Disney has been changing the message in its cartoons quite a bit. Once again, the romantic love story took a back seat, and the theme of the importance of emotions came to the forefront. With Frozen, the issue of aggression became quite evident. This time, in Inside Out, they were very explicit. The story begins with the birth of a girl and shows what happens inside her "control center," in other words, her head. Gradually, her emotions emerge: joy, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear. From then on, the audience gets to see what her thoughts and feelings are like in every situation.
The first brilliant aspect is that, in this sense, the cartoon resembles reading a book. Books are generally richer than movies because they contain the characters' thoughts, whereas in movies, we have to infer feelings through body language.
Digging a little deeper into the movie's story, we arrive at what I consider to be the masterstroke. Riley was born and raised in Minnesota, and at the age of 11, she moves to San Francisco because of her father's job. This move greatly affects her, and it becomes challenging to cope with all the feelings that arise from it. Her parents are also trying to deal with all the adversities, and the family dynamics change.
Meanwhile, the movie shows the importance of experiences from birth and how memories shape one's personality and influence behavior. It's only possible to deal with difficult situations when there is a reserve of good experiences to draw from. It's as if we need to have comforting islands to turn to in order to navigate darker and scarier paths. Somehow, everything we experience is stored somewhere. Some experiences are stored more strongly than others, but they all remain there.
Inside Riley's head, Joy spends most of her time trying to keep Sadness from gaining a foothold. Her effort is so great that, inadvertently, both are ejected from the "control center" and thrown into the world of memories. At that moment, Riley becomes apathetic. Without these emotions, everything starts to lose meaning. In their struggle to return to the control center, Joy and Sadness go through various situations and realize that the islands built since childhood are being destroyed one by one: friendship, honesty, fun, and hockey. In the end, only the family island remains, and it also starts to crumble. Joy tries to return at any cost, even if it means leaving Sadness behind. That's when the film's main message appears: we cannot live well without sadness. Without her, Riley starts putting herself in dangerous situations because she doesn't think about her actions. She decides to run away from home to escape everything she's feeling. She becomes unresponsive to her parents' affection and efforts. It's as if she becomes unable to connect with others' affection and with her own. When Sadness finally manages to return to the control center and be felt, Riley comes to her senses and shows her parents how difficult it has been to deal with the changes.
If we ask parents what they most wish for their children, the vast majority will say they want them to be happy. This has been shaping the upbringing of this new generation: parents trying to provide moments of joy and happiness 100% of the time, avoiding sadness as much as possible. There is a general effort in society to banish sadness. In fact, sadness hardly exists anymore because any sign of it is quickly turned into a pathology and called depression. Sadness is fundamental. I don't mean to say that it needs to be deliberately induced, but it should not be avoided at all costs. It promotes maturity and keeps us sensitive. The more hardened human beings become, the more complicated it is to live together. Let us wish for our children to become good, sincere, honest, and strong individuals to deal with the difficult situations they will encounter in life because happiness will be a consequence, not a goal.