Day: August 3, 2022

First of all I want to say how much I love Inside Out and I am not ashamed at all that most children’s movies make me cry – they really know how to get me in my feels. Especially when they have personified them. The movie suggests that everyone is controlled by  5 basic emotions – Joy, Disgust, Anger Fear and Sadness. The movie doesn’t seem to count surprise nor contempt as basic emotions, which in my opinion is a missed opportunity because surprise would have been a funny addition to the crew. In Riley, Joy is mainly in charge (although other emotions take the wheel at times) however it appeared that in other minds, other emotions were at the helm. In the father’s mind it was anger and in the mother’s- sadness. It felt like this could be alluding to a person’s general affect. While certain emotions might be temporarily “in control” Riley is generally led and influenced by joy. I wonder if this remains constant throughout life. Is a person born being controlled by a particular emotion – and that emotion remains in control – or do certain emotions get “promoted” as a person changes and grows? Are all children inherently governed by joy?

Inside Out portrays embedded cognition and Arnold’s appraisal theory of emotions.  As stimuli are received and life events occur the emotions assess/appraise the stimuli and then a certain emotion takes control and dictates the action.  The broccoli clip is a perfect depiction of the appraisal theory in action.

The islands as facets of Riley’s personality reminded me of schemas – how Riley sorted and divided information and memories collected and fit them into different categories that made up her understanding of the world and herself. This movie is so nuanced and there is so much to unpack in every moment of the movie, I think a lot of it could be used when we discuss memory, since a major portion of the plot was delving into how we store memories and the way we retain/forget information. Inside Out does a really great job of conceptualizing memory making and how our emotions affect our decision making.

Like Joy in Inside Out who initially viewed sadness as a detriment to Riley’s cognition, Alkar in “Man of the People” also views difficult emotions as a cognitive deficit. However, this weeks Star Trek episode goes back to pitting emotions against rational thought rather than an embedded cognitive process. Ambassador Ves Alkar states “I discovered long ago I had the ability to channel my darker thoughts – my unwanted emotions to others, leaving me unencumbered.”  While he doesn’t get rid of all of his emotions/thoughts he channels the ones he sees as “cumbersome” leading him to be a better negotiator for peace because he isn’t influenced by rage or sexual desire. While he is unencumbered the host for these emotions and thoughts are not only mentally affected but also suffer physically. After being the host for these emotions Deanna ages rapidly –  This seems to depict an ideology that emotions affect you physically and age and eventually kill you, while without these negative emotions the ambassador is free to make more rational choices and lives in a youthful state.  I wonder why he died in the end of the show. Has he been doing this for so long he is actually ancient and those years caught up to him or was he so unprepared to handle any negative emotions from his years of casting them aside that he was instantaneously crushed by the metaphorical weight of them?

This week we watched the movie, Inside Out, and the episode “Man of the Future” from Star Trek: The Next Generation. These two both had a focus on emotions and their effects on you, although they both had pretty different takes on that concept.

In the movie, Inside Out, in the beginning of the film we are introduced to the main character Riley and we immediately are introduced to the film’s main concept which is that the emotions that people feel throughout their lives are physical beings within one’s mind. In many scenes we are able to see how quickly emotions can change such as when a younger Riley is sitting down in her highchair with her father attempting to feed her. We see Disgust take over when they see that the food is broccoli, we see Anger take over when her father says that if she doesn’t eat then she wont get dessert, and finally when her father begins to make the food “fly” towards Riley like an airplane we see Joy take over. We also see how the emotions that Riley has can make up her core memories such as her love for hockey and her family etc. We can see how Riley needs all of her emotions to function properly, when Joy and Sadness are trying to get back to headquarters and it is just Disgust, Fear and Anger they are unable to help Riley function which leads to her running away. In the end when Joy and Sadness finally work together, Joy is able to understand Sadness better and they both are able to get back to  headquarters. After a time skip we are able to see that Riley is even better then she was before and she is able to properly express all of her emotions. 

Next in the episode “Man of the Future” from Star Trek: The Next Generation, we see how negative emotions can affect people. In this episode we learn that ambassador Alkar is projecting his emotions onto Deanna Troi causing her to become aggressive and age rapidly, while he becomes level-headed and calm. In the end when Alkar is unable to project his emotions onto someone else and he begins to feel all of his emotions, he quickly ages and dies.