Bo Burnham's "That Funny Feeling" Is Our Generation's "We Didn't Start The Fire"

Hey, what can you say, we were overdue

Billy Joel’s high energy 1989 hit is something of a cultural touchstone for the members of the late Boomer/Early Gen X generation, a rip roaring rock anthem highlighting the “fire” of political and social reckoning of the latter half of the 20th century. Many other songs have come and gone reaching for the legacy of Joel’s sharp condensation of cultural upheaval, but few have really touched on what made the original so captivating: a generation who didn’t ask for this, but were going to fight the scores of issues they face with attitude and bravado anyway.

Of course, by “fight it”, that generation clearly seemed to mean they would extract the last remaining bits of value they could get out of a socioeconomic system clearly on its last legs. The fire that Billy Joel so charismatically stoked in 1989 has now withered, as the rising tides of our modern era, both literally and metaphorically, now lap gently against what remains - a small campfire where Bo Burnham creates its quietly desperate spiritual successor, “That Funny Feeling”.

Burnham’s new special “Inside” deserves its own long form critical examination; the one hour and twenty-seven minute one-man-show is as much a spiraling anthropological analysis of the throes of 21st century young adulthood as it is a personal gaze into the isolated creative struggles of the 30 year old YouTube star turned touring comedian turned award winning-director. Every second of “Inside” is carefully crafted to invoke both laughter and existential crisis, from a tongue in cheek poke at streaming and Instagram culture to a maniacal musical number detailing the overbearing weight of the internet itself. It’s an incredible achievement for Burnham, who is open with his struggles over the past years in what is sometimes an awe inspiring mix of high art and comedy. While the full impact of “Inside” is not yet known, it has already been heralded by some as one of the greatest pieces of art to come out of the Covid era.

In the midst of the chaos and unraveling that takes place, we are treated with the special’s only acoustic performance, “That Funny Feeling”. It is poignantly placed in front of a backdrop of fake trees projected on the wall, with lights emulating a campfire as sound effects of crackling logs softly loop in the background. Burnham, in his constantly hypercritical parodic style, greets us like an amateur performer at a coffee shop, saying “I can’t really play the guitar very well, or sing, so..” and of course goes on to play the guitar and sing perfectly well. Earlier in the special, this method of self criticism to offset external criticism is established as a coping mechanism, and in Burnham’s never ending excavation for truth this feels like an additional layer of self-critical-criticism, covering as many tracks as possible simply to say “I have a slower acoustic song, this is cringe right? I know it, but I want to perform it so I am going to let you know I know it’s cringe.” This is obviously played for comedic effect, but is the first piece of cultural observation, presented before the song even begins. It speaks to the carefully worded self awareness of an online generation who is more exposed to justified and unjustified judgement than ever before, that those who participate must anticipate every way their thoughts will be perceived and acknowledge it as quickly as possible so they can move on to the point they want to make. The song starts and we are introduced to what Bo describes as this “funny feeling”.

The Fight For Change™

The first half of the song emphasizes the corporate commodification of social movements. In 2020, this was especially true for those involved in activism, directly and consistently or even adjacently and stochastically. Political movements, social justice, racial justice, and more were on the docket last year. The real world effects of unchecked police brutality, political corruption and incompetence, and rampant disinformation were on full display, as people relentlessly fought in the streets, in voting booths, and online to try to secure a future for themselves, their family, or their friends. Blood was shed, and lives were lost, and meanwhile, in the background, from the metaphorical ivory towers of corporate America there arose a golden opportunity to create profit amidst the chaos. This motive was blatant last year, with every “brand” weighing in and promoting their product as an agent for change. This analysis isn’t new, but Burnham so eloquently weaves this commodification into “That Funny Feeling’s” opening structure. “In honor of the revolution, half off at the gap” “Discount Etsy agitprop, Bugle's take on race” paint a dystopic picture of reality, where demanding a world where the state does not systematically enact violence on its most vulnerable citizens is the hot new trend to use in your marketing. Be one of the cool kids with this one easy trick! There are additional layers to this, especially with the “agitprop on Etsy” line. For corporations to be so successful in, a large portion of the public has to fall for it, and even play into it, and we do. This line evokes an image of social justice cosplay, a person, who isn’t in danger of having the life squeezed out of them by police, buying a cool BLM tee online to fit this year’s social aesthetic. Ryan Knight’s infamous “Why can’t I find the sickle on iPhone?” Tweet comes to mind as an adjacent political movement with some actors often more involved in aesthetic appeal for the sake of the grift. We are all brands in the 21st century, and our personal appeal must be crafted like a corporate ad board so we too have the widest reach. Burnham litters the song with these acknowledgements, as well as an earlier skit in “Inside” that comically address “activism as a brand image”.

The Discourse As Routine

As we continue the decent into more esoteric territory, Burnham hits us with “backlash to the backlash to the thing that’s just begun”. “Inside” is best(worst) enjoyed as a terminally online person, someone who is somehow aware of Twitter’s daily “Main Character”, who is actively conscious of every second of discourse about every single opinion every single shitty person has; the “hilarious” quote tweets that platform neo-Nazis to get “dunk points” and “ratios”. The progression of “hot takes” to rabid discourse to discourse about the discourse is as formulaic as an assembly line at this point, and the never ending flat circle of time on websites like Twitter, YouTube or TikTok algorithmically promotes constant negative engagement for hate clicks and exposure to progressively worse and worse opinions. This is of course true even in the slightly more real sphere of politics, where politicians engage in the same cycle of opinion-dunk-rebuke, ultimately giving every participant in the exchange endless exposure. Burnham, while not a “poster” is clearly well tuned into this culture, and offers this line juxtaposed to the softer “Loving parents, harmless fun”, which is seemingly unrelated, but paints a portrait of a happy, ignorant life removed from the Sisyphean act of engaging in clearly necessary social movements with clearly unnecessary actors looking to turn every online opinion into a notch on their discourse bedpost. From Burnham’s “Welcome To The Internet” musical number earlier in “Inside”, the online discourse is “everything, all of the time”.

Burnham also revisits more mainstream cultural identifiers of the last five years. “The surgeon general's pop-up shop, Robert Iger's face” “The live-action Lion King, The Pepsi halftime show” “Carpool Karaoke, Steve Aoki, Logan Paul”. On the surface none of these sometimes niche figureheads of modern entertainment contain the apparent emotional weight of “JFK, blown away, what else to I have to say?” but that’s arguably just misdirection. As we’ll see, they are all important clues to the subdued, oppressive cultural landscape the youth find themselves in today, offering themselves as the cheap way out of the pain of realistic change.

Bo’s most direct lines, however, do hit with the aforementioned emotional immediacy found in “We Didn’t Start The Fire”. “Female Colonel Sanders, Easy answers, civil war. The whole world at your fingertips. The ocean at your door…A gift shop at the gun range, A mass shooting at the mall” will get a breathy “Jesus Christ….” from even the least analytical of us, and weaving them in-between more nuanced lines allows them to have the gut-punch effect intended. Corporate appeal to social movements as an “easy answer” to the unknowably looming ideological clash, unlimited information given at the cost of a dying planet, a thriving market of firearms amidst daily mass loss of life. Finding a way to exist with these threats, to possibly admit they are unconquerable, and the devastating consequences of that acceptance are what lead us to the song’s chorus and its title.

“That Funny Feeling”

There will be many interpretations of what the chorus is truly alluding to, but after a dozen or so listens, “that funny feeling” would seem to be the feeling of resignation to a future we are helpless to truly affect. It’s a creeping thought that presents itself amidst an uphill fight to create a better world. That after a year of protesting, fighting, and voting the amount of black men killed by police remains as high as before in mot cities, if not higher. That despite the adoption of renewable energy sources the pace of change is too slow to stop the worst effects of climate change from presenting itself in full force. That, despite our best efforts, all of this fighting and arguing and pain and chaos there exists a future barely nudged from its initial trajectory. That funny feeling is eating away at us, the gnawing voice in the back of our heads that says “just give in, it’s useless”. The easy outs are there, waiting for you: Disney remakes, YouTuber drama; spoon fed uncontroversial content that doesn’t engage with the coming end of the world. Reject modernity, embrace Marvel Movies, so to speak.

Hopelessness is another word to describe “That Funny Feeling”. This song and to an extent “Inside” in general seem to be unintentional sister content to YouTuber Carlos Maza’s latest video “How To Be Hopeless” which expertly draws the parallels between the biological pandemic we all are fighting and the ideological pandemic of the growing threat of fascism. How to fight when fighting won’t help seems to be at the center of both Burnham’s and Maza’s work, both offering their own solutions, both equally as pessimistic but somehow still beautiful, and for the time being both stand as the cumulative “Magnum Opus” of sorts for their creators. “How To Be Hopeless” builds its narrative on Albert Camus’ work, offering the historical parallel that these feelings are not new ones, even if they feel that way. However, Burnham seems to argue these feelings are much more substantive than they ever have been before.

Burnham’s chorus and later refrain of “Hey, what can ya say? We were overdue. But it'll be over soon, You wait” as well as the strikingly specific “Twenty thousand years of this, Seven more to go” really lean into the consuming desire to relinquish the fight. It doesn’t seem to suggest that things will be ok, and that the only relief we can draw from this conclusion is that the exhaustive struggle will be over soon, in apocalyptic fashion. The suicidal ideation at play here is apparent, and the credits for “Inside” invite anyone struggling with those thoughts to reach out for help. While an expected and nice gesture, this feels like a moment of inauthenticity from Burnham, as it would seem he doesn’t even buy that getting help will make all this vanish, and the resources in the credits may be more for self preservation than a genuine feeling that the hopelessness we feel is simply a therapy appointment away from disappearing.

A more optimistic take is that “That Funny Feeling” is the experience of flitting between states of being, where in one moment it really feels like good things are possible and the work you are putting in or cause you are supporting is gaining traction, and in the next moment you are crushed by the overwhelming nihilism described above. Billy Joel gave us a song of generational events, and the tone of a group fired up by the challenge. Bo Burnham gives us the response, the same response given when the Realists responded to the Romanticism era: that while the fight seems nice and possible, what’s really happening is we are all hurting, and some of us want to give up completely, and perhaps that by acknowledging those feelings we might have a better chance at saving it all in the end.

But also maybe not.