Film Theory: The BIG Mistake of Monsters Inc

[Music] dang kids never cleaning up their toys before bedtime who still buys their kids jacks in this century the kids even know what these things are for anymore oh what could possibly inflict this much foot pain [Music] i really wish kids would just stick to minecraft [Music] hello internet welcome to film theory the show that proves to you that you don't need to be afraid of monsters in your closet because the real world is filled with so so much worse today we're talking about the pixar classic monsters inc if you don't remember it monster's inc isn't just the name of the movie it's actually a power company that gets its electricity by harvesting energy from children's screams the business model of this place is simple use a door portal to have a monster enter a child's bedroom through the closet do something terrifying and watch as the canisters of scream energy fill up except as it turns out their business model isn't working as well as it used to kids these days apparently are growing up too fast and losing their fear of monsters which is kind of a weird premise isn't it i mean i get that children are the ones that are supposed to be scared of monsters but if you think about it the people who would be most disturbed by a monster coming out of their closet door would probably be the ones who don't believe in monsters in the first place right i mean not only do you suddenly have this terrifying beast roaring at you but heck now your entire world view has just been shattered in front of your eyes i guess existential dread and questioning reality just doesn't pack the same punch as a blood-curdling scream huh anyway as we start our movie business is bad at monsters inc and things are doubly bad for star employee james p sullivan aka sully when one day he accidentally takes his work home with him he's spending a late night at the factory when a human girl wanders through the door and into the monster realm boo causes quite a ruckus since as it turns out monsters are just as afraid of us as we are of them sully with the help of his pal mike wazowski works to return her home and along the way loki learns how to become a parent seriously coming back to this movie now that i have a kid there are so many scenes that hit differently except for this one yeah that moment when the two-year-old toddler looks sully in the eyes with the expression that says it's time to locate the nearest restroom most fictional thing that happens in this movie forget door portals and monster companies if you're getting that look from a two-year-old it's already too late don't ask me how i know that animated hijinks ensue and after foiling a plot to kidnap kids to farm screams out of them which i totally overlooked the first time i watched this movie and his genuine nightmare fuel we learned that kids laughter is actually the thing that produces more energy than kids screams so in addition to saving the day for boo mike and sully actually saved the day for monsters inc as well whose new laughter-based business model not only leads to a happier world for little kids around the world but also for the city of monstropolis but let's talk brass tacks here alright finding out that laughter provides more energy than screams makes for a feel-good ending but just how real is it like what is monstropolis really running on here how could a scream-based energy system work and is there an explanation for why laughter may just be more efficient well believe it or not but for as fictional as this world's rules might seem i think i've actually cracked the mechanics of how this whole thing works so step aside elon musk here comes elon matpat to show the world our next green energy source emotion while the idea of screams and or laughter serving as a power source might seem fanciful you might be surprised to find out that it actually squares with real world science screams and laughter like all sounds are the result of energy vibrating air particles or any other material that the sound is traveling through those vibrating air particles are a form of kinetic energy so if you have a device that's somehow able to capture that kinetic energy you would actually be in business and wouldn't you know it you don't have to have a special engineering degree from monsters university to figure this out a group of 11th grade students at philippine science high school made headlines when they created their own proof of concept a gadget that's like a speaker but in reverse instead of taking electrical power and converting it into sound waves like your headphones do they take sound waves and convert it into electrical power they take sound waves to vibrate a magnet and coil system which creates a flow of electrons and not just a measly flow of electrons here people it's enough to power a 5 watt led light bulb apparently this idea won him a silver award at a big science convention to which i say silver are you kidding me they generated electricity from sound i mean what did the gold medal winner do create nuclear fusion meanwhile all the rest of us are making baking soda volcanoes anyway this silver metal idea gives us a place to start when it comes to how screams and laughter can possibly provide energy one thing that should be fairly obvious is that louder sounds provide more energy loudness measured in decibels is literally a measure of how intense the sound waves are which directly correlates with how much energy they're carrying except it's here that we run into our first problem human laughter usually registers at about 65 decibels screaming registers at about 90. while that might not sound like that much of a difference it's actually significant the decibel scale that we use to measure the intensity of sound is logarithmic i'll spare you all the math but it basically means that a 90 decibel scream is actually 56 times more intense than a 65 decibel laugh not looking too good for laughter based power there maybe the monster villains planning to kidnap the kids and strap them to chairs we're onto something or maybe there's something else at work here maybe sound isn't the only thing being produced when you laugh or scream these extreme emotions are experiences that engage our whole bodies after all so we need to consider screams versus laughter as a whole metabolic experience luckily real world researchers have done a surprising amount of study on this exact topic one found that laughter in general can burn anywhere between one and three calories per minute but fear also does a fine job of kicking your metabolism into high gear a separate study at the university of westminster found that people watching horror movies were burning an average of 1.25 calories per minute from being in a heightened fear state here's johnny you've been sitting there all day ma i'm exercising here phew i'm really working up a sweat in fact that 1.25 calories per minute burned from fear is actually a bit low because that was the average for the whole movie rather than periods of fear intense enough for a blood-curdling primal scream of terror which means that yet again screams have the slight advantage over laughs but i feel like there's a big thing we're overlooking here after all we're shown in the prequel movie monsters university that the monsters have the ability to access all sorts of locations in the human world yet they choose to focus on children's bedrooms sure screaming kids can hit a pretty high decibel level but let's be honest if the monsters only cared about harvesting energy from something really loud they could just take a door that led to like a waterfall or an airport or something likewise when it comes to burning calories those one to three calories per minute is tiny you want to harvest that much energy from the human world you just grab a log and you burn it you'll release 4780 calories worth of energy more than you'd get from thousands of minutes of terrified screaming and a log ain't gonna fight back clearly there's something else going on here and i think the answer is neurochemical dopamine has historically been known as the brain's pleasure chemical but that's a bit simple of an explanation more recent research suggests that it's better described as the motivational chemical it gives you the impulse that you really want to go out and do something studies show that playing video games actually doubles the levels of dopamine in your brain which fun fact is about the same increase that you get from um how do i put this snogging very passionately single on valentine's day no worries friends you have video games to keep you company your brain will be just as happy the rest of your body and wouldn't you know it but activities known to increase dopamine levels in the brain include laughter and surprisingly enough screaming in fact the simple act of screaming by itself is enough to trigger a dopamine release which means that all those companies selling scream therapy pillows actually have a little leg to stand on this method of yelling to trigger a neurochemical release and relieve stress briefly became a popular therapeutic technique during the 1970s i say briefly because as it turns out the more you do it the less effective at releasing dopamine it becomes and there it is my friends that is our missing piece that's the reason why monsters inc seems to be doing so poorly these days remember their business model revolves around having a daily rotation of doors to kids bedrooms that they repeatedly visit and the more you keep scaring the same kids the less dopamine each of their screams is gonna release kids these days they just don't get scared like you used to yeah mr waternews you're right you know why kids aren't getting scared like they used to it's because the more you keep scaring them the less effective their screams are but you know what doesn't get less effective with repetition laughter while the primal scream therapy technique has now fallen out of favor there's plenty of scientific research indicating that laughter does make for effective therapeutic treatment releasing dopamine into your system and unlike screams whose effectiveness decreases with repetition laughter may actually increase dopamine levels the more that you laugh a study by researchers at the university hospital of zurich found that people with higher dopamine levels were more likely to laugh when exposed to humorous stimuli and laughter led to higher dopamine levels in the future thereby leading to a self-perpetuating cycle where the more you laugh and generate dopamine the easier it becomes for your brain to laugh and generate more dopamine the next time you encounter something funny in other words you could not ask for a better and more sustainable source of energy than laughter it really is the best medicine the benefits of laughter are both short and long-term which is great news for me considering my addiction to whose line is it anyway it's also great news for monsters inc who by transitioning to laughter as a power source have just found something a whole lot more effective and a whole lot more sustainable than harvesting screams but hey that's just a theory a film theory and you know what's not a laughing matter you know what truly is scary the fact that monsters inc is not on netflix yep the old mouse has taken all of its movies and thrown em into the disney plus vault that you can keep open as long as you keep paying at least in most cases that's how it's going down you see monsters inc is available to stream on netflix in egypt but i don't live in egypt you say to which i reply you can make your internet look like it's coming from egypt using our sponsor for today's episode nordvpn in two clicks you change your region and suddenly netflix egypt is available to you meaning you suddenly have access to monsters inc as well as other pixar classics that aren't streamable here in the us like wall-e and toy story with nordvpn you unlock a 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Channel: The Film Theorists

Views: 3,296,089

Keywords: monsters inc, monsters inc theory, monsters university, boo, sully, mike wazowski, pixar, disney, pixar theory, disney theory, boo pixar theory, updated pixar theory, monsters inc full movie, film theory, film theorists, film theory monsters inc, film theory pixar, pixar timeline theory, pixar timeline 2021, monsters inc movie, monsters inc 2, monsters inc 2001

Id: oc7CwftRnG8

Length: 12min 4sec (724 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 11 2021