everything that has ever happened to you is an orb
I wanted to recap a movie this week, because it’s fun. But since I don’t have a blue TV anymore, I needed a new gimmick. So I found a movie that kind of conceptually freaked me out the last time I watched it, took [embarrassingly low number] milligrams of THC, watched it again, and got even more freaked out. The movie? Pixar’s 2015 “emotion picture” Inside Out.
What follows is adapted from the notes I took throughout, which got kind of. Incomprehensible.
If you haven’t seen Inside Out, this is the one that purports that every single one of your memories is represented physically by a glass marble. Like, real marbles. Like, colorful marbles. I mean, they purport that there’s a lot of infinitesimal infrastructure inside your brain, which is scaled up to roughly the size of a large metropolitan area, but the marbles are the ones that get to me. If I shook my head while I was high, I could feel them rattling around.
Remember that joke about how every Pixar premise is just “what if [X] had feelings”? The metatextual nightmare that is Inside Out seeks to answer the question, “What if feelings had feelings?” And additional questions, such as, “What if feelings were fuzzy little humanoids with silk yarn for hair?” and “What if feelings were color-coded?” and “What if feelings were voiced by that guy from The Daily Show?”
So everyone has (in addition to infinite glass orbs) five dudes running around in their brain, controlling their emotions. And a large, unspecified number of other little dudes doing various thankless tasks outside of “Headquarters”, the mission control where the main dudes live. Everyone also has five extra important orbs — “core memories” — that correspond to five “islands of personality.” The five dudes are named Leslie Knope, Phyllis Vance, Stefon, Mr. E., and Kelly Kapoor Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust. The islands are not named that. They are named like, Goofball and Hockey and Friendship. This is confusing even when you aren’t high, I imagine. I don’t like the number 5. It’s not as bad as the number 846, though.
(Quick aside — how have we all just been okay with the Pixar lamp our whole lives? It commits violent onscreen murder, makes direct eye contact with you, and the lights go out.)
The brain we’re hanging out in belongs to an eleven-year-old named Riley, whose parents abruptly move her from Minnesota to San Francisco. Riley is a girl, but two of her five emotion dudes are voiced by men. I assume the dudes are supposed to be genderless, but they’re definitely not coded as such. I remember director Pete Docter having to go on record and dismiss theories that Riley is genderfluid because two of her emotions are male, which means they only did that because Pixar was still afraid of putting too many women in their movies at the time. Before Brave, they’d always justify their lack of female protagonists with, “We’re a bunch of guys!” They’re also a bunch of humans, but that didn’t preclude them from making movies about bugs and rats and shit.
So the moment Riley was born, our protagonist Joy was also born. The other four emotions came later. I don’t remember being born, but I feel like my very first emotion, of the five options, was not joy. Joy is my last guess, actually. Why are there not prenatal emotions?
Joy is a solo act for exactly 33 seconds before Sadness spawns and makes baby Riley start crying. But I would assume crying is a fear response???? When do newborns start experiencing sadness?
So Joy is the de facto leader of the gang, and she’s cool with everyone except Sadness. She wants Riley to be happy 100% of the time, but also it’s okay if she’s angry or afraid or disgusted. (Disgust was a weird choice. Like, she’s my favorite, I’m not complaining about her presence, but is disgust not just like, anger-lite? Also, she’s green, which feels like a SICK BURN @ people who like green.) It’s not okay if Riley is sad. If Joy sees a blue orb, (Sadness is blue) she gets pissed, which implies that Joy has dudes in her own brain. With the exception of Sadness, they can all experience each other’s emotions, even though they’re supposed to fully embody one thing. Sadness, queen of consistency and integrity, is perpetually sad. Joy is afraid sometimes. Fear is angry. Anger is disgusted. Et cetera. Why?
Anyway, Riley’s five “islands of personality” are Family, Friendship, Honesty, Goofball, and Hockey. I count two actual personality traits and three interests. I do not like the islands because they make me worry about what my own islands are. I can’t help but assume my brain is home to like, Asshole Island and Boba Island and “Kendall Roy Once Said” Island. Later, we see that the islands can be eradicated and replaced, so please join me in mourning Tree-Climbing Island, c. 2002-c. 2011.
The move to San Francisco jeopardizes Riley’s lifelong happiness, which means Sadness is shambling around Headquarters touching every yellow orb (happy memory) and turning them blue. Joy is like, “Die, perhaps????” and sends her off to read manuals on human cognition, but like, human cognition in this universe where everyone has five little dudes in their head. Do psychologists know about the dudes yet?
The family’s moving van accidentally gets sent to Texas, so Riley’s parents are stressed, so Riley is stressed. Joy essentially Ratatouilles her into starting a family game of living room hockey, which improves matters until her dad gets an ominous phone call about a work thing and bounces. I cannot tell you how concerned I am for this marriage.
Also, Riley is wearing a rainbow striped sweater. Hey Pete Docter, if Riley cis then why gender-neutral name boy emotions rainbow sweater move to San Francisco? Checkmate.
Joy uses something called a recall tube to summon a memory orb from earlier that day of Riley noticing a pizza place down the street, and all I can think about is how (allegedly) every time you remember something, you’re actually remembering the last time you remembered it. Everything’s a copy of a copy of a copy. Whenever Joy replays one of these happy core memories, they depreciate in value. But I bet she never replays the sad/angry/fearful/disgusted ones!
This pizza place only serves pizza with broccoli. Normal! Riley hates broccoli so much that Disgust actually spawned for the first time when her parents tried to feed it to her as a baby, so no pizza for her. She goes to bed and hears a scary noise, and Fear is like, “Is that a bear?!” and Disgust is like, “THERE ARE NO BEARS IN SAN FRANCISCO,” which is the funniest line in any Pixar movie ever, except I feel like my own Sadness just touched the yellow orb of hearing it for the first time, because now I’m wondering if that means Disgust is homophobic. Which would be sad.
Anger wants to lock the door and have Riley say “that curse word we know.” I assume I’m supposed to interpret the word as fuck, but it’s much funnier if it’s like, damn. The next time you’re stressed, try locking yourself in your bedroom and just screaming the word DAMN. Comedy gold. Guaranteed mood lifter. Bastard is indisputably the funniest curse word, but I think damn is an unsung hero. Anyway.
Riley’s mom comes in and tells her to put on a brave face so as not to further stress out her dad. She is low-key the villain of the movie for this one. Then Riley has a nightmare about broccoli pizza with the Haunted Mansion organ in it! Joy has had enough of that, so she summons a happy memory even though she’s “not supposed to do this”. Yeah, Joy!! It’ll depreciate, like I said!!!!!
The next day, Joy draws Sadness a Sea Bear Circle to sit in while she and the other three objectively unpleasant but APPARENTLY FINE emotions pilot Riley through her first day at her new school. Like, I get that Anger and Fear and Disgust are useful, but if Joy is delusional enough to believe that Sadness has no purpose, she could easily rationalize invalidating the others, too.
Oh never mind, there was a throwaway line about how she convinced Fear that earthquakes aren’t real.
Riley’s teacher asks her to stand up and introduce herself, and Joy is maneuvering her through that by recalling happy memories of Minnesota, WHEN SUDDENLY SADNESS TOUCHES ONE AND IT TURNS BLUE. Dabadee, dabadie!!! My TV wasn’t even that blue!!!!! Riley starts crying at school, which upsets every single emotion and forms a blue core memory. This implies that Riley will get a sixth personality trait called Crying At School Island.
So that’s the first four hours 20 minutes of the movie. But wait! It wouldn’t be Pixar if there weren’t two characters with opposing worldviews out on an unexpected gay little adventure together! In a custody battle for the core memory orbs, Joy and Sadness (and said orbs) accidentally wind up in the vacuum tube they use to send each day’s memories to wherever long-term memories are stored. They are stored in an apparently endless maze of extremely high shelves. That’s so many fucking orbs. I think I’ll just never move my head again.
This girl is eleven. I am more than twice her age. HOW MANY OF THESE FUCKING THINGS DO I
Joy and Sadness have to get back to Headquarters, and Riley has to navigate all these life changes and stressors with no personality traits, and only Anger, Fear, and Disgust at her disposal. Don’t worry, Riley, same thing happened to me in college.
First obstacle: family dinner. They are having takeout Chinese food, which is usually riddled with broccoli, but this doesn’t come up. I wish I had Chinese food. Disgust, Anger, and Fear try to act like Joy, but they just act like Disgust, Anger, and Fear, so Riley snaps and gets sent to her room.
I really, really, really hate what the dinner scene implies about Riley’s parents. You know how Joy is generally in the driver’s seat of Riley’s brain, and in charge of the others? Riley’s mom is likewise controlled by Sadness, and her dad is controlled by Anger. Cool! The dad is mentally checked out and watching a hockey game in his head, and the mom’s emotions don’t like how he’s handling the situation, so they pull up a happy memory of a hot Brazilian helicopter pilot she met once. GET A DIVOOOOOORCE, GET A DIVORCE!!!! #MakeFamilyIslandDivorceIsland. The only auspicious thing here is the credence lent to the genderfluid Riley theory.
Joy and Sadness climb over to the now-defunct Goofball Island and try to walk across the bridge that connects it to Headquarters. This bridge crosses directly over the memory dump, which is where irrelevant orbs go to evaporate. That’s… that’s exactly how it feels. Congratulations, Inside Out, you’ve summarized tetrahydrocannabinol. As Joy is creeping along, the island breaks apart and falls into the memory dump. At least now there’s room for Crying At School Island.
Joy and Sadness are wandering around long-term memory purgatory, trying to find Friendship Island, while Riley Skypes her best friend from Minnesota. They fight because Anger is in charge, so Friendship Island also falls into the abyss. Some blob guys who work in the maze use a recall tube (you remember?) to send a gum commercial jingle to Headquartes to annoy the emotions. Joy and Sadness are looking for another route to Headquarters (IF ONLY THERE WAS A TUBE THAT WENT DIRECTLY THERE!) when they run into Bing Bong, a smartly-dressed pink elephantine guy who was Riley’s imaginary friend as a child.
BING BONG TANGENT: I saw this movie in theaters. (Sober.) I read zero spoilers, but this was squarely in the middle of Disney and Pixar’s twist villain kick, so I was fucking ready. Anger seemed a little suspicious, but he represented a normal, everyday emotion and had a cushy job in Headquarters, so probably a red herring. Literally, he’s red. Then when Bing Bong showed up, I was like, “OH. He wants to kill and replace Joy, and he’ll use her mistreatment of Sadness as leverage to get Sadness to betray her. Plus, he’s been stuck wandering around this horrible orb maze for ostensibly years. And he’s basically the same color as Lotso.” Bing Bong is so twist villain-coded that I still expect him to turn out evil every time I watch the movie. Especially this time.
Bing Bong tells them he knows a shortcut back to Headquarters, which I have to retrain myself into perceiving as genuine. Like, this movie has a Chekhov’s chasm of forgotten memories. He could easily push them in there.
Instead, he gives Joy a nice drawstring bag to hold the core memories. He has to dump like, fifty marbles out of it first, because he’s been casually stealing them from the shelves. This is not suspicious behavior, apparently.
They’re going to take a literal train of thought to Headquarters. Bing Bong shows them a shortcut through the abstract thought zone, which I can’t. I can’t even recap it. The characters are turning into two-dimensional shapes and falling apart. Their limbs are running away from them. Sadness is like, “We gotta get out of here before we’re nothing but shape and color! We’ll get stuck here forever!” BE QUIET, SADNESS, THAT IS HAPPENING TO ME RIGHT NOW CURRENTLY. AREN’T YOU SUPPOSED TO BE SENSITIVE TO THE PLIGHT OF OTHERS?
They miss the train, but Bing Bong knows another shortcut through Imagination Land, which just serves to introduce Chekhov’s Imaginary Boyfriend. He looks like this!
A group of garbage… anthropomorphic blobs come and take Bing Bong’s song-powered wagon-rocket to the memory dump. Joy probes him for directions to the train, but he isn’t ready to give them until Sadness lets him vent about losing his rocket.
Meanwhile, Riley does a bad job at hockey tryouts, and Hockey Island collapses. Fear tries to quit his job by escaping through the same tube that sent Joy and Sadness to hell, but it just explodes. Disgust is all, “Did you really think that would work, you idiot?” but like, we just saw it work. Like three and a half hours twenty-five minutes ago.
Anger has an idea (represented by a lightbulb) to run away to Minnesota and make new core memories, since Riley evidently can’t be happy in “San Fran-Stink-Town.” Amazing. He’s (not!) “sure jolly, fun-filled times are just around the corner,” but Lewis Black definitely says “jowly.” This will be playing on a loop in my brain like the gum commercial for the remainder of the viewing experience.
Joy, Sadness, and Bing Bong finally make it to the train, but Riley falls asleep, stopping it in its tracks. Conveniently, they’re right outside the TV studio where dreams are produced. Sadness wants to scare Riley awake, (oh god) but Joy thinks they should manufacture a really happy fun dream. ????? Unbeknownst to them, Fear is filling in for Joy as dream… viewer? Experiencer? but I can’t imagine any of them voluntarily waking Riley up from a good dream, especially with Joy AWOL.
Joy’s like, “Let’s act out a happy dream about a dog!” and gives the bag of orbs to Bing Bong. I sure hope he isn’t a twist vil– oh wait, he’s actually not a twist villain. Riley starts having a generic nightmare about being pantsless at school, with her teeth falling out. Fear is in Headquarters MST3King the dream when Joy and Sadness burst in dressed as a dog. Riley doesn’t start to wake up until their dog suit accidentally rips in half. Bing Bong gets arrested (???) and Joy and Sadness have to rescue him from the subconscious, where he is imprisoned on top of a giant, sleeping clown like Mei from My Neighbor Totoro. Also, they encounter Riley’s biggest fears, including broccoli??? I thought that was Disgust’s territory!
They free Bing Bong and lure the clown into Riley’s dream, finally prompting Fear to smash that mf wake up button and restart the train of thought. Anger is so… well, angry about his interrupted sleep that he inserts the idea of running away into the control panel, and Riley starts Googling bus tickets.
On the train, Joy and Sadness reminisce about the same core memory from different perspectives. Meanwhile, Riley sneaks downstairs and steals her mom’s credit card, resulting in the destruction of Honesty Island. The island, the train, and the tracks all fall into the memory dump with a series of loud crashes. I can never let this happen in my own head. Guess I’m stuck with Purple Island forever. Is purple my favorite color because I have an anxiety disorder and my brain is piloted by Fear???? Holy shit…
It finally occurs to Joy to send herself back to Headquarters via recall tube, (you’ll recall those) but Family Island is crumbling, and it knocks into the tube, sending Joy, the core memories, and Bing Bong, who was standing on a precarious ledge, into the memory dump. This is when normal 2015 Ashton decided he perhaps was not a twist villain. Zooted 2023 Ashton is still not convinced!
Joy watches the hockey-related core memory, and it turns blue when Riley misses the winning shot in a championship game and her parents comfort her. Joy starts crying, which means she finally understands sadness the emotion and Sadness the character. We get a lot of close-ups of Joy, confirming that the emotions are fuzzy. I don’t like this about them. I think they should be smooth. Rubbery, perhaps.
They try to use Bing Bong’s song-powered wagon-rocket to launch themselves out of the chasm, but it’s too heavy, so Bing Bong stays in the memory dump and gets forgotten forever. This would affect me if I hadn’t spent the past eighty-five years half hour incredibly wary of his motives.
Riley runs away, which is enough to freak out Joy and Disgust. They can feel fear. They have their own little guys! Riley keeps ignoring phone calls from her mom and actually gets on a bus. Then Anger freaks out, and they start trying to pull the idea lightbulb out of the control panel, but the control panel turns to cement.
Family Island is falling apart, and Sadness is floating around on a cloud from Imagination Land, having a pity party. She’s only happy when it rains.
Let me attempt to describe how Joy and Sadness get back to Headquarters because okay. Jesus Christ. Joy makes infinite copies of Harry Styles Riley’s imaginary boyfriend and forms a human (?) chain up to Sadness’s cloud. Joy launches them into the sky via a convenient trampoline on Family Island and they smash into the Headquarters window. Disgust goads Anger into breaking the glass as Riley’s bus is about to merge onto I-80 East. I think the emotions probably have more time to stop this than they realize.
Sadness manages to unfreeze the control panel, and Riley asks to get off the bus and runs home. Joy hands Sadness all the core memory orbs, and she puts them back in place, prompting Riley to break down crying in front of her parents. She’s all, “I’m sorry I can’t be happy, even though you need me to. Please don’t be mad.” I told you they were the real villains! They comfort Riley like at the hockey championship, and a half-blue, half-yellow core memory forms. Joyness is canon. Time for the Fear/Anger/Disgust polycule to get their shit together, methinks.
When I saw this thing in theaters, it made me cry for the exact duration of Riley’s breakdown, which in hindsight feels like some kind of malevolent sorcery on Pete Docter’s part. I have a blue marble rolling around in my head to prove it. I feel like I could dig it out and show it to you, if you want.
Family Island reforms from this new core memory, and now it’s bigger and has the Golden Gate Bridge on it. That’ll come in handy in case anyone accidentally gets sent to the long-term memory maze again!
One timeskip of unspecified length later, Riley now has nine personality islands, all of which are powered by multicolored orbs. Additions include Fashion Island, Tragic Vampire Romance Island, and Boy Band Island.
They also have a new control panel that includes every curse word, and a scary red warning light labeled PUBERTY. “It’s probably not important,” Joy reassures Disgust.
Riley plays in a hockey game, and her dad tells her to be aggressive. Her mom tells her not to be too aggressive. Reader, I’m worried. Riley’s mom’s Anger throws away the Brazilian helicopter pilot memory, but her Fear picks it up “just in case.” Jesus Christ.
Riley meets a boy, and is like, “Hello,” and the boy’s emotions are instantly screaming and panicking and in the fetal position. They live in San Francisco. What am I supposed to take away from any of this?
The end of the movie is a montage of side characters’ emotions. The most noteworthy reveals here are a) Riley’s teacher is dating the helicopter pilot, and b) dogs and cats have little dudes too. Oh, and bus drivers have custom little dudes that are all anger, but different colors. They also hate the gum commercial. Fin.
If you are going to watch the 2015 Pixar emotion picture Inside Out directed by Pete Docter, I recommend you do so sober and having preemptively made peace with the idea of infinite marbles in your skull. And also with the knowledge that Bing Bong has no ulterior motives. I, (the proud owner of Dumbass Stupid Idiot Island) however, might do this again someday with the eerily similar Soul. I probably won’t watch Inside Out 2 next year, because I don’t believe in sequels, with the obvious exception of Shrek 2. It’s gonna be a hot mess, anyway!