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Inside Out

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In the film, Inside Out (Docter, 2015), the connection between Joy and Sadness works to explain the relationship between the mind, brain, and body, of their host child, Riley, and by extension, the minds, brains, and bodies of its audience. The importance of the Joy and Sadness connection demonstrates that while the classic “theory of mind” approach holds that we understand things through immediate reflection of our ability to attribute mental states like beliefs, intentions, desires, knowledge, and perspectives, to ourselves and to others, these animated characters, all while understanding that others, again including these animated characters that we know to be mediated by the hands of artists, have beliefs, desires, intentions, and viewpoints …show more content…

We are further able to understand and identify with Sadness because our whole body is in attendance to her animated involvement, putting us in a space where the same thing is happening to us. In the case of Inside Out, the space is inside Riley’s head, and it is built on the shifting psychical landscape of her childhood. Pixar deliberately moves to engage the audience in Riley’s world by avoiding the fact that Inside Out is a film. The film’s narrative treats its artistic external space as though it was being televised, complete with long establishing shots, and in an approach similar to the description of Toy Story (Lassiter, 1995), Riley’s “real” life also features “… a three dimensional, digitally constructed environment … (that) … ultimately gave the animated filmmaker a great deal of flexibility in constructing (the) visual narratives… (T)he ultimate outcome (was) a greater degree of control in colorization, in which every individual element in the digital landscape (could) be fine-tuned in color space. (Brunick & Cutting …show more content…

It forces them to literally forget their hardships, bypass their differences, and refocus on the task of getting back to headquarters, and leading Team Riley. The flaw composed of the narrow vision of their purpose and self-imposed hierarchy don’t allow them to succeed in every situation, giving heart to their goal, and triggering urgency and investment in spectator mirror neurons because our bodies believe that if we lean a little closer, or breathe a little deeper, the Team will push through for

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