Inside Out Emotions Theory
I just spent some time at Disneyland, and after riding the Emotional Whirlwind I started thinking about Inside Out and its upcoming sequel.
For anyone who doesn’t know, Inside Out 2 will involve Riley suddenly gaining new emotions now that she’s a teenager: Anxiety, Embarrassment, Envy, and Ennui.
Now, I know I’m not the first one to point this out, but these new emotions don’t exactly sound like they’d be fully distinct from the main 5, do they?
Let’s start by looking at the dictionary definitions of these new emotions:
There's some overlap, isn't there?
The way I see it:
Envy involves Anger and Disgust
Fear is inextricably baked into Embarrassment
Anxiety has shades of Fear, Sadness, and (from my personal experience) a little bit of Disgust in a self-deprecating way
Ennui may involve Sadness as well as Disgust at life, but it’s a bit different than the other three (I’ll get to that later)
Anyway, I think I may have mentally stumbled upon what could potentially be the big reveal of Inside Out 2 – the five main emotions directly, albeit unknowingly, influence the actions of the four new ones.
We can even see this demonstrated in the teaser! All five of them are freaked out, so naturally Anxiety is running at peak performance. At a different time, she might not be as anxiety-ridden as she is here.
Therefore, these new emotions have all previously existed on some level, they’re just physically manifesting for the first time.
Embarrassment is the most prominent one — that’s experienced by people of all ages and Riley is no exception. It’s explicitly shown when she interacts with her parents…
Additionally, the emotions react to her introducing herself in school as if it’s an embarrassing moment, and Fear’s tiny outburst beforehand really seems like an anxiety attack.
Riley definitely shows envy when Meg tells her she’s been replaced on the hockey team back in Minnesota, with the exact combo I mentioned earlier (Anger & Disgust) contributing to that reaction.
And as for ennui, that honestly just became her default state when Joy, Sadness, the core memories were gone.
Really, the multicolored memories were just the first step toward these multifaceted emotions manifesting. And who’s to say these four will be the only ones? Joy and Sadness could theoretically combine into Ambivalence, or Anger and Fear into Stress, etc.
And for a movie that already raises in-universe questions on whether or not free will fully exists, it would add a whole new layer of existential dread if some of the emotions themselves aren't fully in control of themselves either.
(Is now a good time to mention how the emotions themselves experience emotions too? Joy’s utter despair in the Memory Dump is the most blatant example but there are some other, more subtle ones, like Fear displaying disgust while on Dream Duty.
But honestly, digging into the emotions’ emotions is opening up a can of worms I’m not ready for right now, so I’ll just end that "train of thought" here.)
Of course, I could be completely wrong about all of this, and after June 14 this post will look like Charlie Kelly came up with it.
But regardless of whether I’m right or not, one thing I can guarantee is that this influx of negative(ish) emotions will single Joy out from the rest even more…
At least until Riley gets a few years older and Joy finds herself influencing a new emotion…
(Please share this post and comment on it. I really wanna know what everyone thinks!)
Continued Here
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