The Genius of Inside Out

what's up with humans and depicting the brain as having tiny humans controlling us this is an idea that keeps showing up in media in various forms like there are tiny versions of yourself living inside of you and they are actually the ones running things from the most basic of body functions to the most complex of thoughts back when inside out was announced some people took issue with it saying that it had been done before and they were right but just like with any other story what matters isn't whether or not your idea is truly unique because it seldom is but instead what you do with this idea and the unexpected places it might take you i think part of what makes us return to this concept of tiny humans controlling a big human is how it makes humans themselves a little easier to understand it is one thing to learn about cells and synapses at a science class but it's another thing to picture those cells as a team working together to keep us alive to the best of their capacity an element that often pops up in these kinds of stories is a complication in making the body run smoothly maybe because there's a disagreement at headquarters or because our tiny workers are having trouble dealing with an outside factor there's a fun paradox here on how we can picture the human body as a system of multiple workers almost as an attempt to make it impersonal and automated more akin to a company or even a machine but even with all of this mechanization it's impossible to make life any less chaotic or unpredictable you can only fight against it this is part of the core message of inside out we have different emotions taking turns ruling the brain trying to make things run as smoothly as possible but even if they have the human's best interest at heart they still constantly struggle with overriding the natural turmoils of living like the person they guide they're just trying to get through the day doing the best they can to experience a story like inside out is to allow yourself to become lost in the secret world of inner workings watching as a titular human is guided through many of life's troubles like a vehicle navigating rocky terrain picturing how those same tiny workers would deal with your body in your life's conflicts the bottom line is that it's nice to think someone is in control especially when we ourselves feel lost in the chaos at first glance that's what inside out seems to be a movie about being controlled from the inside but what sets it apart from any other story of the same kind is the way it shows us that our inner workers might be less in control than you think join me as i dive into this chaos ridden world of emotions as i want to talk about inside out inside out is what you get when you try giving feelings to your feelings in this universe the most important workers within us are the five emotions that rule a great part of our actions joy sadness fear disgust and anger they stay in headquarters which is where most of our thoughts are conjured up as we live through the day we make memories which can be neatly tucked away and summoned back into relevance whenever we need them sometimes we make really formative memories that help shape our personalities and define who we are those are called core memories and they are kept in a special area of headquarters while the rest of the memories are sent down to long term for storage and into a dark pit when they are no longer worth keeping just like with any inner workings movie we understand that this is an imaginative way of illustrating the human mind rather than a scientific explanation we don't even exist we're just a clever visual metaphor used to personify the abstract concept of thought you can see the biological inspiration behind some of the choices the writers made like memories being sent down to long-term storage during sleep but we're not expecting a whole lot of accuracy here i don't want to get too technical yeah don't worry about that sweetie nobody wants you to this is done through what we call suspension of disbelief which is when you allow yourself not to criticize every aspect of a work of fiction that doesn't conform to what exists in real life the movie tells you that this is how the brain works and you agree to believe that this is how a brain works and you'll continue to believe it for as long as the movie doesn't betray its internal logic too much our main human character is riley an 11 year old girl who is going through some major life changes as her family moves from minnesota to san francisco her emotions had never had to deal with something this radical before and they all try their best to ensure that riley can safely go through this transition joy is usually the one who takes the lead and the other emotions go to her for guidance joy was the first emotion to appear in riley's head and although each feeling has their own function and degree of importance it is generally thought that joy is the most important one as they all want riley to be happy most of all joy tries to take control of the situation and make sure every other emotion acts accordingly and they all try to stick to her plan except sadness seems to have some sort of urge to do things her way even if it defies joy schemes she keeps touching memories even after being ordered not to and her drive to do it feels almost irrational it's just that i wanted to maybe hope joy has always had trouble understanding sadness's role and these defiant outbursts aren't really helping her in her increasingly desperate attempts to keep sadness out of the way joy ends up sending herself and sadness all the way to long-term storage along with the core memories that make up riley's personality this means that until they can get back riley is no longer capable of feeling neither joy nor sadness and seems to lose her sense of identity the rest of the movie follows joy and sadness as they attempt to make it back to headquarters as well as disgust fear and anger trying to get riley through the changes in her life with the least possible emotional damage what follows is an absolute lack of success on both ends with riley having terrible mood swings and lashing out at her family and with every path back to headquarters falling apart just as joy and sadness managed to reach it we get to the story's climax as joy falls into the memory dump running the risk of being forgotten and with the rest of the feelings making riley run away from home and try to get back to her hometown threatening her safety joy manages to get herself and sadness back into headquarters just in time to save the day and this is done by allowing sadness to run things for once revealing her great importance to the group this resolution is fast-paced action-packed and dare i say it very emotional this story has been praised since the movie came out and rightfully so it is a beautiful illustration of how the human mind works and the characters are incredibly fun to follow it is in essence a movie about the importance of sadness and this message never feels dumbed down or heavy-handed the question that the movie poses is one we have all grappled with at some point what's the use of feeling blue especially now that we have a universe where our emotions are self-aware and the very act of feeling anything seems to come not from a natural reaction but from a calculated move why would the other emotions allow sadness to take over we easily accept the truths presented to us by the movie when it goes over the importance of other feelings with fear warding off danger disgust warding off poison and anger warding off injustice and by that logic joy's role would be to ward off sadness and vice versa but sometimes we're thrust into situations where there is no apparent enemy or where we can't do anything to make it better there is no monster to run away from no imminent threat to our health no amount of screaming and arguing that can make things any better there's just a longing for the better times we once had and the sorrow of knowing those days are gone and the weight of realizing we can't do anything to change that the only way we can deal with that is by feeling sad sadness isn't attempting to change anything or running away from what we have now it is acknowledging that things aren't always good and that it sucks that they are no longer good sadness is understanding and its purpose is to connect us for that moral alone inside out should be considered a really good movie but that's not entirely true because in reality it is a fantastic one [Music] remember that thing i said about suspension of this belief and how we agree to believe in whatever fantasies the movie is feeding us as long as it doesn't betray its own internal logic you see there's one moment where inside out does that annoyed at how bonkers everything is now that joy and sadness aren't around and afraid he's not doing a good job looking out for riley fear decides to quit his job and send himself to long-term storage he packs up his case and presses the eject button waiting to be taken down with the rest of the memories but the system fails watching this nonsense unfurl disgusts snarkily remarks emotions can't quit genius essentially stating that emotions can't escape headquarters through the storage shoots okay but wait a minute if emotions aren't capable of leaving then how come joy and sadness were rejected from headquarters through that exact same mechanism shouldn't the fail-safe that stopped fear from being taken also have deterred any other emotions why is this rule in particular so arbitrary but most importantly why would the writers keep that moment in the film knowing it could potentially ruin its own internal logic you could easily nitpick at this event blaming it on poor writing and then latch on to the other narrative contrivances that seem to happen for no other reason aside from padding out the runtime isn't it awfully inconvenient how every path to headquarters seems to fall apart just as joy and sadness finally reach it the islands of personality fall one by one in the precise order of proximity that would take joy and sadness to them joy runs into bing bong riley's old imaginary friend just as sadness was about to point them in the right direction forcing them to take a detour instead they try to reach the train of thought but they get caught up in an abstract thought shortcut and the locomotive leaves just as they are reaching the station not a second later just as they reach the next station riley goes to sleep once again bringing the gang's journey to a halt and when they manage to wake the girl up another falling island destroys the tracks when joy finds a shoot that can take her back to hq the land collapses around her breaking her path and sending her into the memory pit every single step forward fails miserably in what can only be described as a series of unfortunate coincidences always somehow matching up to a real life happenstance that could justify that internal failure but that feels awfully contrived nonetheless as if the brain or the body or destiny itself is trying to stop our heroes from reaching their final destination because it is let's imagine for a second what would happen if that fail safe really did stop joy and sadness from being ejected much like it did with fear with the two of them still at headquarters riley would still technically be allowed to feel those emotions and joy would continue to try and run things like she had been doing keeping sadness out of her way as much as possible we've been looking at this process as if the feeling's presence in hq is what determines whether the person can feel that emotion or not if joy is at headquarters riley can be happy if joy is away riley cannot except really it's the opposite it's not that riley can't feel happy because joy isn't around joy isn't around because riley can't feel happy riley is expected to feel happy she is praised for the moments where she is and reprimanded for the times where she isn't the rest of the emotions agreed that joy should be running things because they want riley to be happy more than anything else but nothing about riley's situation is giving her a reason to feel happy she's been moved away from her friends her new house is dirty and gray her new school feels hostile and isolating she had to leave her team behind and is struggling to find a new one the moving company keeps messing up the furniture delivery and her parents are so stressed out about the whole operation that they fail to realize how miserable she feels and give her the comfort she needs riley can't feel happy so joy is taken out of the picture as for sadness it's a similar process crying in school is a humiliating experience especially on your first day so it's natural to assume that riley would try to repress that side of herself aside from that there's also the possibility that much like joy riley hasn't truly understood the importance of sadness yet likely due to a lack of maturity since the adults appear to have already found room for all emotions in their lives there's also the fact that sadness brings us closer to being understood and riley feels like no one can understand her now when her mother praises her for staying happy even as the moving process becomes more and more stressful she takes joy as being the opposite of sadness if her parents want her to be happy it means she can't be sad about moving no matter how badly she wants to sadness's drive to defy joy's orders and touch the recalled memories is a reflection of how riley wishes she could feel sad but even that attempt is quickly shut down by her reaction to suppress it riley won't allow herself to feel sad so sadness is taken out too as she's tossed along with joy into long-term storage the two are stopped at every corner from getting back to hq as if every attempt is doomed to end in failure because it is much like joy and sadness were expelled from headquarters once riley could no longer feel those emotions they will only be allowed to return when riley is ready to feel them once again even the steps the two of them take to go back echo the way riley feels about the very ideas of joy and sadness to think that they once felt so distant they might as well be abstract concepts or that joy felt like such an impossible thing to feel that riley might as well forget how to feel it at all the same fate-ridden coincidences that fiercely stopped every attempt at returning now work in joy's favor as she frantically searches for sadness around the memory lanes and their rushed success feels as magical as their failures were frustrating isn't it amazing how joy is able to locate sadness so quickly and create the exact number of fake boyfriends she needed and positioned sadness so precisely in order to execute a maneuver so risky that any reasonable person would declare impossible and isn't it wonderful how all of this takes place in the last possible second right as riley is about to send herself off in an incredibly dangerous journey so numb she can't bring herself to feel anything how it took a measure so extreme to make her realize that all she needed was to have a good cry joy and sadness were violently sent away because riley could no longer feel them and they were welcomed back in just as intensely now that she was ready to feel them again the feelings in riley's head were never in control as much as we like to think that they are just as we like to comfort ourselves with ideas of organized operations and relentless teamwork and automated systems and whatever else can bring us a sense that we're being watched over and cared for by a team that only wants what's best for us and are the best at what they do like we can be free of the responsibility of keeping ourselves functional because our actions are really just a sophisticated byproduct of a series of calculated decisions like we're capable of outsmarting chaos because we are an entire system making sure that chaos does not win but we cannot outrun something that is part of us and that rules our existence to its very foundation the feelings couldn't override the external factors that tormented them because they were also ruled by that same force and because no one is immune to the effects of change and trauma of loneliness and closeness of good days and bad days of life inside out more than any other story like it paints a portrait of how much we can change and grow and how our inner journeys are oftentimes just as chaotic as what we experience on the outside every narrative beat and plot point helps create an entire web of fate and happenstance where the rules of its universe are positively strengthened by its own contrivances in a way that had never been done before in any of the narratives it is often compared to be it thanks to what it attempts to teach us or for the magical world it presents us with it is for all intents and purposes a fantastic movie [Music] thank you for watching well hello there it was very nice of you to watch this video if you have enjoyed the video you can do those cool things such as clicking the like button subscribing to the channel and clicking the notification bell too you can also follow me on twitter and share this video with your friends if you really like what i do you should consider supporting me on patreon i have linked it down in the description and i highly recommend you check it out feel free to leave a comment down below especially if it is about how much you love inside out thank you so much for watching and i'll see you on my next video [Music] do you ever look at someone and wonder what is going on inside their heads

Channel: Drawpinion Dump

Views: 102,168

Keywords: disney, inside out, inside out disney, inside out pixar, pixar, is inside out good?, inside out sadness, inside out joy, joy and sadness

Id: 0AD3ulitTWg

Length: 21min 8sec (1268 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 24 2020