In Inside Out, I thought it was interesting that Riley’s brain was depicted as a factory, beginning with popping out core memories of Joy and then expanding the production center to different feelings. Not only that, but, when Riley lost her core memories, the solution was to travel to Minnesota and make new ones. This showed me that though an emotion is something you (and pretty much everyone) can create, how it’s developed is dependent on your environment. She was determined to go back to the source of her happiness: the home where she first experienced joy. 
When I re-read the phrase, “an emotion is something you create”, it sounded weird when I said it out loud because that’s usually a phrase you associate with memories. Memories are created. But all of Riley’s memories are attached to a specific emotion, so are memories just physical representations of our emotions in different settings? Also, something I noticed was, though the emotions seemingly worked together, Riley’s memories had a few set outcomes: a solid yellow (Joy), red (Anger), green(Disgust), or purple color (Fear). Each emotion would take turns as the pilot of the spaceship that was Riley’s mind and saved the memory.
There were two scenes that stood out to me: the scene where Joy watches a memory of Riley losing a hockey game and the ending, when each emotion contributes to the core memories. After watching the entire memory, Joy realized that Sadness is a necessary emotion because it functions as the precursor to joy. Instead of icing out Sadness, Joy really should’ve been embracing her. Another scene that stood out to me was when Riley’s memories were no longer one solid color. Rather, they were rainbow colored, signifying that her core memories became a mixture of all the emotions, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
I really enjoyed the Star Trek episode “Man of the People”. While I wouldn’t go about it the way the Ambassador did, I would also like to offload my emotions into a receptacle if given the chance. I like the idea of separating emotions from the body to allow one to think straight so as to achieve a higher purpose. This episode seems to go against the Theory of Constructed Emotion since it separates feelings from the body and supports Plato’s idea of rational thinking. For example, emotions act as a force to deteriorate Troi’s body over time.
Lust and anger caused her to age quicker than usual- not just in her appearance (grey hair and sagging jowls), but also mentally. Her brain entered a state of psychosis.
Compare her, who’s been transformed into the stereotype of a hysterical woman, to the calm and composed Alkar whose decisions are unaffected by how he’s feeling at the moment. It plays well into the stereotype that men are better at reasoning than women are since they can disconnect from or reconnect to emotions whenever necessary. Troi even confirmed this at the beginning of the episode when she complained that, “Sometimes my body has a problem conforming to my mind’s conditions”. In other words, her mind tells her how to feel, but the body doesn’t always act accordingly.
3 thoughts on “Alexa, Play “Emotions” by Mariah Carey”
Hi Tonicia,
In your post, you make an interesting point about the role of our environment in our emotions. For emotions, context matters. For example, if my heart is pounding and my hands are sweaty because I am about to sky dive; or if my heart is pounding and my hands are sweaty because I am in the bad part of town, walking at night by myself, I am likely to understand what I am feeling in different ways—even though my body feels the same. That is because we make sense of our emotions within specific cultural, physical, and social environments.
I also like that you are thinking about the relationship between memory and emotion. Memories are something that we create—construct, really, as you’ll see in next week’s VT. And they are very tied to emotion. Just as we saw in this film the valance of the memory—the emotion that we remember it with—can shift as we get older and get distance from it. I think we all have memories that we look back on when we were really happy, sad, or proud, and kinda cringe at this point.
Your point about offloading emotions so that you can think straight it interesting. We tend to think about emotions and reason as separate—often competing—systems. But there is considerable research in neuroscience and cognitive science that our cognitive and emotional systems are not separate, but are part of the same integrated system. There is no “emotional experience” separate from “logical processing” because they in inseparably linked. So, if we were able to offload emotions, we would actually no longer have a human mind.
Jessica Hautsch
Hi Toni,
Great post! I thought your question was an important one: “But all of Riley’s memories are attached to a specific emotion, so are memories just physical representations of our emotions in different settings?” In the beginning it seems as if most of Riley’s memories were gold/yellow (Joy), and the other emotions had less memories. But as she was growing up, those memories were emotions mixed in, as a way to accept that certain situations can both bring joy and sadness, or fear and anger. So our memories could be considered physical representations of our emotions! Similar to those random memories brought up by a random smell or song (senses tied up to our emotions as well).
Alessa Bustillo
Hi Alessa,
So glad that you are thinking about emotion and memory! We will be thinking about this a lot more in Module #6, which is focusing specifically on memory. Although they are represented as physical balls in this film, that’s not actually how memory works.
Jessica Hautsch