I just saw Disney’s newest Pixar film, Inside Out, a movie which I had been waiting to see for months. If you’ve followed my series on reclaiming negative emotions, I’m sure you can understand why I was psyched out of my mind. If you’re familiar with the way that society tends to demonize shadow emotions, you’ll also understand why I was slightly apprehensive.
Spoiler Alert, by the way, for this post. I’m going to be discussing the significance of the plot.
I knew from the previews that Joy gets lost, and I suspected that it would be a movie about depression, where Sadness takes over running things because Joy is missing. I was equal parts hoping for some positive representations of what sadness does for people but also prepared for it to be all about having to find one’s joy again.
To my surprise and delight, that’s not the way that plot goes.
Joy does get lost, but she gets lost with Sadness after the two of them have a fight in head-quarters about whether Sadness can produce a core memory shortly after Riley has to move away from her home and friends.
Nobody likes Sadness, especially not Joy. Joy tolerates Anger, Disgust, and Fear because she recognizes they have a valuable job to do (yay that they weren’t demonized!). But she doesn’t see the point of Sadness. When they get lost together, she’s even willing at one point to leave Sadness behind in order to get herself back to headquarters because she sees herself as the most important emotion for Riley to have.
Meanwhile, back at headquarters, Anger, Fear, and Disgust are trying desperately to cover up the fact that two of the emotions have gotten lost, but it’s not their jobs to be either joyful or sad, so they mess it up. Big time. They end up planting an idea in her head that sets Riley off on a destructive and dangerous course.
The longer Joy and Sadness are gone, the more things fall apart inside Riley until the emotional control panel in her head begins to shut down and turn gray. With horror, Anger, Fear, and Disgust realize that they can’t make her feel anything anymore.
Eventually, it becomes apparent that Sadness has a really important role to play for Riley. Only Sadness can turn the control panel back on. Riley needs to grieve for her friends back in her former home and the fact that she feels completely lost in this new place.
Once Sadness is permitted to do her job, the other emotions are able to start doing their jobs again.
I was crying so hard at the end of the movie, not just because it was a tear-jerker. I was crying because it felt like someone finally understood the importance of emotions and had codified it so well in this children’s movie. All of the emotions are vital. But when we try to distance ourselves from one, we distance ourselves from all. When we try to cover up one with another (Anger is great at covering up sadness), we only make it worse. If we try to operate without one entirely, the whole system eventually begins shutting down.
sometimesmagical 