Bo Burnham and His Postmodern Act

Bo Burnham is a comedian with somewhat controversial humor, that also includes postmodern touches in his jokes, giving his show a sense of reality (or lack thereof). Burnham's show "What." is one of my personal favorites and is available on Netflix. All of his jokes are not school appropriate, so I do not suggest watching them as a family thing, although they are all constructed to make you believe one thing and then immediately turn it on it's tail and throw it in the opposite direction.


During one of his sections, he is reading a story out of his book, and in the middle of a sentence turns the book around and says, "The pages are blank why am I lying to you?" and then continues to recite the story with the book on his head. A few sentences later, he gives a little "excuse me," takes the book off of his head, turns a page, and returns it onto his head. Not only is this funny, but it makes a statement, he makes a show of not making a show, if that makes sense. One of his whole bits is a song titled "Sad," all about tragedy, and he has everyone laughing just because he throws a positive spin. He's talking about all these terribly sad events and begins to connect that comedy stems mostly off of tragedy, and blatantly says it in his song.

(Cursing warning)

In another bit, he begins telling a story (the same story in the book mentioned above) with themes of love, and it seems to be heading in the direction of a happy ending, but instead it ends abruptly with the main character (a frog), being eaten by an alligator. Much like a true war story, the crowd is kind of baffled, not knowing if it was the end of the story or not, because it wasn't satisfying, although it was funny how it ended. 

A controversial yet brilliant comedian who plays the public with a great sense of postmodernism, making things hilarious even though they shouldn't be, raising the question "What is comedy?"