I love animated movies – passionately. On my flight to Sydney one month ago, I first watched “Inside-Out 2”, which I hadn’t even known existed. I loved it so much and decided to rewatch the first movie as well. When I first watched it a few years ago, I didn’t understand it on a deeper level, but rewatching it now was incredibly fascinating! Today I will only be discussing the first movie, but a part two is definitely on it’s way!
Let’s dive right in!
What is the movie about?
“Inside-Out” is a movie about an 11 year old girl named Riley, who moves from Minnesota to San Francisco with her family. The main characters are Riley’s emotions: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust. Throughout the whole movie, they manage Riley’s actions and memories from “headquarters” and make up her inner dialogue. When Joy and Sadness accidentally get sucked out of headquarters into Riley’s memory, Joy learns a lot about herself and other emotions.
Why is it so fascinating?
While some critics find that “Inside-Out” over-simplifies the workings of the brain, many admire the portrayal of emotions and the overall message of the movie: Every emotion -good or bad- is important.
Who are the emotions?
At the beginning of the movie, Joy introduces every emotion and tells us what they do:
image source: Inside Out – Meet the characters | Confusions and Connections
Riley’s inner dialogue
I love how the dialogue between the different emotions sounds like an inner dialogue you can actually relate to. What we say or even our conscious thoughts are always filtered and influenced by logic or shame or our self-image. Riley doesn’t communicate her fear, anger or sadness openly with her parents, because she knows that that is not what they want her to feel. Her parents want her to be “their happy girl”, so Riley puts on a filter and suppresses her negative emotions, but they are still there and hearing them speak is like hearing Riley think without any filter.
Toxic Positivity
Joy and Sadness meet Riley’s imaginary childhood friend Bingbong in Riley’s memory. His rocket is thrown into the memory dump, which makes him feel sad. Joy tries to cheer him up with grimaces and jokes, but this has no effect on Bingbong whatsoever. Then, Sadness listens to him, she empathises and lets him cry. Eventually Bingbong gets up and is ready to move on.
Here’s the clip if you’d like to watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t685WM5R6aM
That scene is such a good demonstration of empathetic listening skills and you can really see what role Sadness plays in empathy. It shows how being optimistic is not always the right choice and covering negative emotions up with positive ones doesn’t make them go away.
This is what Joy is attempting to do. She wants to keep Riley happy, so she is very controlling of other emotions and doesn’t let them do a lot. But it becomes clear that you can’t just ignore how you truly feel. This also becomes apparent when Sadness starts touching happy memories and turns them sad in the beginning of the movie. She feels guilty about it, but she can’t really control herself.
All emotions have a use
The whole plot of the movie is basically that Joy realises that even negative emotions have a use. There is a specific scene where Joy realises that Sadness can be useful:
Joy looks at a happy memory where Riley is lifted up in the air by her parents and hockey-teammates, when she goes back several minutes to see what had happened before: Riley’s team had lost a game and Riley felt it was her fault. She was sad and her parents and friends came to comfort her. In that moment, Joy realises that Sadness was actually responsible for Riley finding comfort and understanding. She acknowledges the important role Sadness plays in relationships, empathy and connection.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV5j8VXH8j8 (starts at 2:02)
Joy’s self-realisation
At the time Joy sees that memory, Riley is running away from home, on her way back to Minnesota. When Joy and Sadness get back to headquarters, Joy steps back and gives Sadness more control. Riley returns home and finally tells her parents how she really feels. She finds out that they actually share her feelings, which brings Joy to the console. She and Sadness create a memory that is happy and sad at the same time, which had never happened before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2CJ46XkwxA
In the closing scenes, we don’t only see happy memories in the background anymore, but emotions in all colours, often combined. This indicates that Joy leaves the other emotions more room and is has become less controlling.
The notion that you cannot just suppress negative emotions and cover them up with positive ones is the main takeaway of the movie. No one can be happy all the time and we shouldn’t be. Every emotion has their time and place and Sadness can be liberating and comforting as well.
I am honestly so exited for next week, because I like the second movie even more than the first one!
See you then!
