And it’s written by a philosopher I like a lot, no less.
And yet, for all that, he’s completely off base! He as a philosopher of mind of all people should recognize the Multiple Drafts model of consciousness when he sees it. He doesn’t have to agree with it (or simplified versions of it found in works of pop culture) but to not even acknowledge it?
Noe’s (and Sir T-Cups)'s views seem to me to ignore what I thought was clear on a first reading of the film: there’s no question that needs asking (or answering) of whether she controls the emotions or the emotions control her, rather, the emotions (plus a lot of other agents encountered in the film) constitute her mind. It would be like asking whether the computer controls the circuitry or the circuitry controls the computer…
I’m not buying the thesis that Riley was a meat puppet controlled by the emotion characters. That’s simply not how I interpreted what was actually happening in the movie I watched.
I thought it was pretty clear that the emotion characters had influence over Riley - they could ‘tinge’ experiences with emotional states, or even introduce ideas - but they had no direct control over what she did day to day (and their attempting to do so even indirectly was portrayed as bad).
In fact, that’s what sets the plot in motion. The Joy character attempts to control Riley more closely - to prevent a “core memory” she dislikes (because it is sad) from entering Riley’s mind. This causes, in effect, the whole system to crash. The system, evidently, rejects such elementary manipulation. Similarly, when the Anger et al. characters insert an ‘idea’ into Riley, it is a bad move - they can do it but it results in near-disaster. Even so, they do not control how the “idea” is put into practice.
Riley is always presented as a seperate person, for whom the emotions (and others) are performing services (for good or bad), or influencing (for good or bad): another example is that some of the brain’s employees are in charge of creating dreams for Riley to view (indicating that there is a “Riley” to view them). But ultimately, the actual source of Riley’s concious thoughts lay elsewhere - perhaps a creation of the “system” itself.
Saw this today on cable. It’s an astonishingly gorgeous movie, but I have never hated a character more than sadness. Every time there was an opportunity for her death I was actively rooting for that outcome. I’m a little worried about what that says about me…
In an interesting sidenote, this was the top performing US movie in 2015 excluding sequels and spinoffs.
Pixar is a brand in itself, just like Star Wars or Marvel. It’s not really a fair comparison, IMHO.
Tell that to The Good Dinosaur which tanked.
Well, it doesn’t mean that it’ll guarantee success. But surely you’d agree that a Pixar film will attract a certain level of interest just due to the name of the studio?
The volcanos were designed after this guy, Israel Kamakawiwoʻole, a relatively important cultural figure in Hawaii and his wife
Inside Out won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and deserved it, I’d say (although The Incredibles remains my hands-down favorite Pixar film of all time). Bing Bong’s sacrifice made me a little verklempt, I have to admit.
I don’t think there was any doubt it’d win Best Animated. What was it even competing against?
Two beautifully hand-drawn films from Japan and Brazil and two excellent stop-motion films–one very smart one geared toward kids and one very sad one geared toward adults. The Pixar was the only that was fully CG.
I love Sadness. The whole point of the movie is that Riley has good reasons to be sad and not giving in to it makes everything worse.
