Sadness, the character, spends most of the movie believing she's the worst, that she ruins every memory she touches, and that Riley's life would be infinitely improved if she were to just disappear forever.
Girl, you couldn't be more wrong.
Inside Out demonstrates that no emotions—including sadness—are necessarily bad. In fact, understanding our own sadness is a gateway to other, more sophisticated emotions, like empathy. Feelings, just like Netflix, frozen yogurt, and Miley Cyrus, are best in moderation.
Feelings get more complex as you get older, too; for starters, you can feel multiple emotions at the same time. You can even be happy and sad at the same time.
No feeling (like Joy, for example) should be valued above, or at the exclusion of, all the other ones (including Sadness). Sadness makes you slow down, think about your life, consider where it's going next, and signal to others that you need a hand or a hug or a Hannah Montana streaming binge.
What? Like that's only us.
Questions about Sadness
- In the age of selfies, how can understanding our own sadness make us less self-obsessed?
- How does Sadness help Riley get back together with her parents?
- As a pre-teen leaves childhood behind, what role does sadness play in forming their new personality? Use Riley as an example, use yourself as an example, or go hog-wild and use both, you maverick.
- Joy's "a-ha!" moment in the film comes when she realizes that, in Riley's happy hockey Core Memory, her parents and teammates weren't necessarily there to celebrate; they were there to cheer Riley up after she blew the game-winning goal. Riley's joy was determined by sadness. What other ways do emotions influence each other? Give us at least one fresh example, please.
Chew on This
If you broke your arm skateboarding, you wouldn't ignore it; you'd get it fixed with the help of a doctor and let your mom bring you chicken noodle soup and comic books. We shouldn't ignore sadness, either. Once Riley expresses it, things start to get better.
The movie tells us that sadness enhances your appreciation of happiness.