The Inside Out movie made around $858.8 million, and now, its sequel has broken multiple records. It was praised, applauded, nominated, and won accolades of different kinds. Perhaps it will win the Oscars 2025 if the movie Flow doesn’t catch the flow of judges.
I watched the movie last year because I thought it was necessary to watch the sequel.
But you don’t have to. It really doesn’t matter. You can watch the first and skip the second, or vice versa.
Anyway, this is not the point of writing this article.
The point is, that the Sadness character from Inside Out movie franchise couldn’t fulfil its purpose effectively. It could have done better but missed a lot of points that are essential for people to know.
Because half information is more dangerous than no information, a teacher of mine used to say that.
So, what is it that Sadness missed? There are multiple things. Let’s find out.
Table of Contents
- The overlooked fact of Sadness from Inside Out
- The paradox of realising the value of something through sadness
- It’s never about happiness or joy – but the movie makes you believe it
The overlooked fact of Sadness from Inside Out
In the movie, the conflict between Joy and the Sadness character starts when Sadness touches the memory of Riley and turns it into something dark.
From that moment on, Joy tries to keep Sadness away from all those memories, so that Riley can only feel happiness: the good emotions.
However, her plan doesn’t work out well and in the climax, she realises that in order to help Riley create all those personality islands, there’s ample need for Sadness. The scene where Riley was sad and because of that, her parents came to make her feel good tries to convey this point that because of sadness we feel happiness/joy.
Like you won’t realise the meaning/value of something until it is not gone.
And once you do that, what are you going to do? Well, you’re going to preserve it with all your might.
But do you think it is the right way to handle sadness?
No, it’s not because by doing so we are not accepting sadness, which creates a paradox of running after good emotions and ignoring the bad ones.
The paradox of realising the value of something through sadness
When we realise the meaning of something due to the effect of sadness, what we are going to do is we will always be okay with what we get in our lives.
It’s a good thing to be grateful for what you have, but just because we realise its meaning, we will be afraid to lose it. We will be scared of the sadness because we don’t want to feel it because it reminds us of “the good” we lost.
Now, rather than enjoying it, we will try to protect it. We will try to put it on a pedestal.
For example, you are in a relationship and because you know how you feel when it ends, you will try to overcoat it with love, even if the partner is toxic.
Why?
Because you don’t want to experience that loneliness again: the bad emotions aka, sadness.
And there the Sadness character has fooled us all.
If you go with the movie’s perspective of sadness, it is all about letting sadness in your life to help you understand what brings joy in your life.
But that’s not all.
It’s never about happiness or joy – but the movie makes you believe it
Someone once said, “You don’t have to go and try to make everything right. Let the wrong guide you to the right.”
The same applies to each and every emotion we humans experience.
Happiness is not because of sadness. Yes, because of the sadness, we realise the value of joy but that doesn’t mean you have to choose happiness.
- We don’t choose happiness, it happens on its own.
- We don’t choose sadness, it happens on its own.
So, what you need to do is, sit with it. Let the sadness subside. Let it sink in.
Sadness isn’t here to help you realise the meaning of things but to help you realise yourself.
Who you are actually as a person and what it should have in it that’s what the role of sadness is.
The movie is clearly telling that because of sadness happiness exists.
But the same is true with sadness because it is because of happiness.
When we are happy, we don’t think about sadness, so why do we need to think about happiness when we are sad?
This is my question to the makers.
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