A few days ago, I started replaying one of my favorite video games, Omori. The game is an emotional roller coaster ( ha ha) and when I first played it, I had to take a step back every so often to recollect myself. It’s a masterpiece of a game and I feel that it connects a bit to this unit because in this game, emotions are an important gameplay mechanic when it comes to battles. Your emotional changes in battle will increase or decrease your stats and change the tides of battle. It’s really unique and fun !
The reason I bring this up is because upon starting the game, I thought to myself “I’ve already played this game ! This can’t possibly hurt me.” And yet I started to weep the moment i saw my favorite character. Which is exactly what happened to me when I watched Inside Out. I forgot that this movie about emotions could make me so emotional. While I have so much I can say about this movie, I want to focus on the portrayal of the “emotions” in other characters head. While Riley seems to experience joy, sadness, fear, disgust, and anger in a way that may be seen as “standard,” the same can’t be said about many of the other characters. An example would be the bus driver at the end of the movie, whos emotions all geared a physical resemblance to “anger” and seemed to experience the same thoughts and reactions to outside stimuli. This would suggest that he may come off as a bit aggressive, despite experiencing the same spread of emotions that Riley does.
Another thing I noticed was how Joy seemed to be the strongest emotion in Riley’s head, the leader the others looked to. However her mother’s emotions seemed to look to Sadness for guidance. Additionally, her Sadness seemed to be more composed and calm, which suggests that she experiences sadness in a less outward way. This may be a sign of maturity.
I thought a lot about the past two units while watching Inside Out as well. As I began to cry for Bing Bong, I thought about what exactly was making me cry. The theory that crying is the reason you’re sad or vice versa wasn’t something I thought about until I was actively crying and feeling sad and I could not remember what came first. I’m a really sensitive person, so I tend to cry a lot. But I also cry tears of joy ! If an emotional response such as crying triggers sadness, then what do tears of joy mean ? Additionally, at the end of the movie I began to cry alongside Riley. Maybe I was just super tired, but I remembered our unit on empathy at this point in the movie. I was sad, sure, but I think I was sad with Riley rather than for her. I was experiencing her emotions parallel to her which is something that the characters in the film seem to do as well !
The Star Trek episode reminded me of the part in Inside Out where Riley’s control panel goes dark and becomes unusable. She becomes unable to experience her emotions, much like Deanna seems to when she loses her empathy. What strikes me as interesting is that empathy is being used as almost a catch all for “understanding feelings” where its more about the feelings of others.
One thought on “tries not to cry. cries a lot.”
Hi Ari,
You make a great point about how familiarity with a story or a piece of media does not necessarily mean that our emotional experience of it is lessened. There are plenty of films that I’ve watched multiple times (including Inside Out), books that I’ve read many time, and tv shows that I’ve rewatched, that I cry during. There’s an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I’ve probably seen 15 times and I still can’t get through the cold open without sobbing.
Robyn Warhol, who is a literary critic, has an interesting theory about this. She argues that the bodies of people who like certain types of media (tear jerkers, romance, horror, soap operas) are inscribed with patterns of affect. What that means, is that we have the same embodied experience while engaging with this media, and that it leaves a mark on body. She argues that this engagement is a rehearsal of emotions that makes us more, not less, likely to experience them. We practice them, and so its easier for us to construct them. That could also relate to your observation about the bus driver. It is possible that he rehearses anger more often that other emotions, so he is better at constructing it.
Great observation about crying tears of joy. I’m also a crier, and I’ll cry when I’m experiencing anger as well. That’s why Barrett says that there is no single fingerprint for emotion. Just because I am crying, it does not necessarily mean that I understand myself as sad.
Jessica Hautsch