Film Analysis 2 'Inside Out' Emotions, stress, and well-being are a major part of our lives. It can be comforting or even humorous to watch films that are based on how human emotions work inside our heads, and how particular films portray these human traits. This essay is an analysis of the film 'Inside Out', a Pixar film that portrays human emotions as small characters inside our heads. Emotions like joy, sadness, anger and a few more, navigate a stressful time for the main character, a young girl. This analysis will present concepts like human emotions, and wellbeing practices and how they are portrayed in the film. Using psychological research to determine if the way in which these concepts are portrayed are accurate or inaccurate. The films main concept is emotions. Emotions are portrayed in the film as characters that hold specific human emotions as their personalities. For example, 'Joy' is a character that feels solely positive emotion, Joy is motivated and fun and has a yellow glow to her, 'Sadness' is another character, 'Sadness' solely feels negative emotions, she presents as tired, unmotivated and is glowing blue and so on for the other emotions like anger who is fiery red or disgust who is bright green. The emotions play a big role in creating Riley's short-term memories and core memories. The core memories are building blocks of Riley's personality, which are portrayed by 'Islands of Personality' that extend from the mind, 'Hockey Island', 'Family Island'. The memories are portrayed as small glowing balls, and glow with the emotions colour that fuelled that memory. The emotions respond to the daily life of the young girl 'Riley', who experiences a series of stressful events after moving states. The emotions take over control of the mind when Riley is faced with events that require that emotion. A particular theme for the emotions is that Joy is mostly in charge during this time, Joy has a hard time allowing Riley to feel negative emotions like sadness or anger. She seems to feel that it is wrong and tries to avoid Riley feeling negative emotions at all. Which ultimately

PSYC1108 Film Analysis papers for review 7 leads to Riley's metal health suffering and chaos within the mind. This is somewhat of an accurate portrayal of human emotions. Feeling negative emotions like sadness can be seen as something to be ashamed of and a symptom of depression (Lomas., 2018, pp.19-20). There is a cultural intolerance for sadness as it is so deeply associated with depression, which is what was portrayed during the film. Many psychological researchers want to separate the psychiatric disorder depression from feeling normal sadness (Lomas., 2018, p.19). Joy continues to avoid the negative emotions by using Hedonic wellbeing practices. Joy uses short-term fixes like humour, food and seeing the best of the stressful situation like materialistic items to keep Riley from feeling unhappy. This helps to ease Riley's concerns over the stressful event of moving but only for a short time. As time goes on Riley becomes more and more unhappy with the move. This is an accurate display of what researchers describe as Hedonic wellbeing. The Hedonic approach to wellbeing consists of happiness from experiences of pleasure, maximising moments of pleasure and minimizing displeasure or pain. Judging these moments as the good and bad in life (Ryan & Deci., 2001, pp.143-44; Henderson & Knight., 2012, pp.197-198). The Hedonic view on wellbeing has a strong focus on happiness stemming from positive experiences and does not include negative experiences or emotions (Ryan & Deci., 2001, pp.150-52). Another important factor of Riley's wellbeing to note, Joy is supressing the negative emotions, the outcomes that follow can be seen as accurate. Studies have shown individuals that supress negative emotions feel more frequent and worse negative emotions leading to poorer wellbeing (Gross & John., 2003 pp.348-62). The stress of the move brings Sadness into the forefront of Riley's mind. This begins to affect some of Riley's Islands of Personality. Riley begins to clash with her parents, cries at her new school and gives up on hockey. Although Joy continues to fight against Riley feeling these negative emotions through a series of adventures deep within the mind, this is the beginning of an important message that Sadness represents. The concept that all emotions lead

PSYC1108 Film Analysis papers for review 8 to a healthy well-being. The way this concept is portrayed in the film is once Sadness can express herself freely within Riley's mind, Riley can finally reach out her to parents, letting them know how she is truly feeling about the move. This moment of vulnerability allows the family to reconnect, and the embrace of the family insinuates growth. In this moment Sadness asks Joy to be a part of the moment, creating a new core memory that is infused with both sadness and Joy (blue and yellow colours). This concept in the film is accurate from what psychological researchers have learnt the benefits of mixed emotions and a mixed view of Hedonic and Eudaimonic wellbeing practices. Eudaimonic wellbeing focuses on living one's life to full potential, to live authentically and have meaning behind one's experiences (Henderson & Knight., 2012, pp.197-98). Another factor to the Eudaimonic position, is the view on emotions, to fully experience greater wellbeing is to understand and accept negative emotions like sadness, rather than supressing or avoiding those emotions (Ryan & Deci., 2001, pp.150-51). Eudaimonic wellbeing and Hedonic wellbeing often oppose each other's definitions and views in the pursuit of well-being (Henderson & Knight., 2012, pp. 197-199). Studies suggest that having mixed emotions can aid in problem solving during stressful events and be beneficial to wellbeing (Berrios et al., 2017, pp.856-88). Researchers have found a combination of both Eudaimonic, and Hedonic wellbeing practises are highly beneficial for wellbeing (Henderson & Knight., 2012, pp. 215- 217). The film 'Inside Out' portrays a relatively accurate representation of human emotions, well-being and how we respond to stress. The strong message received from the film is that positive and negative emotions are a large part of our wellbeing. Supressing negative emotions can lead to poorer mental health and further negative emotions and experiences. Using hedonic and eudaimonic well-being practises together and allowing mixed emotions to be experienced can greatly benefit our well-being. Although the film is directed at a younger audience with the

PSYC1108 Film Analysis papers for review 9 familiar Pixar themes, it does well to present concepts like well-being and emotions to a greater audience. Psychological research supports the concepts presented in the essay that are portrayed in the film.

PSYC1108 Film Analysis papers for review 10 References Berrios, Totterdell, P., & Kellett, S. (2017). When Feeling Mixed Can Be Meaningful: The Relation Between Mixed Emotions and Eudaimonic Well-Being. Journal of Happiness Studies, 19(3), 841-861. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-017-9849-y Gross, & John, O. P. (2003). Individual Differences in Two Emotion Regulation Processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(2), 348-362. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.2.348 Henderson, & Knight, T. (2012). Integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives to more comprehensively understand wellbeing and pathways to wellbeing. International Journal of Wellbeing, 2(3), 196-221. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v2.i3.3 Lomas. (2018). The quiet virtues of sadness: A selective theoretical and interpretative appreciation of its potential contribution to wellbeing. New Ideas in Psychology, 49, 18-26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2018.01.002 Ryan, & Deci, E. L. (2001). On happiness and human potentials: A review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Annual Review of Psychology, 52(1), 141-166.

Film Analysis 2

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