Learning Experience 2: “Inside Out” the movie – The Joyful Sadness

Learning Experience 2: “Inside Out” the movie – The Joyful Sadness

On Saturday night 10/25, TCU students get the chance to watch “Inside Out” – a Disney Pixar movie that has great ratings. If you have watched and enjoyed it, I’m glad. But if you haven’t watched it, I recommend you do. Disney has always been excellent at coming up with original ideas that nobody has ever thought of; “Inside Out” is an example of originality. It’s hard to imagine that someday, someone will make a movie about Emotions, yet Disney managed to come up with that idea and successfully created a good one. Furthermore, the meaningful messages that “Inside Out” brings to the audience (especially the young adults) makes it unforgettable.

 The movie is about the process of Emotions of an eleven-year-old, sporty, fun-loving, Minnesota girl named Riley. There are five main emotions that control her mind: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust. Her life had always been full of joy until the day her family moved to San Francisco. Her life took a turn when she had to adapt to a new environment and her emotions has never been so unstable until then. Things got worse when Joy and Sadness was accidentally sucked out of the Headquarter, left Anger, Disgust, and Fear in charge of the Emotion Headquarter. From that moment, “Inside Out” took us on a roller coaster ride of emotions. It had the students in the room laugh so hard that they wept many times, and it also had us teared up for some times because of the meaningful messages that it brought. My overall impression was that “Inside Out” is a light- hearted, hilarious, yet meaningful movie.

The first meaningful message is a common-sense one. Without Joy in the Emotion Headquarter, everything can turn upside-down in a bad way. It scares me to just imagine that one day I am left with nothing but Fear, Disgust, Anger, and Sadness. If there is nothing that can make me smile or laugh at; who would I be then? Of course, the human beings are much more complex than just those five core emotions. However, Joy plays such an important role in our brain structure that our lives would be a struggle without it. The movie reminds me to appreciate those good times when I have reasons to smile and a motivation to wake up everyday.

The second intriguing message that I rarely thought of until this movie is the importance of Sadness. At the beginning, Sadness was such a bummer character that I even wished that she disappeared from the movie. During the movie, I was frustrated when Sadness kept messing up with Riley’s emotion balls, turning them into sad memories; Sadness was also the reason why Joy was sucked out of the Headquarter, leading to Riley’s severe emotion corruption later on. I adored the happy, goofy Riley to an extent that I wished for Sadness’s disappearance, and I knew some other students in the TCU Theater wished the same thing through their frustration. However, as Joy and Sadness embarked on their journey back to Headquarter, I gradually realized the role of Sadness in this movie. If it wasn’t for sadness, a person would not understand the value of happiness. Sadness is a vital part of life. What is the point of being happy all the time? Would life then be….less meaningful? When Riley is sad, her parents give her support and show their cares. When Riley burst into tears after deciding to return home instead of going back to Minnesota, her tears of sadness and guilty feeling were the glue that fix the breaking bond in her family. Moreover, her sadness acted as an outlet channel that soothed her pain and warm her heart. At the very precious moment, her sadness and guilt allowed her to express her deep-down feelings and help her parents understand her agonizing struggle better. Had it not been for sadness, Riley wouldn’t have had returned home, fall into her parents’ arms, and reconnected with her family.

By the end of the day, Riley’s core memories experienced great change. Before the incident, all of her core memories were pure joy (all yellow). However, after her life-changing event, her core memories were replaced by emotional ball of mixed colors: they are yellow (joy) mixed with blue (sadness), yellow (joy) mixed with purple (fear), etc. Riley has grown up fast and developed a more complex perception and feelings. As we grow up, we may realize that happiness is not meant to stand alone. We develop a more sophisticated mentalities that allows us to find the joy even in the darkest time. After all, the seemingly negative emotions is necessary for us to have a healthy mentality and a more complete life.