Like many other Disney Pixar fans, I went to see the movie Inside Out a couple weeks
ago and LOVED it, but I find myself asking one questions: is Inside Out an allegory for
mental illness?
*beep* First off I'd like to applaud Disney's recent trend of dealing with psychological
issues.
Two years ago Walt Disney Animation released the film Frozen and Elsa's character can be
said to be an allegory for anxiety and depression, and last year they released the film Big Hero
6 that dealt with issues of grief, loss, and trauma.
For those of you haven't seen the film, Inside Out takes place inside the mind of an 11 year
old girl named Riley and, as the title suggests, deals with her inner emotions.
Riley has five main emotions but the major emphasis is on the dynamic between Joy and
Sadness.
As we see in the movie, every person seems to have a dominant emotion and Riley's dominant
emotion is Joy.
In what I think is an amazing casting decision, Joy is played by the upbeat and bubbly Amy
Poehler.
I mean, she plays Leslie Knope so it's perfect.
First off, before I get into it I want to differentiate between sadness and depression.
Sadness is obviously an emotion that everybody feels and, as we learn from the movie, is
an emotion that is actually pretty helpful and healthy to experience.
Depression on the other hand is a mood disorder causing a persistent feeling of sadness or
loss of interest and can negatively affect your everyday life.
As a depressed person I know this, and I know sad and depressed are sometimes used interchangeably
but depression can actually be a very serious and life altering disorder.
If you wanna find out more, I've made a couple videos on the topic but for the sake of this
video I think you get the general idea.
When I was watching Inside Out I was struck by the way the film addressed Joy and Sadness
through two different lenses.
On one level, Joy and Sadness can represent the internal conflict that many depressed
people feel.
I for one can definitely relate to the struggle between Joy and Sadness.
For me, Sadness represented many common symptoms of depression such as persistent sadness,
anxiousness, and emptiness, feelings of hopelessness or pessimism, feeling guilty, hopeless, or
worthless, fatigue and lack of energy and decreased interest in activities that one
typically enjoys.
In the movie, Sadness felt like she had no value and would only mess things up if she
interfered.
She felt constantly down and when things went wrong she felt like things would stay that
way forever.
She also tended to magnify problems and view obstacles as insurmountable, which is something
that many people suffering from depression can probably relate to.
I also related to Joy's irritation and inability to deal with Sadness.
Joy represented the part of my brain that's optimistic and wants to make things better.
For me, the power struggles between the characters Joy and Sadness paralleled the power struggles
between my brain and depression.
Joy often wishes that she could rid herself of sadness and she even makes a joke that
she looked into it but there was no other place for her to go.
At one point Joy literally has to drag Sadness across the ground to get her to move and like
many mentally ill people, felt bogged down by the literal weight of depression.
The other lens that the character can be viewed through is Sadness representing a depressed
person through the point of view of a mentally healthy person.
Joy is basically the well-meaning friend who tries to fix Sadness' depression without really
understanding what she needs or how to go about supporting her.
Many friends and family members of mentally ill people can get frustrated with them because
they think they should just be able to snap out of it.
But as Joy learns in the movie, depression isn't something you can simply fix.
In contrast, Sadness often feels like a burden to Joy and the other emotions because she
feels like she's constantly annoying them and letting them down.
I think what's so great about the movie is that in the end Joy doesn't try to fix sadness.
She realizes that despite her flaws Sadness is an important person and has value, which
I think is something that a lot of depressed people need to hear and something that needs
to be reinforced by society.
In the end Sadness' character is reframed in a way so that she's no longer a burden
or negatively affecting Riley and the other characters but as a central part of the team.
And when Sadness and the other characters finally realize this, Riley is finally able
to feel sad and get the support from her family that she needs.
And it reinforces the valuable lesson that sometimes it's okay not to be okay.
Anyway, thank you for watching this video.
I'm curious what you guys thought of Inside Out.Did you like it?
What were your thoughts when you were watching it.
Leave a comment with your opinion below.
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