Inside Out Movie Analysis Essay Example

“Inside Out” is a movie that follows an eleven-year-old named Riley. Throughout the movie, she has to cope with losing two of her emotions while still going through stressful life events such as moving and starting at a new school. She struggles to keep up her “normal” self and starts to lose the person she was as well. Her emotions must work together to bring Riley back to herself and bring her Joy and Sadness back too. 

Joy is the leader at the beginning since Riley was happy with life for the most part but as the movie goes on and things such as moving, losing her best friend, and not making the hockey team make it so she’s letting other emotions emerge. Other than the literal explanation of Joy being gone from Riley’s core, Joy learns throughout the movie that it’s alright to let other emotions take over from time to time since they all serve some purpose. This is why Joy needs to allow Sadness to run the control panel sometimes because as humans, there’s a need to be sad sometimes. As learned in the movie people can’t always be happy, there are consequences for suppressing sadness. Being sad and experiencing the things that come with it, like crying, allow humans to deal and cope with the effects of stress. There can be harmful to the body when you ignore stress and don’t mitigate it by allowing yourself to cry and be sad, even if it’s just for a little. When two of Riley’s emotions disappear, her other emotions experience changes as the body is no longer able to release stress and cope with the buildup of emotion and sensory information that can’t be expressed through joy or sadness. Riley’s emotions become more complex in a literal sense since the rest of her emotions are trying to fill the place of the two missing emotions. This is how the audience gets to see that the emotions don’t just represent what their names are. The audience gets to see the complexity of their jobs. This is brought out and develops not only because Riley has lost two major emotions but also because Riley is going through a great deal in the outside world. She just moved, possibly lost her best friend, didn’t make the hockey team and had a rough first day of school. All of these events are overwhelming for an eleven-year-old who might not have experienced things this stressful yet. This could easily be the cause for Riley’s emotions becoming additionally complex as the movie continues.

Emotions exist for many reasons the main one was that humans used them for survival. Fear helped us to sense danger and activate the flight or fight sensation. Emotions also helped/help us make decisions and allow us to understand other people and their emotions. Emotions can help us process sensory information and help us to work through stressful or depressing events. Emotions help us better interact with others and help us to learn information or lessons for future situations. Emotions can hurt us through mental disorders, in which the chemicals in our brains are off which can cause an overwhelming amount of sadness, like depression, or an overwhelming amount of fear, like anxiety. These can go on to harm our physical health and of course, a person’s emotional well-being can very well affect their mental health. Emotions, while being a source to help us deal with stress, can also cause additional stress when we become overwhelmed with it. However, there are times when our emotions might not match the situation or dilemmas that we’re in and that can cause confusion and new stress. There was a time when I was faced with a great deal of confrontation between my team and the other team in a volleyball game. While I was nervous and quite frankly terrified, I laughed at the time. It was a response to all the fear and stress I was feeling and it felt as though there was no other reaction to have. I didn’t know what to do but I felt confused and aggravated that the most I could do was laugh. Looking back there were many better ways to handle the situation like backing out of it or trying to deescalate the argument. I don’t think I could have changed my emotions since at the time that was all I could do, my mind and body panicked and forced out an emotion that didn’t fit the situation I was in at the time.

The personality islands served as a good representation of the key personality traits that an eleven-year-old would have. In my opinion, it was interesting that without these personality islands, Riley isn’t herself. It could be argued that it is the same for real people. Without our personality traits, it can be argued that we aren’t ourselves. Bing Bong is the guide to these islands for many different reasons. He’s been forgotten for so long that he’s had time to learn his way around Riley’s mind. He knows locations, timings, and most general knowledge about most of her mind which makes him a fitting guide. Bing Bong also grew up with Riley, meaning he knows her well and knows a great deal about what the islands, do,  mean, and consist of. All of these reasons make him a very fitting guide for Joy and Sadness. Meanwhile, Riley is struggling in the real world. As her emotions try to fill the gap of losing two emotions, Riley becomes a stereotypical moody teen to those around her. The stereotype of a moody teen in the movie is depicted as lashing out at others quite a bit. The moody teen also has an attitude, giving sass to adults in their lives for seemingly no visible reason although it is known by the audience the reasons that the moody teen is acting out. It seems with the moody teen in this movie that there is a great deal of uncertainty, especially involving emotions. Riley isn’t able to control her emotions well, crying at odd moments and feeling angrier as the movie progresses. Losing her personality and two major emotions have made her into a stereotype of just another moody teen. In reality, Riley was faced with changes of puberty as well as stressful life events that made her into this “moody teen”. 

In the movie, the characters stand for more than just their names. Joy stands for Riley’s happiness and overall generally happy feelings. She seems to be one of the most abundant memory creators which means she’s most likely also representing Riley feeling content or average as well. Anger is a representation of Riley being frustrated and aggravated with her situation. He includes her lashing out and her annoyance with small and significant things in life. When she’s annoyed or frustrated, he takes over. Disgust represents not only Riley’s disgust over food and objects but also her fear to fit in. Disgust is the need to fit in within society and among her peers. As the movie says itself she keeps Riley from being poisoned “physically and socially”. Fear represents Riley’s flight or fight, he is her survival instinct and helps her determine what is dangerous to her. He represents her anxiety and her worries about what could go wrong in her day-to-day life. Finally, Sadness represents Riley’s disappointment when things don’t go well and event the sadness one can feel when reminiscing on things. She represents the possible depression that Riley felt as the world around her changed drastically. They all represent underlying things besides just what their names mention.