A Little Bit of Everything, All of the Time
The most 2020s art ever made
This morning I’m in The Argument with a new piece, arguing that Bo Burnham’s Inside is the artwork that defines the 2020s:
Five years ago, Bo Burnham released Inside on Netflix to near-universal acclaim. Inside is a fantastically rich comedy special and probably the single best piece of content made about the COVID-19 pandemic in any medium.
But looking back at it five years later, Inside feels like more than just a very good comedy set, more than just a statement about the pandemic. It feels, if you’ll forgive the pun, special.
It’s always a risk to call a race before we’ve reached the finish line, but with some trepidation, I’ll take that chance: Even though the decade isn’t over yet, the 2020s already have their definitive piece of art. And we got it in 2021.
A definitive piece of art needs to embody the main trends of its time. Its strengths and flaws should be the quintessential strengths and flaws of its era. It should ideally anticipate the trajectory society is headed in. And it hopefully has something meaningful to say about the technological, social, and cultural currents people are navigating.
Inside does all of these things better than anything else produced this decade.
Check out the full piece over at The Argument!
I thought it was bad. Embarrassing. And a chore to get through. Average songs (for a YouTuber) don’t become good because you slip in a few lines about how you’re self aware of how obvious and uninsightful they are.
I read it over there but I can't comment since I don't subscribe.
I think you hit the nail on the head, but never has one piece of modern art been so perfectly summed up by the Family Guy "It Insists Upon Itself" meme. When it came out , I got into an argument that it was a little too smug for me. For the uninitiated:
https://youtube.com/shorts/C4ictNgsb0A?si=6cjxgI0z6TuF15lF
When it first came out, I really appreciated a lot of the songs, but the constant doomerism made me roll my eyes hard. "20,000 years of this, seven more to go" always reminds me of the worst parts of social media brain.
I always imagined Burnham leaving his shitty little dark room to the rest of his big ass, well-lit house, giving his millionaire wife a smooch while she asks how the depression music is going, and then they chat about where to have dinner and if they should change the cleaning lady's schedule before he eats some Pringles and goes back to his melancholy cave to ruminate on Amazon some more.
Welcome to the Internet is a classic, though.