Inside Out.... While it's a rare movie I can't wait to see, from the moment I saw the preview for Inside Out, I couldn't wait for its release. I was not disappointed; I laughed and cried and laughed and cried. My therapist heart sang.... Finally! As a society, we can talk about feelings! And in a fairly intelligent way! Our personality being made of distinct islands (tendencys) formed and colored by core memories? I'm on board with that. That memories are changed by the current context? Neurobiology says yes. While we sleep, our brain is discarding unused information to become more effecient? Excellent personification of a process we don't completely understand yet.
So what happens in this movie? I've seen an occassional review that complains 'nothing.' I suppose at its most basic level, the plot line is that a girl moves to San Francisco when her dad gets a job transfer. But rather than the plot, I see that as the setting in which the real story unfolds.
The real plot asks us 'what makes us human? What are our feelings? How do we develop emotionally? What is the meaning of family? Of struggle? Of change? What is the difference between saddness and depression? What are the protective factors and risk factors for an emotion shifting into something beyond our coping skills?'
I suppose if you are looking for Hollywood's epic adventures with sex, violence, and explosions, this may not be the movie for you. And if you are expecting the movie industry to have resolved its gender, racial, and class biases all in one movie, it's not quite there.
However, Inside Out gives us all a way to conceptualize our sense of self in a way that is more complex than our standard conversations about self. "What do you do for work? What do you do for fun? Weather, politics, sports talk, blah, blah, blah..." These fall back topics are not who we are. This movie tackles how our memories affect both our current feeling, our mood, and our overarching sense of self. This movie gives us a picture of how our that process is recripocal; whichever feeling is at the control panel can influence our perception of that memory. And this movie challenges the platitude 'don't be sad. You have so much to be happy about.' This movie shows us that our saddness (and the complexity of our emotional experience) is what lets us experience empathy, lets us sit alongside those who are struggling and to wittness their pain, and through that experience, gives them the ability to manage their emotions and continue moving forward.
And the movie captures all of this and more in scene after relatable scene. This movie connects us to our process of maturing, moving away from pure simplistic emotions, and to our understanding that most situations present mixed emotions, and that we have power over which parts of those experiences we focus on. This movie tackles expectations, and how they can get us into trouble. This movie tackles resiliance, and how in our early years, our family helps us form our resilience. And this movie tackles how it is the challenges in life that help us to grow into more fully developed individuals. This movie even lets parents off the hook to a healthy degree. The good foundation built by loving parents leaves a lot of room for missteps and mistakes, and those mistakes leave space to deepen the parent child bond.
Do I understand the critics frusturated with the lack of social progress displayed in our media? Sure. But to have a movie that gives us a language to talk about our feelings, memories, depression, family, core experiences, subconscious, dreams, empathy, and the formation of self being dependent on both our experiences and our perception and interpretation of those experiences for me overshadows the pieces Pixar missed the mark on. I hope that in the discussions I have, those other cultural elements will figure in and help me to better understand other people's experiences. But that will only add to the wonder that is Inside Out.
This blog will now return to your previously identified topic of motorcycles. Please forgive this interruption.
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