This week, we delved into the processing of emotion, watching Disney’s Inside Out and “Man of the People” from Star Trek: The Next Generation. I laughed, cried, and experienced almost every emotion possible along with these characters.
I watched Inside Out first; a movie I’ve seen a few times before, though this is the first time I’m truly appreciating it. It’s so sweet and such a relatable story. We follow the personified emotions of young Riley as she moves across the country, both her and her emotions struggling with the process. While Joy and Sadness have to trek across Riley’s inner mind, wreaking havoc as they do, Riley suffers the consequences and acts out against the people in her life.
Though I believe the writer’s intentions were to depict the changes we experience when growing up, I think this could also be a really brilliant way to depict mental illness. Riley’s emotions act for her, flipping switches to make decisions, which becomes a huge issue when only Anger, Disgust, and Fear are in control. This is akin to mental illness; I imagine depression would be as if Sadness was in control of your actions most of the time, while anger issues would be like if Anger was always in control. As someone with ADHD, I think my emotions are constantly pushing each other out of the way to take the wheel – they’re probably bouncing off the walls in there! I also think that the scene towards the end when Riley makes her first core memory out of two emotions – both Joy and Sadness – is a great depiction of growing up. As a child, your worldview is much more black-and-white, so it makes sense that Riley’s memories would be centered in one emotion. As she discovers the difficulties and nuances of life, she gains more memories that are a just as nuanced.
While nearly all the topics of this week’s lecture could be tied into Inside Out, I found myself connecting the Theory of Emotional Construction to it the most. This states that emotions are not something that happen to you, but are something that you construct from your experience. All of Riley’s memories are experiences tied directly to emotions and they are created simultaneously. One cannot exist without the other; emotion shapes Riley’s experience, while experience also shapes her emotions. I think the way Inside Out depicts Riley’s memories is a really simple and efficient way to communicate this theory.
I then watched “Man of the People” from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and man, have I been absolutely loving the Star Trek episodes we’ve had to watch! I’d never seen the Star Trek T.V. shows before this class, but now I’m going to add it to the weekly rotation of shows I play in the background while I’m doing work or cleaning (along with She-ra and the Princesses of Power, Ghibli movies, and basically every other cartoon available).
This time on the Enterprise, they are carrying Alkar, an ambassador, to mediate peace talks in order to end a civil war. The ship’s counselor, Deanna Troi, began to act strange after spending some time with him; flirting with various men on the ship, wearing scandalous clothing, and becoming angry for no apparent reason. It is only revealed towards the end of the episode that Alkar had found a way to offload his negative emotions onto other people, which helped him become an extremely effective ambassador, and Deanna is going to die because of it.
The logistics of this are a bit more complicated than “Deanna feels Alkar’s negative emotions”, though. Deanna, and the other woman who Alkar did this to, seem to feel their own negative feelings in an extreme way because of Alkar’s. For example, it is shown that the receptacles Alkar takes are all women and have had a lot of romantic tension with him. When Deanna and the woman Alkar first appears with both accuse other women of wanting him and say to stay far away from him, they are expressing an extremely heightened version of their thoughts. This agrees with the Theory of Emotional Construction, as well; while Alkar and Deanna both understand the concept of anger, they will express it in different ways according to their life experiences.
2 thoughts on “Module 5 – A Whirlwind of Emotions”
Hi Maddy,
I really like your observation about how the film could be a depiction of what it is like to live with issues related to mental health, especially depression, anxiety, or other mood disorders. The film is demonstrating that we don’t need to be happy all the time, but we could take it as a way to talk about what it feels like sadness, anger, or fear constantly has control of the switchboard.
This idea of emotions being in control, though, does run somewhat counter to the Theory of Constructed emotion, which you mention in your post. In that theory of emotion, emotions are not in control of you, rather you construct them. It is a very different way from thinking about emotions, which we generally tend to see as something that happens to us and that is out of our control.
As you note, though, emotion is tied to memory in a really important way. We’ll be learning about this more next module when we look specifically at memory.
I am so glad that you’ve been enjoying Star Trek. This module’s episode is a wild one, but that’s part of the reason I love it as much as I do. You make an interesting point about Deanna’s experience of anger and how it relates to the Theory of Emotional Construction. Her emotions appear to be completely out of her control (and because they are, at least in part Aklar’s, they kinda are). But we could also read what she is doing is constructing her emotional experience in terms of things like anger and jealous and lust. Those are the emotion concepts that she is using to make sense of her bodily and social experiences, so those are what she seems to express.
Jessica Hautsch
Hi Madeline,
Great post! I thought your point on how mental illness can be displayed through these characters was such a great idea. I could also see how emotions would “fight” each other trying to take control in order to make the best choice for their person. It would also be a great way to inform parents and children of what to do in situations similar to these. I think being aware of how emotions work is a great way to eventually learn how to cope with them. I definitely would’ve felt differently towards my own emotions if I had seen a film like Inside Out when I was a child.
Alessa Bustillo