Everyone loves Disney-Pixar's smash hit, "Inside Out." Small animated emotions living inside our heads, how cool is that? It benefits children, adults and everyone in between to watch this film. It offers so much more than an escape from boredom for an hour and 40 minutes. "Inside Out" has a much deeper meaning, and yes, it is even deeper than its most apparent lesson of the importance of opening up.
Riley, the main character, is an 11-year-old girl who grew up in a loving and warming environment in Minnesota with her parents and hockey team. However, when her dad lands a new job in San Francisco, this causes Riley to uplift her roots and move there. Leaving all of her friends, hockey team and hometown behind is hard enough for a preteen, but with her parents stressed out with the move, new home and new jobs, Riley feels alone and abandoned. The five emotions that dictate her head -- Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust and Fear -- all go into this spiral along with her. Then in the midst of all of this, Joy and Sadness disappear from the Control Center and are now lost somewhere inside Riley's head and have no way of making her feel joy or sadness.
"Inside Out" is clearly a movie about depression and how quickly it can develop. This movie clearly exemplifies the quick progression of depression, how depression does not discriminate and how crucial it is that society starts becoming OK with talking about mental health. In society today, any type of emotion is seen as ridiculous, and a lot of people are found wishing they did not feel anything at all. Disney-Pixar shows how dangerous it can be to feel nothing and how scary it is to feel nothing. This movie is an outcry to society, basically screaming for us to give into our feelings and to stop fighting them. Riley does not talk to her parents or open up about what is going on inside her head because she cannot. She has basically shut down and cannot feel joy or sadness. To show this, the characters Joy and Sadness disappear from "Mission Control," which controls all of Riley's head, leaving her to only feel Anger, Disgust and Fear. Without the ability to feel sad, she cannot open up about her true feelings which causes her to slip into a further depression and to then start feeling almost nothing.
This movie is a wake up call for society about the importance of talking about mental health and explaining it to the younger generations as well. It shows the younger audiences that it is OK to talk about feelings, even if they are not always happy. This movie is an effective way of explaining mental health to younger generations who can not quite understand it in adult terms just yet. It also shows kids that it is OK to feel the way they do and that there is not anything wrong with feeling sad, angry or anything else.
This movie also shows the importance of feeling sadness. Now I know, no one likes feeling sad, but, it is important because there are things that happen in everyday life that we need to feel sad about. Sadness helps Riley cope with the move and the readjustment, just as sadness helps everyone readjust to new situations that are mostly unwanted.
Let this movie become the bridge between society and mental health, making it OK to talk about mental health and illnesses. With mental illnesses becoming more and more apparent in society, it is crucial that we start acknowledging it and talking about it.
