Everybody's feelings, everywhere, all at once

Six thoughts (sort of) about the 2015 blockbuster children's movie Inside Out and the past decade we've shared

Before we begin:

Welcome to the White Pages Summer Movie Series. If you’re wondering what this is all about or have other questions (like what movies we’ll be covering, how often pieces like these are going to pop up, or whether you can pitch me your essay idea), check out this quick explainer. For now, though, let’s talk about a movie about pre-teen emotions that is ten years old but that remains incredibly timely (for instance, for this specific moment, when the world’s richest man and the President of the United States attempt to out-tantrum the other).

Part one: My promise to you, cinema haters and lovers alike

When it comes to pop culture discourse, I am equally allergic to hyperbolic canonization and self-righteous takedowns. We all love different things, and thank goodness for that. If Inside Out changed your life, have no fear. I’m not going to argue that it’s fascist, actually. Likewise, if you are an Inside Out skeptic, you won’t find any “Inside Out is the most important artifact of our lifetime” takes around these parts. My God, it’s a cartoon movie where anger is depicted as a little red guy who blows his fire top every few minutes.

Now, my sense is that many child psychologists give Inside Out (and its sequel, the one with way more anxiety/hockey) high marks for its message, themes, and overall creative depiction of what’s going on in our brains. I bet they’re right! I’m sure that there are also smart psychologists with critiques. I bet they have a point too! I am not a psychologist. I am a dad in Milwaukee who spent yesterday afternoon googling “how to use fewer hand gestures when I talk,” so I will take their word for it.

Also, although I do believe that the major themes of Inside Out (once again, a cartoon movie about funny characters having adventures inside a fictional child’s brain) reflect some interesting broader cultural trends, I’m not arguing that Inside Out itself was the cause of a society-wise vibe shift. I mean, does anything cause anything these days? I became a writer to change the world and do you know what I change, on a daily basis? The volume of emails in your inbox.

Part two: A recap of the plot of Inside Out (maybe skip this part if you don’t want spoilers for an animated film that came out ten years ago):

Ok, so there’s this emotion. Her name is Joy. She is in charge of a special console inside the brain of a girl named Riley. She is assisted in this task by a number of other emotions— Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust. Yes, we human beings have other emotions than those ones, but that’s for the second movie, damnit. We are discussing the first movie, the one where Riley has a brain lever that her emotions push to make her feel different things at different moments. There are also memory marbles, some of which (“core memories”) are particularly important, as well as various islands that represent Riley’s values. Are the core memories the same as the islands? I’m not sure! Ask a neurologist! Again, I can’t even figure out how to stop flapping my hands like a muppet whenever I talk (one Reddit thread I read suggested superglue, I hope facetiously).

Anyway, it’s important to know that Joy is very protective of Riley (dating back to Riley being a very cute baby, a scene that will always make me cry, on account of this film being released in 2015 and my oldest being born in 2013 and wait, why do I even feel like this needs an explanation? You get it). Also important: Joy’s belief, at the film’s outset, that life for Riley would be better if she were happy all the time, rather than experiencing a healthy balance of all emotions.

Throughout the course of the film, Riley has to navigate a lot of change, on account of her parents doing the cruelest thing that one can possibly do to a child (namely, moving her from the Midwest to the Bay Area– A JOKE, COASTAL FRIENDS! I’M MAKING A JOKE! ALTHOUGH DID YOU KNOW THAT IN THE UPPER MIDWEST WE HAVE LOVELY PARKS AND BEER GARDENS AND CITIES WHERE YOU CAN STILL AFFORD TO BUY A HOUSE?). And while that’s happening, there’s also a whole lot of business with the cartoon emotions, and both Joy and Sadness end up lost in the brain, and the other personified feelings make a mess of things and before you know it RILEY RUNS AWAY FROM HOME ON A BUS and by this point, as a parent, I am wondering why nobody told me that this is actually a horror movie.

Fortunately, everything turns out ok in the end, but not before Richard Kind voices an imaginary friend named Bing Bong and there is a whole situation with a canyon and wait, are you wondering if I cried at that part too? Of course I did. I am not a monster. But by the time the credits roll, Joy has learned a powerful lesson about letting Riley feel all her feelings and our girl is back home playing hockey and cultivating a healthy relationship with her mother and father, the latter of whom has a very impressive mustache.

And yes, since this is a newsletter that discusses gender issues, I am required by law to be the fifteen millionth person to point out that it is interesting and telling that Riley’s primary emotion is joy but we also get to see other characters’ brain levers and her mom’s driver’s-seat emotion is sadness and her dad’s is anger and, well, there you go. Hey, what have Trump and Musk been up to lately?

Riley’s dad, what’s your take on male loneliness? I’ll take my answer offline.

Part three: A brief interlude, so that we can admire the absolutely life-changing promotional posters for other movies named “Inside Out.”