That's how the world works

Scenography and ethos in How the World Works

Abstract

The present paper has as its theme the analysis of the enunciative scene, scenography and
the discursive ethos mobilized in the sketch How the World Works, by Bo Burnham. This research
delimits itself in the investigation of the enunciative-discursive process of the two enunciators present
in the sketch of the musical comedy Bo Burnham: Inside (2021), produced and performed by the
North American comedian Bo Burnham; the sketch, staged as a children's talk show, simulates the
political-ideological conflict between a puppeteer and his puppet. For this analysis, we use theoretical
notions about enunciative scenes, scenography and ethos as an image of the self in the discourse
(MAINGUENEAU, 2008, 2015, 2020) in interface with dialogism and discourse genres (BAKHTIN,
2015, 2016), in particular, the genre “sketch” (TRAVAGLIA, 2017, 2019). This is an exploratory,
bibliographic and documentary research, whose approach in its analysis is qualitative. The research
corpus is composed of the sketch How the World Works, by Bo Burnham. In this study, we conclude
that Burnham, in a sketch marked by oppression and censorship, recreates a political-ideological clash
from the enunciative-discursive process of the subjects present in the sketch, so that discourses in
tension mobilize antagonistic ethos, making the enunciators guarantors of opposing ethical worlds.