Transcription
Inside Out is an introspective deep dive into the value of our feelings and the consequences of emotional suppression. There are psychological components in every element of this movie. The environments, characters, and overall setting all have a strong psychological basis. This is one of the only movies where we get to see the main character's perspective and internal thought process simultaneously. Not to mention, we get to see what happens in real time when a character suppresses their emotions.
Understanding how we feel is one of the most important experiences in the human condition. When we suppress our emotions, we undermine our ability to understand how we exist in the world today. I wanted to break down the importance of emotions and the psychological themes in the movie. Also, I want to explain why I think Joy is the main villain in Inside Out. I'm Very Berry. If you enjoyed this video, like and share with your friends. Also, don't forget to hit that notification bell so you'll always see my latest content.
Riley is the main character in the movie, and she is in a transitionary period. Her family sells the house she lives in, and her life completely changes. She used to play on a hockey team with her friends in Minnesota. The change is hard on Riley, as it would be for any kid. Inside her mind, five basic emotions: dictator behavior, joy, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear, run Riley's mind and try to make good decisions on her behalf. They use a control board to dictate how Riley will interact with the world. One day, Sadness has an impulse to touch a core memory. Joy and Sadness have a confrontation, and all the core memories get sucked through a transport tube. The two go to retrieve the memories while the other characters try to keep Riley in check. They eventually meet Bing Bong, Riley's old imaginary friend. These three go through some crazy debacles while returning the core memories.
In the meantime, things are falling apart in the control center. The lack of core memory starts to wear down Riley's mental state. She feels disconnected from the things she once loved. Anger, Fear, and Disgust decide to run away and go back to Minnesota. Riley's life has become too complicated, and they miss how easy things were in her previous home. They second-guess themselves, but she's already on a steadfast path. Luckily, Santa stops Riley from running away. This causes her to break down and confide in her parents about her true feelings regarding the move. She misses her old memories and friends, which is a very relatable experience. Eventually, Riley adjusts to her new living circumstances. Intentions subside. She learns through her experiences that every emotion is important and serves a unique purpose.
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Now that we've broken down the plot, let's take a look at the psychological elements in the movie. Let's begin with the controllers of Riley's mind. The five emotions in the movie represent our five basic emotions. Anger, Joy, Fear, Sadness, and Disgust are universal feelings that serve as a baseline for how we engage with our environment. These basic emotions help us understand and interact with the world. We might feel joy when our child scores a home run or experience sadness at the death of a relative. In Riley's case, her prevailing emotion is happiness. Joy is dominant throughout the movie and constantly tries to assert herself over the other emotions. The pointy message in the film is that all five emotions serve a purpose, not just Joy.
In the movie, Bing Bong has a meltdown because Riley is forgetting him. Joy and Sadness need his help to traverse Riley's mind, but our imaginary friend is incapable of moving on for the time being. Joy tries to comfort him, but to no avail. She doesn't know how to help Bing Bong because she doesn't usually experience negative feelings. However, Sadness can help him because she can empathize with his pain. Joy matures through interacting with Sadness. She recognizes that she's overbearing. Her constant control of Riley's emotions causes the conflict to begin with. Joy begins to realize that Sadness has just as much value for Riley's growth as happiness. There can be lots of conflict with emotions when making a decision. One of the biggest factors that determines which emotion will succeed is the intensity of the emotion. There are several points in the movie where Anger takes over the control board. We understand through this interaction that some of our emotions are so powerful, they take over.
Inside Out doesn't just tackle emotions; memories are another key component to the film. At the beginning of the movie, Riley has five core memories. Core memories represent the most impactful and formative moments in a person's life. They shape our behaviors and the way we interact with the world. Without core memories, we would cease to be who we are. We can see this with Riley's character when Sadness removes the core memories, Riley shuts down. She loses her sense of self because she doesn't have anything to base her personality on. Storing memories is also covered expertly in this movie. When Riley has an important or meaningful experience, then the thought becomes part of her short-term memory. The most salient or relevant ones to her are taking the long-term. This process is how memory storage works in the mind. Inside Out goes the extra mile by building a world around memories and experiences. The world itself is a living, breathing representation of psychology.
When Sanders and Joy are going to the transport tube, they end up in long-term memory. Here, we can see all of Riley's stored memories. At one point, we get a hilarious bubblegum jingle. [Music] This memory doesn't serve a purpose, but it's in Riley's mind because of how often she heard it as a child. Repeated exposure to certain stimuli impacts whether a memory is stored in long-term. Right below are the forgotten memories. Although long-term memories can last for a while, they eventually fade into nothingness. There are multiple reasons this can happen. The importance, time, and relevance of the memory can all impact long-term memory storage. These lost memories never return to our mind.
Bing Bong is a great character for this reason. We get to see the emotional experience of a character being forgotten. Bing Bong is a lovable character that anyone can relate to. Almost everyone has had an imaginary best friend, and the crushing scene when Bing Bong accepts his fate embodies how an imaginary best friend might feel when forgotten.
Sadness, the final way this movie dissects memories, is how Riley perceives her past experiences. Initially, Riley thinks of her memories using only one emotion. When she plays hockey with her friends, she is happy. When she moves, she's sad. But when Riley matures, she begins to develop cognitively. Her perception of reality actively shapes her memories. Instead of just thinking of hockey as happy, she can think of the sadness that comes with the loss or the fear that comes with playing a tough team. At the end of the film, all of Riley's memories are complex and less one-dimensional.
Our current mental state is also very important in memory perception. One might assume memories are static, but it's a little more complex. When our perceptions of reality become skewed in one direction, memories can drastically change from how we once perceived them. This concept is called my ability. It's the idea that our emotions or feelings are changeable depending on the circumstance. A happy, fun memory can change to a sad, isolating one depending on the current mental state of the person recalling events. All the themes about memory in the movie also tie in beautifully with emotions. Without remembering or experiencing sadness, it would be hard to understand happiness.
Since a lot of the themes in this video are heavy, let's talk about a lighter topic. Sadness is arguably one of the most important characters in the film. She is designed to be frustrating. Her constant moping can be annoying at first, plus she always causes trouble for her fellow emotions. She truly embodies depressive feelings. She can't motivate herself and has a hard time focusing on anything besides despair. Hating Sadness almost comes naturally, but this is by design. Sadness has a very negative connotation in society. People don't want to be sad; they want to be happy. These feelings make sense because sadness doesn't feel good to our bodies. When we feel happy, oftentimes we are energized and excited, whereas sad thoughts usually make us feel tired and unmotivated.
Inside Out shows us the importance of sad feelings. For one thing, sadness helps cultivate empathy. Earlier, we talked about how Bing Bong's emotions bubbled over, and Joy couldn't console him. We often have friends in need, and our sad experiences can help us help them. In this way, sadness can make us happier. Helping a friend feels good, but that happy sensation can only be cultivated through sad experiences. Sadness is also important in our relationships. Experiencing pain can help us create closer bonds with our loved ones. When Joy fell into the memory grave, she noticed one of Riley's memories she loses in a hockey game, which makes her sad. But in that same memory, Riley's family comes to console her, making her happy again. Joy understands that Riley wouldn't have the same love and connection to her family without Sadness.
The last thing we can learn from Sadness is that repressing emotions is detrimental. Joy constantly stresses making sure Riley is only experiencing happiness. She is manic in her pursuit of merriment. She draws a circle to have Sat in a stand. Her goal is to have her blue enemy sidelined so she can rule the show. Joy is essentially telling Riley's mind to compartmentalize. In the scene, essentially store the negative feeling somewhere and don't think about it. This makes Riley fall apart emotionally. Her suppression of emotions causes her to lash out at her family and run away. The other emotions try to stop Riley, but the only one strong enough is Sadness. Riley remembers her family and feels horrible when she finally stops running from her sadness. Her emotional state improves.
Joy is kind of the villain in Inside Out. Don't get me wrong; her intentions weren't bad, but she is still the antagonist to the plot. From the beginning, her goal has been to neurotically control Riley's life. She will step aside from time to time, but in her mind, she rules the roost. To understand how Joy is the villain, we need to look at how her actions impacted Riley. When our blue friend doesn't get to control the board, Riley's depressive feelings begin to build. That's why Sadness tries to touch the core memories in the first place. If Riley were allowed to express her full range of emotions, she would have developed more emotionally, better understanding our feelings by experiencing them instead of suppressing them. Not to mention that Joy is a very exploitative person. She doesn't care about Sadness or Bing Bong; the only thing that matters to her is her goal. When Bing Bong feels down, she tries to rush through making him feel better to be on their merry way.
Sadness is the hero in a sense because she is willing to sit down and truly hear Bing Bong's plight. Joy only cares about getting back the happy core memories so she can go back to calling the shots. How do you think Sadness feels, or what about Bing Bong? Even her character shows one of the negative outcomes of only being joyous: a serious lack of perspective. Riley also has a similar problem. She never felt frustrated or upset in this way before and doesn't understand how to process these emotions. Her emotional suppression stunted her psychological development to some extent. Whenever Sadness expresses how she feels, Joy rolls her eyes to minimize her. Honestly, their relationship is very toxic at purse. Sadness gets brainwashed into thinking Joy is Riley's only solution to her problems. She gets pushed around and tossed aside by Joy. It's not hard to see why she would feel like she's a hindrance. While her bright and cheery character seems good, she does some pretty awful stuff throughout the narrative. She has a breakdown at the end of the film because of all the horrible things this happy devil has done. Although Joy does turn around after seeing the value of Sadness, feeling down was necessary for Joy to changes the character. I think it's important to remember that Sadness isn't necessarily bad, and Joy isn't always good. Sometimes feeling sad can help us feel better in the long run. Joy doesn't equal happiness; it's only one component of it.
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