On June 19th, 2015, Pixar released the animated film Inside Out, which has the premise of showing the complex emotional life of an 11 year old child named Riley as she moves from Minnesota to San Francisco.The focus of the film is on the personified emotions that run the control panel of Riley’s mind; Joy, Anger, Fear, Disgust, and Anger.
These are five out of the six emotions that can currently claim scientific
legitimacy (surprise was not included in the film) (Web. 17 Sept. 2015. ). Each of the main characters embody the emotion that they represent; Anger is brute and volcanic, Sadness is dreary and walks slowly, Fear is jittery and stutters, and Disgust is highly dismissive and judgmental. Each of them share control over Riley’s thoughts
…show more content…
and psyche. However, beyond being beautifully animated and entertaining, this film digs deeply into many psychological concepts in a simplistic and touching way. The first lesson that Inside Out teaches is that we don’t remember things exactly how they happened, rather, our recollection of memories are influenced by our emotions associated with them.
Our emotions add “hues” to our perceptions of life. We see this portrayed the film with Riley’s memories, each of which are symbolized by colorful glowing orbs. The color of each orb symbolizes the emotion that Riley associates with the memory. Red memories are angry (for example, memories of Riley’s temper tantrums), yellow ones are happy (such as Riley’s memories of laughing with friends), blue ones are sad (when Riley moves away), green ones are disgusting (as when Riley eats broccoli ), and purple ones are fearful (when Riley almost puts a fork into a dangerous electrical outlet as a …show more content…
child). These very same scenes also teach us a second lesson; Each emotion is vitally necessary to one’s well being. Joy allows Riley to bond with her father and others, Disgust saves Riley from eating potentially toxic foods, Fear keeps her from putting herself in dangerous situations, even Anger helps Riley defend herself. Seemingly, at first, the only character without use is Sadness (however, later on we see the importance of Sadess too). In the film, certain memories are known as “core memories”, which symbolize specific experiences that develop aspects of Riley’s personality. Riley’s experience of laughing with her father leads to the creation of the “Goofball Island” of her personality, and her first hockey game spurs “Hocky Island”. Throughout the film, these islands of Riley’s personality grow and crumble as they are explored. This is a lesson about how personality is always in flux. There is no point in life where personality is “set in stone”. As life goes on, even through adulthood, one is met with new experiences, opinions, changes, and challenges that change one’s personality. (N.p., n.d. Web. ). Most of Riley’s core memories are yellow and joyful. In fact, Riley avoids negative emotions at all costs.This reflects how we see negative emotions as a society. Often, we see sadness as “bad”. When we think someone is sad, usually there is an instinct to “fix it”.Children often pick up on this avoidance of these feelings and are afraid to feel their own sadness. In one scene, Sadness is restricted by Joy when Joy draws a circle around Sadness and tells her not to leave the boundaries of it. The interaction between Joy and Sadness in this scene is especially significant when taken into a social-psychological context. Sadness displays what is known as a”“depressogenic schema”. People who develop a depressogenic schema “are often rejected by others. When we have depressogenic schema, we are constantly thinking negatively about ourselves, the world around us, and our future. Sadness exhibits some of those exaggerations in thinking...those dire predictions are sometimes seen by others as burdensome, displeasing, and even annoying...This negative attribution style is why youths who are depressed tend to have difficulty making or maintaining friendships.” (N.p., n.d. Web. ). This actually provides some explanation as to why we are sometimes fearful of showing such negative emotions. However, one of the most important lessons from this film is that it’s okay to be sad.
Sadness is necessary for the development of empathy When Joy and Sadness need the help of Bing Bong, a long forgotten imaginary friend of Riley’s, it is Sadness that comes to the rescue. When Bing Bong realizes that he will fade permanently from Riley’s mind, Sadness helps by “allowing him a moment to shed his tears. She watches him cry. Then, she reaches out to him subtly and thoughtfully. With an understanding nod, she tells him, “You’re sad.” It’s what he needed to hear. He begins to open up, describing his feelings and the reasons he’s sad. “ (N.p., n.d. Web. ). Sadness has an approach that is, in my opinion, very therapeutic. Therapy, in simple terms, is talking about one’s feelings in order to cope with said feelings, and this is exactly what Sadness has Bing Bong do. In addition to this, Sadness speaks to Bing Bong in an extremely honest and straightforward way. Instead of telling him to “cheer up” or something of an optimistic nature (like Joy attempts), Sadness realizes that that is not what Bing Bong needs, and simply validates his feelings by saying “You’re
Sad”. The very end of the film provides a hopeful resolution to Riley’s internal struggles. Joy, Anger, Fear, Disgust, and Sadness, recover the core memories along with a newfound balance among all of the emotions. Riley’s core memories become a mix of Joy and Sadness, and we see glimpses of new memories which are combinations of emotions and possibilities of new personality islands. In conclusion, Inside Out has something to teach watchers of any age about their own emotions and psyche, and does so in profound and relatable ways.
People push being happy on society as a total must in life; sadness is not an option. However, the research that has conducted to the study of happiness speaks otherwise. In this essay Sharon Begley's article "Happiness: Enough Already" critiques and analyzes societies need to be happy and the motivational affects it has on life. Begley believes that individuals do not always have to be happy, and being sad is okay and even good for us. She brings in the research of other professionals to build her claim that extreme constant happiness is not good for people. I strongly agree that we need to experience sadness to build motivation in life and character all around.
During the movie, I found that these concepts that were taught in class helped me better understand and relate to certain clips of the movie. Throughout the rest of the paper, I will be going into a bit more detail about exactly what these concepts are and mean, following that I will be giving examples from the movie that demonstrate the concepts of conflict and politeness theory.
I assumed that each color would have an individual meaning, but as the film progressed I realized that color as a whole had a much deeper connotation. Through the usage of color, the movie was able to tackle major social issues, which are deeply rooted concerns in cultures and society everywhere. Namely, the element of change - as interpreted from the film's constant stress on the town of Pleasantville's morals. Including the symbolism of sin, as many of the non-colored feared.
For millions of evacuees around the world, finding support from their communities can be a significant obstacle while trying to rebuild their new lives (Fantino & Colak). For the main character, Há, in Thanhha Lai’s novel, Inside Out and Back Again, not being accepted by her peers causes difficulty during her adjustment to American life. She is constantly bullied and excluded at school, which results in her having tantrums at home (Lai 209-211). However, as soon as Há begins to make friends and gain support from her neighbor, Mrs. Washington, she starts to feel like she is “Back Again” and supported by community members (Lai 253). The struggle of being accepted by peers is experienced by Há’s family and real refugees alike, until they can find
Communication is everywhere. We, as interactive human beings, spend the majority of our time corresponding with others to satisfy our physical, identity, social, and practical needs (Adler, Rodman, & Sevigny, 2011). Often, this is consciously done; we search our minds for the accurate linguistic means to express our experiences, and use them to communicate with those around us. However, communication is not as straightforward and effortless as we may believe. It is, in fact, often unintentional, with 65% of it occurring as a result of non-verbal cues (Matsumoto, Shibata, Seiji, Mori, & Shioe, 2010). As mentioned by Marta Dynel (2011) in a study done on nonverbal communication, “Non verbal signs and signals ... are prevalent practically in all social encounters, which entail at least two individuals, who need not even talk or consciously interact otherwise”. Examples exist in all mediums, including in the animated film ‘Up’, where one scene depicts transactional communication between a male and female character, all expressed nonverbally . The nonverbal communication in this scene, along with various other communication constructs, will be discussed.
how hot the setting of the movie is. The color also reflects tension, conflict, anger,
Think of a children’s movie or two. Maybe a Disney or Pixar movie first comes to mind; or maybe a movie with “real” actors. Who are the good guys in this movie? Who are the bad? This should be easy to answer given a basic knowledge of the movie. Now who are the “good guys and bad guys” in life? Not as easy to answer. Of course, comparing fictional stereotypes to real people does not make all that much sense. Most people can obviously tell the difference between watching a movie and events happening in life. The distinction is clear. Yet children are different. They can still distinguish from the fictional and reality, but are more exposed to and influenced by the portrayals movies can impose.
Even though the community does benefit from Sameness, there are some things it is deprived of. While color is not absolutely necessary for the proper functioning of a society, it is still something important that this community lacks. “The red was so beautiful” (Lowry 95). This quote shows that once Jonas is exposed to color, he realizes how beautiful and important they are. Whenever he sees rare flashes of red, he gets excited and likes it. After being able to experience color, he looks at th...
There are many casual factors that can help explain Riley’s behavior such as culture, school, family, and biology. Riley experienced a culture shock when she moved to a different state. The first night when they got to San Francisco Riley suggested to get pizza for dinner. There was a pizza joint just down the road that she saw on the way to the new house but when she got there, there’s only one type of pizza on the menu, broccoli pizza. Which is radically different to what she is used to in Minnesota. Riley was extremely disgusted and soon realized that being in a new city, comes different ways of living. “Besides the conflicts that differing cultural standards create, children’s and adults’ own culture values may bias their perceptions of others... but it’s important to note that problems of bias and discrimination carry serious implications for evaluating youngsters’ behavior (Kauffman, 159). School also can have many effects on her behavior. When the teacher called on Riley to introduce herself to the class she started off well until she thought about Minnesota and how her life used to be and comparing it to what it will be like now. Riley had an emotional breakdown and became upset under pressure. She started to cry, ramble and lose her train of thought when she talked about the times she used to play hockey out on the pond every winter with her dad when the water froze.
4) How this relates to the real world: This relates to the real world because positive and negative behaviors are displayed by terms of words and actions everywhere around us on a daily basis. After reading this article, I believe the mood maintenance hypothesis has a tighter grip on positive people. Expressing positive behavioral actions and words can change someone’s day. However, I believe using empathy is one of the strongest and most influential strategies to extinguish negativity. Empathizing with another person means to express a genuine care and share that persons state of mind, thus having a strong impact on that particular individuals feelings.
At first glance, Pixar’s Inside Out seems to be your standard coming of age film. The film follows an 11-year-old girl, Riley who is forced to make a move from Minnesota to San Francisco with her parents. However, a deeper look at the film reveals how accurate it is to developmental psychology. The center of the story isn’t Riley and her family, but Riley’s primary emotions –Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust. The five emotions are personified as characters that control her mind as she transitions from childhood to adolescence and deals with the challenge of adjusting to a new place. Inside Out uses Riley and her emotions function as a demonstration of the relationship between emotion and cognition. In doing so, the film reveals several important questions about developmental psychology. Such as, how do emotions color our memories of the past and what is
Not many children’s movies show children how the brain develops, stores memories and works in day to day life, but Inside Out does just that. Within this hour and a half movie the psychology topics of long term memory, short term memory, emotions, and development is all include. Although it is very clear Inside Out indulges on these psychological topics throughout the movie, memory and emotions take the spotlight. Developmental psychology may not be as obvious, but is still in several of the scenes in Inside Out.
Colors raise feelings and provoke emotions, but sometimes these connections are considered as being a result of a color possessing a feature of descriptiveness; bananas are yellow, therefore it may be viewed that the color yellow serves as a descriptive color of the
Joy and Sadness are the leaders in the film. Joy is the first emotion to appear inside Riley’s brain when she is born. Joy is the clear leader of the other emotions with Sadness emerging as a distant second. She tries to keep everyone moving, focused and sets the goals for the team. Even after the other emotions appear, Joy remains Riley’s primary emotion throughout the movie. Sadness wants to be optimistic and helpful in keeping Riley happy, but she finds it so hard to be positive. “Sometimes it seems like the best thing to do is just lie on the floor and have a good cry.” Sadness was the second Emotion to take hold in Riley 's mind, appearing a half a minute after Joy. Afterwards, she tended to be more on the outs with Sadness. Joy does
Color psychology plays an important role in the film. Colors in this film are an index, which the village complies with. The colors chosen to stand out throughout the film evoke certain emotions from the characters. Yellow is the safe color while red is the dangerous color. These colors are enhanced throughout the film. These colors are bright and vibrant, while other colors appear dull. Most characters are seen wearing neutral tones of colors. Red is the color that is worn by “those that shall not be named”. A strong use of red as the “bad color” is when creatures enter the village and leave red marks on the doors. While they use the color red, villagers never address it, or name it, instead, they say “the bad color”. On the other hand, yellow is the exact opposite, it symbolizes safety.