The Philosophy of Pixar: Inside Out

For as long as humans have been alive we have had anxiety about our emotions. What they mean, and how they affect our decisions in life. People are often split between using their emotions or their logic to base the majority of their decisions. For example, in the popular Meyer-Briggs personality test, one of the categories is whether the person is "thinking" or "feeling". Which aspect of their personality they use to guide many of their decisions. In western culture, it is seen as weak to show your emotions. Women are usually considered "weaker" because they are "emotional", and men are only seen to be strong if they constantly hide their emotions. Why has hiding our emotions become such a staple in our culture? Don't our feelings make us human?

In the movie, Rylie the main protagonist has five main emotions: Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Anger, and Fear. In the beginning of the movie, Sadness is seen as nonessential. She is literally put inside a circle and told that she cannot move away from it. At one point, Joy and Sadness are accidentally ejected from the headquarters and must find a way to return. Throughout the rest of the movie, Joy discovers that Sadness is a crucial emotion to Rylie's healthy cognitive functioning. Sadness is what gives Rylie the ability to connect and emphasize with other people's struggles. Without that, Rylie is only able to connect with people through happiness, while an important bond, is not nearly as potent as emphasizing with other people's struggles. At the end of the film, Rylie is seen to grow emotionally when they fix the board controlling her actions to include all five of the emotions instead of just one leader at a time. After this point, Rylie is able to have memories with a mixture of the emotions instead of just a single emotion at a time.

Our culture has become technologically driven. In this age, data and information have become paramount. In the movie, the scariest place for Joy and Sadness to go through is not the subconscious with the giant clown. Instead, it is the giant pit in the middle of Rylie's mind where memories are meant to be forgotten. Our culture has become fixated on the idea of having others remember us. Why else would we document every aspect of our lives on Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat? We are afraid of becoming obsolete. This is not a new fear either. Many people wrote journals and autobiographies in order to be remembered by their progeny. Because of this fixation on documenting our lives, we usually leave only the happiest or best representation of ourselves. We don't let the world know how we really feel and because of this, it is stunting our emotional growth. Being emotionally in tune with one's self should be seen as a good thing. We need to learn how to express ourselves more. We need to take what's "inside" us and bring it "out" for others to see.