Words Words Words (2010)
Catch up here:
Just a year after his first comedy half hour, Burnham had his first hour long comedy special, which shares some of the same jokes with his 2009 special, which isn’t that surprising considering the timing and the difficulty of filling an entire hour of comedy. And you can feel the thinness to the set.
Still, there is development here, particularly in Bo’s stage presence. While he was mostly awkward and highlighting his youthfulness in his first special with just a hint of biting darkness beneath it all, in Words Words Words he leans more into this biting darkness.
His persona becomes more distant, even as the crowd wants to embrace him more. They shout their love for him and we get the sense that he is caught off guard by this outpouring of genuine emotion. And so like many young people who don’t know how to handle their emotions, his persona lashes out.
There’s a sense of a caged animal here.
He wanted this. Chased it. Found it. Toured the country, sold out theatres, sold out albums, and what he found is that the taste of fame is different than what he hoped for.
Despite all that, he seems and feels far more confident here.
Rather than an awkward boy, he presents and postures more as a prodigy. Like he deserved all this. Like it was fated because of his immense talent and intellect.
A Mozart of dick jokes and offensive ethnic stereotypes.
His jokes in this special still have the dense wordplay of his first special and rely heavily on attempting to shock and offend. Like when he gets the audience to fall into a call and response during a song. As soon as the call and response is in full swing, he shouts at them, telling them That’s how Hitler rose to power.
This edge plays throughout the special. Not only a biting satirical edge, but like Burnham himself is on edge.
He craves the attention and fame but he resents us for giving it to him, for laughing at his jokes about vaginas, about Jewish people.
Burnham has said that his comedy inspirations are Mitch Hedberg, Anthony Jeselnik, and Steven Wright, among others.
Now, I don’t expect everyone to know every comedian, but Jeselnik is, perhaps, best known for outraging audiences and offending them on purpose. Often he begins his joke in a very stereotypical way, using a sort of Seinfeldian observational setup. But instead, he takes this light setup and goes to a very dark place.
A sample joke:
Women are really divided on abortion in this country. Half of them are cool, but the other half I have to drag down there.
If that doesn’t make you laugh, don’t watch any of his special. What makes him work, I think, is that Jeselnik delivers every line with combative arrogance. He presents himself with such supreme confidence that you can’t imagine him giving a shit whether you laugh or not.
You almost feel him wanting you to storm out of the theatre in protest of the offensive shit he’s saying.
Interestingly, I think it’s clear how much Jeselnik owes to Wright and Hedberg who are best known for their one-line jokes.
The first time I saw Mitch Hedberg was on Comedy Central Presents. I watched it alone, which is a recipe for laughing less since comedy and laughter are communal activities. But I was laughing by myself so hard that I was crying and effectively missed the second half of the half hour special because I was still laughing so hard at the first half.
I remember clearly the day he died and how strongly it struck me. Maybe especially because he’s from Minnesota and Minnesotans are obligated to love any famous person from here, but I couldn’t help but feel the loss of the funniest person I’d ever heard.
A sample joke:
I’m against picketing, but I don’t know how to show it.
Hedberg also had one of the strangest stage personas, which was driven by his own immense stage fright. He hid behind a curtain of hair and sunglasses while he stood rigidly clinging to the microphone like a lifeline while he delivered his jokes with a surprisingly casual voice and halting intonation.
Steven Wright is very much in the same field of one-line comedy. His persona has just feels wildly indifferent to the fact that he’s on stage, that you’re there listening, or that any of this is happening. You get the sense, too, that these are all just thoughts bubbling up in the moment rather than something rehearsed and practiced and perfected.
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.
I bring all of this up because you can see Burnham, in a way, as the combination of these three comedians. Burnham’s standup is full of nonsequiturs and wordplay, short bits that are meant to surprise and offend. His persona is a mix of overbrimming confidence, sneering indifference, and obscene levels of stage fright.
The biggest difference is that Burnham’s comedy mostly comes through in song.
But it all feels, instead, like an insufferable prodigy who doesn’t care if you’re impressed or not. Because he’s also not impressed that you’re there, paying him money to listen to him talk and sing.
He expects it.
This best in class or smartest boy in the room persona makes his jokes about other comedians and comedy in general land better. He comes as a liberator, as a transformational figure, and this works because of our culture’s fetishization of young people performing at a high level.
Everyone hears about a debut author who becomes a bestseller when they’re 20 but most people don’t hear about the debut author who’s in her 40s or 50s when she hits it big.
We love to see someone succeed in their field at the highest level when they’re basically still children. Burnham knows this and plays off this expectation.
And while I do think this special is a bit thin—I don’t think he was really ready to hold a whole hour—with a few bits that are overlong, like the haiku and one man show sequences, there’s also interesting growth.
He’s becoming a more confident performer and also discovering and crafting his persona, but his writing also becomes more interesting. And so I want to talk about the most important early piece of Bo Burnham.
Art is Dead.
Art is dead
Art is dead
Art is dead
Art is dead
Entertainers like to seem complicated
But we're not complicated
I can explain it pretty easily
Have you ever been to a birthday
Party for children?
And one of the children
Won't stop screaming
'Cause he's just a little
Attention attractor
When he grows up
To be a comic or actor
He'll be rewarded
For never maturing
For never under-
Standing or learning
That every day
Can't be about him
There's other people
You selfish asshole
It’s hard not to assume that Bo is talking about himself here. He sought fame and attention. He broadcast his desires out to the world and was rewarded for it. Not just a little bit, but immensely. He became rich and famous, was embraced by audiences and Hollywood. He began getting offers, people requesting he write scripts for movies or TV shows.
He was nineteen/twenty when this special came out. He had very famous comedians vouching for him, singing his praises.
Though he started on the very unserious comedic platform of youtube, he was on his way to being embraced by the comedy world. He’d already been embraced by audiences.
And so we see a strong current of self-loathing in this song.
But this is also an outward facing sort of thing. He sees himself in everything he hates and despises about famous people.
I must be psychotic
I must be demented
To think that I'm worthy
Of all this attention
Of all of this money, you worked really hard for
I slept in late while you worked at the drug store
My drug's attention, I am an addict
But I get paid to indulge in my habit
It's all an illusion, I'm wearing make-up, I'm wearing make-up
Make-up, make-up, make-up, make...
What will become a recurring theme for Burnham is the artifice of fame and performed authenticity. He began as a performer in his bedroom but even then he was playing a part.
He knew this. Maybe we all knew it.
But the false intimacy, the manufactured relatability of the medium—talking into your webcam from your bedroom—cultivated this sense that internet stars were just like us. That the only thing keeping us from being on that side of the screen, pulling up thousands or millions of views, was that we never pushed record.
Unlike so many who have claimed and crafted a narrative of hardship paving the way to fame, Burnham just undresses that narrative and stands nakedly there on screen telling us that his job is easy. Not only that, but that it’s more an extension of neuroses than anything else.
But, at the same time, he’s literally playing the piano and singing.
This is a performance.
Even the words.
And I think this is the secret sauce of Bo Burnham. The way he layers—well, let’s be patient for now. There’s more of this down below.
Art is dead
So people think you're funny, how do we get those people's money
I said art is dead
We're rolling in dough, while Carlin rolls in his grave
His grave, his grave
The show has got a budget
The show has got a budget
And all the poor people way more deserving of the money
Won't budge it
'Cause I wanted my name in lights
When I could have fed a family of four
For forty fucking fortnights
Forty fucking fortnights
I am an artist, please God forgive me
I am an artist, please don't revere me
I am an artist, please don't respect me
I am an artist, you're free to correct me
A self-centered artist
Self-obsessed artist
I am an artist
I am an artist
But I'm just a kid
I'm just a kid
I'm just a kid
Kid
And maybe I'll grow out of it
Rather than continuing to dissect this song since you can read the words for yourself and hopefully understand them as clearly as I can, I think I’ll just repeat this very important sequence that may hold the key to this whole special and Burnham’s relationship with his audience, with fame, with the internet.
I am an artist, please God forgive me
I am an artist, please don't revere me
I am an artist, please don't respect me
I am an artist, you're free to correct me
You can watch this special here.
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"Art is dead"? No, it died several decades ago, when Hollywood sold out to Wall Street- everyone knows that now.