‘Inside Out’ is a remarkable film that animates a model of
the human mind in a very entertaining fashion.
The main human character is an 11-year-old girl named Riley,
but the majority of the action in the film takes place in her mind. The
conscious mind is portrayed as a control room staffed by five emotions: Joy,
Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust. The emotions interpret and react to events
in Riley’s life, and the emotional response puts a stamp on experiences as they
are saved to long-term memory. (The filmmaker acknowledges that he had to
simplify the emotional composition of the human mind to keep the film from
being overwhelmed with characters. I think he did a good job at picking the most
important ones.)
In the beginning of the film, Joy rules the control room.
The other emotions have their place, but most of Riley’s memories have Joy’s
emotional imprint.
A catastrophe knocks Joy and Sadness out of the control room
and they are forced to find their way back. They traverse the vast maze of Long-Term
Memory; the cavernous, scary Unconscious; the funny Dream Factory and
Imagination Playhouse; and the abyss of the Memory Dump.
If you haven’t seen the film, I’d encourage you to stop now
and read this after you’ve seen it.
What the film illustrates beautifully is that all of our
emotions have their place. We may dream of a life with no sadness, no anger, no
fear. Many of our spiritual pursuits are about getting to a place where there
is no suffering; where only joy—bliss—remains. But I have found myself increasingly
wondering: is that pursuit compatible with the nature of existence? Is the
pursuit of ‘no suffering’ in fact anti-life?
