The Personification and Characterization in Inside Out Series

The Personification and Characterization in Inside Out Series

Personification is the secret to the enduring success of American animation: from Steamboat Willie to The Lion King and Bambi, and more recently, the wildly popular Zootopia. Disney and its animal friends have consistently dominated mainstream cultural perceptions of American commercial animated films. In these animations, personification is nothing more than endowing animals with human-like thinking and behavior, or conversely, using animals to allegorically perform human actions; both approaches ultimately create a cute and educational world for children. In contrast, Pixar's animated films show more careful selection in their use of personification. The personified settings are not just simple substitutions of identities between humans and non-humans but form the creative core around which the movie's narrative revolves. Furthermore, since WALL·E (2008), which features a robot cleaning up a post-ecological disaster Earth, Pixar's use of personification has become increasingly linked to social issues. The pure fictionality of Toy Story (1995), which originated from the old childhood fantasy—'What do toys do when their owner is not around?'—has given way to explorations of themes such as lost childhood, institutional systems, and abandonment in its subsequent sequels.

As one of Pixar's most successful films of the 2010s, Inside Out (2015) emerged within this context. Its innovative concept, which is personifying the five emotions (Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Anger, and Fear) within a young girl's mind, not only provides a stage for imagination but also explicitly targets the complex psychological mechanisms of childhood development. From the perspective of the main character, Riley, Inside Out tells a seemingly typical family story: after an unpleasant move, Riley struggles to adapt to her new environment; compounded by her parents' lack of proper guidance, Riley nearly runs away from home. However, when viewed from the "inside out" perspective, a completely different scene unfolds: to prevent Riley from running away, the emotion sprites Joy and Sadness—the true protagonists of the film—endeavor to return the girls’ core memories (in the form of orbs) to their rightful places within Riley’s mind. Along their adventurous journey, Riley's brain is visualized as a combination of an amusement park and a factory, with memories, forgetfulness, thought, dreams, imagination, the subconscious, and even personality traits each taking on corresponding scenes, props, and characters. This provides fertile ground for the writers' and animators' creativity. Contrary to general assumptions, the personification of psychological processes does not lead to a typical psychological structure like in traditional films; rather, it largely dissolves it. We see that the traditional screenwriting structure of the A story (external plot) and B story (character's internal development) is inverted: the latter is no longer a "deep" thread that can only be revealed through external depiction—which easily creates a rigid correspondence between the internal and external—but is directly transformed through the imaginative personification into a tangible play and adventure, relegating the former as its derivative and backdrop, positioned on the other side of parallel editing.

However, upon closer examination, this concept of personification remains somewhat peculiar: what exactly is the relationship between the personified emotion sprites and their host, Riley? In the control center where these sprites reside (modeled after the human brain's amygdala), there's a screen projecting visuals, memories, and dreams; and a console that can adjust Riley's emotions by inserting a lightbulb to input a thought. If the emotion sprites control the brain completely, does that not reduce Riley to a mere humanoid machine? This is made even more evident in the latest sequel, Inside Out 2 (2024), where Riley's actions, such as speaking and ice skating, are strictly controlled by this console in her brain. On the other hand, from the external plot perspective, Riley's behavior follows a coherent logic, while the irrational actions of the emotions—like Sadness wanting to touch the memory orbs in the first film or Anxiety taking over the brain in the second—along with the ensuing dramatic events, do not genuinely exhibit behaviors that proves Riley is self-aware. Instead, they seem more like abstract, metaphorical representations of the inner workings of a single psyche. In this sense, it is Riley’s mind who "controls" these emotion sprites. Here, Pixar's concept inadvertently touches on one of the oldest philosophical conundrums: am "I" controlling my brain, or is my brain controlling "me"? The Inside Out series, relying on modern psychology as its textual foundation, naturally does not choose the former's transcendental self, but rather adopts the latter's constructivist self as the film's core MacGuffin. Whether it is the personality islands extending from core memories in the first film, or the self-awareness crystallized into root-like structures in the second, the construction and transformation of Riley's "self" through the efforts of the emotion sprites is the most crucial narrative thread of the movies.

Of course, when it comes to the specifics of what kind of self is needed, Pixar’s creativity ultimately aligns with Disney’s safe, conservative pluralism—every emotion has its value, and their organic, harmonious integration within the brain is the healthiest path for self-development. Thus, within the brain's adventure to save Riley lies a story of the emotion sprites learning to accept and coexist with one another, evolving from conflict to harmony. The original B story expands into the A story, but this does not prevent a new B story from emerging. In this regard, although Inside Out 2 introduces four new emotions (Anxiety, Jealousy, Embarrassment, and Ennui) to depict Riley's teenage psyche, the conclusion merely reiterates the theme of the first film: life isn't always joyful, and crying with family can also be a precious memory; negative emotions like anxiety and jealousy are integral parts of one's personality that must be accepted. The praise for "multiplicity" isn't just a psychological truism but also a standard for character development in traditional narratives. Yet, in the world inside out, who is the true "character"? It's not Riley with her multifaceted self but the emotion sprites that constitute this self. This is the paradox embedded in the concept of Inside Out series: to authentically represent the nature of emotions through personification, these emotions must retain a degree of caricature and singularity; yet, as film characters, they need to be rich and multi-dimensional to sustain emotional storytelling. In the first film, the fairytale simplicity of the animated characters and the comedic treatment of their stereotypical traits somewhat mitigated this conflict, but the issue was apparent: the most moving scenes in the film did not involve any of the emotion sprites but centered around a character named Bing Bong. While the sprites were personified "emotions", only Bing Bong’s character was entirely shaped by genuine emotion. In the sequel, the conflicts between the four new "negative" emotions and the main characters further constrained the film to a binary conflict-resolution structure. The creators evidently recognized this and attempted to give the emotion sprites some character reversals—Joy feeling sad and angry, Anger saying, "I can't always play the role of Anger"—but these efforts had limited success. More critically, Bing Bong’s place was taken by new characters paying homage to video games and children’s animation. While these next-gen meta characters might seem fresher than the "imaginary friend" trope, the genuine emotional depth of the first film was lost.

To be fair, as a sequel, Inside Out 2 is not poorly executed; I also do not think the first film deserved as much praise as it received. However, the sequel feels somewhat superfluous, with an underlying anxiety of creative exhaustion evident in its attempts to replicate the successes of its predecessor. In recent years, Pixar animations have faced a similar predicament: sequels often feel like mere extensions of the original, while new works lack substantial innovation. Last year's Elemental (2023) stands as a prime example of this decline. The more the creators attempted to imbue characters with "personality" through distinct, differentiated traits, the flatter and less believable they became. What resulted was a seemingly vibrant but ultimately hollow spectacle of diversity. In truth, the theme of moving from opposition to unity has always been central to Pixar animations. However, instead of relying on a colorful city of elements to achieve racial inclusion, it would be more convincing to trust in the collective effort of a group of monsters using laughter instead of screams to generate electricity—a testament to genuine, believable character and emotion. Apart from a few noteworthy moments, Inside Out 2 largely falls prey to the same overambition. It introduces a more diverse range of personified characters but forgets to slow down and let them develop into a real "person". The pivotal line, "We have no right to decide who she is", feels like a sophistry on the storytelling process: in a fictional work, aren't the fates of characters determined by the writers? If so, please exercise this significant right with the sincerity and effort it deserves.

write by ANNI