending of it all. Bo continues his final verse, that unapparent summer air in early fall.
It seems like another reference to climate change, specifically what's known as season creep, or changes in the timing of seasons. Recently, spring has begun sooner, and winters have become shorter and milder. These changes disrupt critically important timing of events, such as snowmelt and spring bloom, upon which ecosystems and agricultural industries depend. Thus, this bridge is seamlessly into the final line, the quiet comprehending of the ending of it all.
The irony here is that the end of the world should probably bring vocal concern in widespread panic, yet we seem to be either totally unaware, or in someone like Bo's case, suffering in silence, perhaps resign to the fact that things are beyond repair. As he's pointed out all song long, the signs of digital dystopia, economic collapse, and the catastrophic outcome of rising temperatures are all around us, all the time. We're feeling a little funny, living in such a world to say the least, yet we seem reluctant to acknowledge our circumstances, because to do so would be to acknowledge the real possibility that all of this is coming to an end, and that there's not much we can do about it. Not funny feeling ends with a culminating anthemic refrain from the beginning of the end.
The line, hey, what can you say is an idiom used when one is unable to explain, excuse, or clarify something further. It's a phrase that summarizes that funny feeling more generally, since Bo has little to say about the modern world aside from it making him feel funny. Indeed, Bo has crafted one of the more relatable songs in recent memory by simply vocalizing the absurdity of the modern world. It's the recognition and articulation of symptoms, the first step required in formulating a diagnosis and cure, and it's comforting to know that someone else is also concerned with the strangeness of it all.
The lyric we were overdue, but it'll be over soon, continues the threat of climate change apocalypse, but given the song's consistent allusions to capitalism, it may also reference the potential collapse of America as we know it. In recent years, the phrase late stage capitalism has emerged to describe the current stage of capitalism, with its massive inequality, superpower corporations, and shrinking middle class. Not unlike that funny feeling, late stage capitalism, as a pop culture phrase, has become a sarcastic, ominous catch-all for the tragic, almost comedic absurdities of our contemporary economy, signs that it's digging its own inevitable grave, signs that America's overdue, that all this will be over soon. There's irony in the fact that this outro section is the most upbeat, almost jovial portion of the song.
It feels almost as if Bo is finding relief in the notion that this will all be over soon, which is perhaps most poultly felt in his carefree, sing-songy scats. In a rare mid-pandemic interview in 2020, Bo acknowledged that he did actually find some comfort in feeling like the world was ending. I went through the period that other people, actually people are people with whatever mental health issues. I know people had said, well, when the world really felt like it was ending, I actually felt great, because I'm always worried that the world's going to be bad, so things really are bad.
I kind of have a sense of calm. I had that a little bit, but then it kept going. It's hard for everybody. But I take solace in the fact that, but also I'm sad on the fact that every single person I talk to seems to be in a very particular crisis.
And they were not all in the same crisis. Like everyone's kind of going through something very specific during this time. And we're kind of all of you, maybe just united by the fact that we're all going through our own thing. The end of that funny feeling is what's known as a terminal climax in music theory.
Climax, because it's the song's peak and terminal, because once the song reaches this section, it never looks back and never returns to the chorus. This is important to note, because this end section also feels like a terminal emotional conclusion of the song's three verses. While each ironic observation listed in those verses, macing harmless and humorous individually, the totality of the irony and oddities of the modern world is taking a serious emotional toll. Add to that more directly, physically threatening catastrophes like climate change, historic pandemic, rampant gun violence, and global conflict flirting with nuclear devastation.
And the result is something like Bo expresses here at the end of that funny feeling, the feeling that we're overdue, that these are all foreboding signs of a larger disaster in the near future. And it's here that we realize that the song that funny feeling is itself a microcosm of inside's overall narrative structure. The first half of the film is fueled by Bo's ironic observations about the world around him, be that white woman's Instagram, FaceTime with my mom, the reaction to the reaction to the skin, the inside consulting for Imparity, and others. While tangentially tied to larger points about the current moment, it feels like the primary function of these pieces are sources of humor.
Like most traditional comedy, it's an attempt at making light of the oddities of the world we live in and offers a scapous relief. What we've been experiencing in the second half of Inside is what Bo finally crystallizes as that funny feeling. This accumulative emotional toll, mental decay, and existential dread caused by coinciding catastrophes caused by living in a world that feels inside out. Recall that Bo's journey was triggered by his attempt to figure out what's funny at a time like this, and it turns out that the entire structure of Inside can be defined by the two principal definitions of the world.
The first half of Inside is funny, ha ha, it's comedic irony. The second half of Inside is funny peculiar, that funny feeling, it's tragic irony. And what is this but a poignant description of what it feels like to be alive in the 21st century, where we're not sure whether our lived irony is comedic or tragic? Should we laugh at Kendall Jenner using a Pepsi to solve racial injustice, or should it bring us to tears?
Is Logan Paul's very real plan to run for the President of the United States funny, or is it a tragic sign of the beginning of the end? It would seem the answer is both, simultaneously. It's because this is all absurd to the point of funny that we collectively feel funny. That funny feeling's rare ability to simultaneously house both sides of the ironic coin is what makes it so uniquely accurate and relatable.
And beneath all the layers of irony is Bo's sincere attempt to understand, to somehow make sense of it all, to figure out a way to live meaningfully despite it. This sincerity is mostly communicated musically. It's in the intimacy of his acoustic guitar, and the vulnerability of his sumpar playing, and the earnestness of his gentle melodies, and the exhaustion of his trembling voice. Indeed, so much of the emotional power and resonance of that funny feeling is in its ability to tap into a shared feeling in a way that only art can.
The accumulation of its individual elements, lyrics, harmony, melody, visuals, results in a feeling of emotional truth. We feel Bo's genuine search for meaning in a world that often feels meaningless. We feel Bo's struggle for truth and world plagued with fabricated performance. We feel Bo more in the loss of some of the very things that make us human.
Not funny feeling like the world it observes makes us want to laugh and cry. It's both terrifying and comforting. It expresses hopelessness, yet provides hope in the fact that this feeling at the present moment is shared, that you're not the only one feeling funny. The damage being done to all of us by just media, every form of media, I mean, like every picture on the wall, every advertisement in the street, just like this thing that we've all just been, at least I have been marinating in for 30 years of my life, just images and videos and pictures.
It's just like the totality of that damage that is being done, just to like the psychic. That is, I think, what all my stuff is kind of trying to see from different angles. It's like, what is this doing to us?