Reflective Analysis Of Inside Out Film Using The Gibbs' Reflective Cycle Model
Introduction
Inside Out is a film that revolves around an 11-year-old girl, Riley, who lives in Minnesota but ends up moving to San Francisco together with her family. The movie then introduces 5 important characters of the film: Riley’s personified primary emotions – Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust, which determine her actions and influence her decisions through a control console. These emotions show what it's like inside the mind of an 11-year-old girl who struggles with having to move to a different city away from her friends and home.
Methodology
This paper is analyzed using the Gibbs' Reflective Cycle Model, which is comprised of 6 stages – Description, Feelings, Evaluation, Analysis, Conclusion, and Action Plan.
Results
Description
Joy, together with Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust, reside inside of the brain of a happy, joyful girl named, Riley. As Riley becomes older, her experiences become memories, which are then sent into long-term memory. Each of her five most important, happy core memories powers an aspect of her personality which takes the form of floating islands. The islands are named Family, Honesty, Friendship, Goofball, and Hockey. A stressor comes in Riley's life as they move to San Francisco for her father's new business, she finds it hard to find joy in her experiences and even creates a sad core memory after crying in front of her new classmates while introducing herself. Joy panics, believing that a core memory formed out of sadness is bad since Riley is known as a "happy" girl after all. As Joy attempts to dispose the sad core memory, she and Sadness gets sucked out to Riley's long term memory.
With only Anger, Fear, and Disgust who remain at the headquarters, they try to maintain Riley's happiness in Joy's absence. This proves to be a disaster as Riley ends up distancing herself from important aspects of her life. This results to her personality islands falling down one by one into the "Memory Dump", a dump of remnant memories that are already in the process of forgetting. Finally, Anger inserts an idea into the console, prompting Riley to run away and go back to Minnesota. While looking for their way back to the headquarters, Joy and Sadness encounter Bing Bong, Riley's childhood imaginary friend, who helps them go back. En route, Bing Bong tearfully watches his rainbow wagon rocket being thrown into the memory dump. Joy attempts to inspire cheerfulness out of Bing Bong, jumping quickly to turn the moment into something more positive, but it doesn’t work.
Quietly, Sadness sits by Bing Bong and empathizes with him. He begins to open up, describes how he is feeling and explains why he feels sad. Continuing their journey, they encounter a lot of setbacks which includes Joy and Bing Bong falling into the memory dump. Deep into the pit, Joy discovers a sad memory of Riley of an ice hockey game wherein her parents and her friends cheer Riley up when she got sad after losing the winning shot. This causes Joy to reflect on Sadness’ purpose which is to produce empathy, impelling peers to understand Riley’s emotions and find comfort in others. Joy and Bing Bong use the wagon rocket to escape the Memory Dump, with Bing Bong making the sacrifice of jumping out to allow Joy to escape. Joy reunites with Sadness and, finally, goes back to Headquarters, where they try to control the broken console. She hands control of the console to Sadness, who extracts the idea of running away, and reactivates the console, prompting Riley to return home. Joy hands the happy core memories to sadness, which turn them to sad memories. Riley arrives home, faces her parents and tearfully admits that she misses her old life. Her parents comfort her by saying they miss Minnesota as much as she does. Sadness pulls Joy to work the console together, creating a new combination of happy and sad core memory, building a new Family island.
The movie ends with Riley adjusting to San Francisco a year later. She has adapted to her new surroundings, made new friends, returned to hockey, and even found new hobbies. These are evident with the new islands built, core memories of different emotions combined. Inside the Headquarters, all emotions work together to work the new and upgraded console.
Feelings
I was amazed by how they portrayed neuroscience, study of the brain and nervous system in the animated film, Inside Out. In the movie, memory was played a big role as it made up Riley’s entire personality. Also, process such as memories going into long-term memory for storage and faded memories that eventually become forgotten were tackled in the movie. But what I struck to me the most, even through its simplicity, is how difficult it is to wake an individual who is in REM or Rapid Eye Movement sleep. While watching the film, I could not help but think of how much I act like Joy most of the time. I could not help but feel connected and feel a strong sense of attachment with her while watching the film because I can deeply relate with her mindset and attitude. Just like Joy, I tend to assert my opinions and decisions without hearing other people’s thoughts because of the belief that I know and am only doing what is best in the situation. Even thought my intentions are pure, I hurt a number of people along the way due to my insensitivity. I disregard their thoughts in order to achieve my goal. The scene where Joy keeps Sadness from influencing Riley’s persona by keeping her in a little circle tugged a string in my emotions, as I realized how I do that to myself as well. It made me think of how I refuse to allow myself to feel sadness in times when I shouldn’t.
Another thing I can relate with Joy and myself is how we’re both afraid of change. Joy was afraid of the change in Riley’s emotions and personality brought by the new experiences and environment; she was afraid of losing Riley’s identity since she was young — bubbly, goofy girl. In my case, I sometimes fail to open myself to change. I find calmness in permanence, knowing that something is constant and unchanging; so when changes take place in my life, I occasionally get anxious and stressed out, not knowing how to deal with it.
After watching the film, I was reminded of the importance of embracing my emotions, that there was no wrong or right emotions; they all serve different purposes and bring out different responses from me. Acknowledging and understanding my emotions fully is much healthier, productive in choosing a healthy response in a stressful situation.
Evaluation
Watching the film together with my two close friends worked greatly for me. Aside from having my personal reflection regarding the film, the three of us were able to share our insights, thoughts, and comments with one another. It could be considered a quality bonding session as were able to take a glimpse in everyone’s mind each time one speaks out how she feels regarding a particular scene. However, I find it quite regrettable that I wasn’t able to keep my eyes on the movie the whole time as my mind was preoccupied with exams I still have to study for. I finished the entire film together with my friends but I was not able to watch intently as we still had to prepare ourselves for a scheduled school event right after. Overall, I enjoyed the experience of watching the film, Inside Out. It was a complete experience that made me reflect on my questionable habits and attitudes. It was diverting to witness my personality in the character of Joy, how my insensitivity and over assertiveness affect others.
Analysis
"One of the most common hindrances to listening is preoccupation. When we are absorbed in our thoughts and concerns, we can’t focus on what some else is saying". My mind was preoccupied of the incoming examinations which caused me to space out a couple times. As a consequence of my selective attention, I had to re-watch a couple parts of the film once more to recall certain scenes. I ended up wasting more time instead of finishing the film in one go. This could have been avoided if I paid full attention to film when I watched with my friends for the first time instead of worrying about the incoming examinations. Watching the movie with my friends went well as ideas, reflections, and opinions were shared left and right. I was able to get different perspectives aside from my own.
I also got to know my peers better by knowing their thoughts about certain scenes. The bond of our friendship was deepened as our thoughts, own reflections and how we deal with our stress and emotions were shared between each other. My friends and I had the same thoughts regarding sadness, on how just like Joy, we tend to isolate it and treat it as a negative emotion which does not have a place in our minds. We tend equate joy with happiness, when happiness is actually more than just an endless ray of positivity. “The experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile”. We think lowly of ourselves every time we feel sad because we feel like it won’t do anything good but bring burden to other people, when in actuality, it’s the core purpose of sadness — for us to find empathy and comfort from other people when we are down, in order to find a deeper form of happiness. According to researchers Tamir and Ford (2012), to truly live a happy life, it is important to feel both pleasant and unpleasant emotions flexibly. Different situations call for context-appropriate emotions, and responding appropriately to them is better for us than always responding happily.
Conclusion
I could have made my experience better if I focused on the movie itself instead of worrying about my exams. The stress of the incoming examination week got the best of me and took my attention. I should have managed my time wisely and studied in advanced to have avoided cramming and worrying. I learned that I am unable to concentrate when I am under stress. I got to reflect on my behavior through the characters in the film and was able to see some habits and attitude that I should change such as: over asserting myself without listening to others, suppressing my emotions, and being afraid of change. F. Action Plan If the same situation was to arise again I think that I would approach it in a slightly different way. I understand that I need to get better at developing my attention, so I would allot a proper time for watching the film, a time when I’m comfortable and not preoccupied with other things in order to devote my full attention to the film and not preoccupied with other things. To avoid forgetting my thoughts, I would list down what I think and how I feel in some scenes. Lastly, I would once again watch the film with friends to encourage sharing of ideas and insights among us.
