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| Clockwise from left are Sadness (blue), Fear (purple), Disgust (green), Joy (gold), and Anger (red) stationed at the control center inside Riley's brain. In the background on the shelves are Riley's memories stocked in colored balls representing the emotion she felt dominantly at the time. / Courtesy of Walt Disney Company Korea |
By Yun Suh-young
People experience a variety of emotions. As we age, these emotions become more abstruse as the simplicity of feeling a single emotion (i.e joy or sadness) grows more complex — feeling several emotions at once (i.e. joy and sadness).
Whether we would like to admit or not, these emotions are part of what form our characters, or "ego," depending on which emotions play a dominant role inside us.
Pixar's recent film "Inside Out," released in local theaters on July 9, does an excellent job of explaining what goes on inside the mind. Inspired by how his daughter's behavior changed as she entered her teens, director Pete Docter wanted to explore what goes on inside a child's head.
The storyline is built on the interactions and adventures of personified emotions inside a young girl's brain. Each has its own character, the five core emotions — Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust — control the feelings and behavior of Riley, 11, and form her personality.
Riley encounters drastic life change for the first time, which causes a huge emotional earthquake. Her family moves to San Francisco from Minnesota, where she had lived her entire life, and this change causes emotional distress.
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Inside her head, the personified emotions are busy trying to adjust Riley's behavior to the changed environment.
Before the move, Riley had lived peacefully and happily in her Minnesota home, with Joy as the dominant, positive character. But the sudden change in environment brings forth other emotions.
The inside of Riley's mental control center is lined in shelves with colored balls of light, which are Riley's memories. Every day, new balls of various memories enter the center and some are shot away by a tube to be kept in the long-term memory storage center. From time to time, these memories are brought to the control center to help Riley recall her childhood.
Each ball is kept in the color of the emotion— they are mostly gold (the color of Joy) — but when other emotions touch the ball, it changes color, which can be dangerous if it alters the long-term memory.
By mistake, Sadness touches one of the core happy memories and turns it blue. While Joy struggles to keep Sadness away from the memories, the two are accidentally vacuumed to the long-term memory storage center. Their journey back to the control center is a witty adventure, which adorably depicts how the brain functions.
With the help of psychologists, director Pete Docter represents the human brain well in cute animation.
The variety of functions are divided into visible locations such as the long-term memory storage center, personality islands, imagination island, the subconscious, abstract space, and memory dumping grounds, to name a few.
On their journey back to the control center, Joy and Sadness experience being at all these locations, educating the audience. With the absence of emotions, the personality islands that formed Riley's character start to break down.
Meanwhile, in the control center absent of the two emotions, the remaining Anger, Fear and Disgust try to take control, but Riley, without Joy's leadership, experiences only turmoil.
Along the way, Joy learns that the emotion she tried to ostracize — Sadness— actually plays a key role in getting Riley back to a calm state and can play a positive role in forming and mending relationships.
The movie gives a lesson to adults and children alike.
It allows adults to look back at who we are and to ponder about our identities and how our emotions influence us.
For children, the film is a lesson about growing up — that it is okay to be confused because it is part of the maturing process.
