Pixar loves attributing feelings to everything, from toys and elements to emotions themselves. If they can give it a face, they can give it some tear ducts, too. It makes perfect sense! Which is why I absolutely love Inside Out. Not only is it brilliantly meta for being just a kids’ movie, but because of how well it also represents the inner workings of our brains in a way that is easily understandable. I mean, feelings, having feelings? As if we didn’t have enough of those already. However, I’d say it’s a rather simplified version of what actually goes on inside the human mind. That being said, what would a realistic version of Inside Out look like in the mind of a harried college student, constantly buffeted by the quirks of college life, such as myself?Â
In the movie, we see that Joy is the dominant emotion in Riley’s head, the leader in charge of everything that goes on in the Headquarters. But the college version of that? It’s a free-for-all. No emotion holds the reins in my head. Each of them randomly decides when they’d like to take over the console and do whatever they like with it. And spoiler alert: it’s rarely Joy.
In my head, it seems like Sadness and Anger love fighting over the console. Anytime anything awfully bothersome happens in my life, Anger’s immediate instinct is to slam every possible swear-word button that exists, dialling up their volume to the max. Fortunately, Joy is always on standby and manages to wrench Anger away from the console, which is why the swear words usually remain in my head. Meanwhile, Sadness hopelessly slumps over the console, pressing whatever button within her reach. None of those buttons end up doing anything useful anyway—they just end up producing a bunch of blue memory orbs of me looking at my Canvas dashboard in dismay, or of me staring into nothingness after writing one line of my assignment after working on it for an hour. Despite her role, she’s often too tired to even press the crying button on the console. So as a result, I just do the same thing she does: slump onto my bed and question every decision I’ve ever made.
As for Anger, he has unfortunately developed a trauma response to Canvas notifications. The poor, overworked guy has seen one too many notifications of “New Assignment”, “Group Project”, and the most blasphemous of them all, “Class Postponed to Saturday”. Now he’s so used to it that he just sits in silent protest with his face hidden behind a newspaper, often with headlines such as “Scandal: Professor Steals Yet Another Weekend”.Â
Apart from the Sadness-Anger Saga, the other emotions also make for interesting side characters. In Inside Out 2, we see Anxiety take control of Headquarters. With her coffee ready and her hands steady, she’s completely locked in, pushing Riley to wake up early in the morning and practice hockey. On the other hand, my Anxiety is nowhere near that productive. Contrary to her job description of actually getting me to do something, she instead runs several laps around Headquarters. Whenever she sees another deadline pile up onto the Train of Thought, Anxiety spirals even more. The other silent and deadly force that fuels Anxiety’s spirals is none other than Ennui. Unbeknownst to anyone, she remotely controls the console whenever I try getting any work done. Consequently, Anxiety starts screaming at the top of her lungs, “WE NEED TO LOCK IN!!”
Speaking of the Train of Thought, it is often so bogged down by general information overload that it simply stops in its tracks halfway to the Headquarters, never running when it’s supposed to. Instead, it suddenly decides to run at the end of an overwhelming day and starts dumping the most random thoughts into Headquarters right when I go to bed, trying to forget the day.Â
Amidst that chaos, Fear sits in a corner in a constant state of existential dread. Rarely does he speak, so it’s hard to determine what exactly causes his dread. Disgust stands close to him with her arms crossed and a perpetual scowl on her face. Unfortunately, she’s been banned from the console after incidents of hogging it whenever I would enter the dining hall.
And lastly, Joy? She, like Anger, has given up. Even though she often maintains peace within the Headquarters, she also secretly wishes she could disappear into a forest and forget that the world exists. However, every now and then, she lights up whenever I see a golden sunset or feel the pleasant wind on my skin. “Ahhh… sunlight.”
Ultimately, these are the layers of emotional complexity that a children’s movie perhaps wouldn’t be able to capture. I could probably write a lot more about the exact behaviors of each emotion in great detail.Â
However, I shall not write more, in solidarity with my malfunctioning Train of Thought.