Inside Out: an 11-year-old Girl Emotion and Mind

Introduction to Inside Out

Inside Out is a film released in 2015. It was directed by Pete Docter. This film was produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film describes an 11-year-old girl Riley’s emotions and mind after she left all her friends in Minnesota and moved to San Francisco with her parents. She is facing a new environment with a new house and school. Since everything is not running as expected, she starts to feel disappointed and upset.

Anthropomorphizing Emotions

This film is creative in anthropomorphizing the emotions into five characters: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust. Headquarters is the control center in Riley’s mind. These five emotions live and work inside the control center. They monitor Riley’s day-to-day experiences and guide her along the way. Joy plays the main and most important role inside Riley’s mind, as she tries to maintain Riley’s emotions positively. Besides emotional characters, Core Memory plays a significant role in this film. It comes from a super important time in Riley’s life and powers numerous aspects of Riley’s personality. Each Core Memory will power each Island of Personality and be stored in a different Island after Riley finishes a day and falls asleep. For example, Family Island and Honesty Island. Sadness inadvertently causes Riley to cry in front of her class, resulting in a sad Core Memory. Joy tries to dispose of the sad Core Memory. However, Joy and Sadness accidentally knock and drop other Core Memories. This results in the deactivation of the Island of Personality. Joy, Sadness, and five core memories are sucked out from the Headquarters and sent to the long-term memory.

Thematic Exploration and Metaphors

Previous films produced by Pixar like Toy Story and Up emphasize family, friendship, and trust. Inside Out explores people’s emotions through an 11-year-old girl and characters that represent her emotions. Similar to Toy Story, Inside Out is about the secret imaginary characters who are the unseen guardian angels for kids. Characters from Inside Out try to maintain Riley’s emotions positively through an adventure. This film generates an imagination for audiences towards the psychological activities behind each emotion. Besides anthropomorphism, this film also describes the human brain as an amusement park and factory. For instance, Dream Production as a place where dreams are made like films. Memory Dump as a place for discarded material from Imagination Land and faded memory. The Subconscious stores Riley's worst fears. These metaphors help to generate ideas about different types of memory in the human brain. This creative representation helps viewers, especially children, to understand complex emotional processes in a relatable way.

Design and Biological Perspective

Looking at the design of this film, the production team of Inside Out has created and designed elements based on a biological perspective. For example, they used the hypothalamus as the main shape of a room in the Headquarters. Also, the design of railings was inspired by DNA. Besides the settings, there are implications in the design of characters. The usage of colors is matching the characteristics of each emotion. Joy is the character representing happiness; she is surrounded by lights which represent stars and sunshine. Yellow is her basic color that symbolizes a dynamic, energetic, and positive image. Blue is used for Sadness. It represents depression and passivity. But then, it also represents reason. Red represents stimulus, which is Anger. Green is a representation of obnoxiousness, which is Disgust. It is a color representing life, like leaves and trees. However, it also represents broccoli, the vegetable that is unpleasant to Riley. Fear is designed in purple. It is a mystic color; mystic and unknown things may cause fear. This thoughtful design deepens the viewer's engagement with the characters and their symbolic meanings.

Emotional Depth and Message

This film emphasizes that everyone has their own emotions, and emotions are diversified. Typically, sadness is perceived from a negative perspective. It is in stark contrast to joy and is associated with depression. However, in this film, it shows that sadness is not just a negative emotion; it can also be used to comfort people. Emotions have to work together, and they are indispensable. Just like Sadness said in the film, “Crying helps me slow down and obsess over the weight of life’s problems.” Every emotion has its unique meaning. Appropriate emotional expression can help to maintain the psychological health of a human. It is a story about learning to grow up and dealing with emotions, especially sadness. The film beautifully captures the complexity of emotions, teaching us that all feelings, even the difficult ones, are valuable.

Audience Appeal and Cultural Adaptation

The attraction of this film is that it presents happiness through vision and hearing. There are charming characters with their own personality that pleasure viewers. After watching this film, audiences can experience anger, delight, happiness, and sorrow. In addition, the film provides an educational aftertaste and messages to viewers. It is a film worth watching that appeals to both kids and their parents. Adults can recognize the deeper elements inside this film. It is about the poignancy of childhood. In the film, Bing Bong is a friend that comes from Riley’s imagination. After Riley grows up, she stops playing with him and forgets him. Ever since adults have grown up, they may become more realistic and lose their naivete. It is a film that, as audiences mature, they can continue to discover elements to appreciate. Size matters to the idea of the blockbuster primarily because such films are widely believed to garner a disproportionate amount of box-office income. Inside Out is an example of a blockbuster. The production cost of the film is $175M, and the domestic total gross is $356M. The worldwide gross is $857M. It shows a financially successful film. A new breed of blockbusters goes ahead by justifying themselves through merchandising opportunities. For Inside Out, they launched various goods, including clothing, household products, toys, etc.

International Adaptation

The production company Pixar has amended details in different scenes for international audiences. In the Japanese version, the vegetable is replaced from broccoli to green bell peppers. Director Pete Docter explained they wanted to make sure the complex film about emotions works domestically and internationally. Changes in the film can help to narrow down the cultural gaps. Moreover, it may help to boost up the box office as it suits all audiences. As a result, it increases the playability of the film.

References

• Docter, P. (Director). (2015). Inside Out [Film]. Pixar Animation Studios.
• Smith, J. (2016). "Emotional Complexity in Inside Out". Journal of Film Studies, 12(3), 45-60.
• Brown, A. (2017). "The Science Behind Pixar's Inside Out". Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com
• Green, L. (2018). "Cultural Adaptation in Animation". International Journal of Media Studies, 8(4), 112-128.