Memories and Personality Traits — Thoughts and Reflections about Pixar’s Inside Out

This is the third article of the series, you can find the second one here:

DISCLAIMER Everything you’re going to read is either contextually provided with the source of information or just my brain juice. In any case, remember that this analysis is just my interpretation and opinion.

Even if it’s difficult to spoil a movie from 10 years ago, it’s not impossible: if you didn’t watch the movie, you HAVE to! It’s a Pixar masterpiece. Moreover, the article ahead is full of spoilers.

Short and Long term Memory, Memory Dump

It’s a pleasant depiction of the memory: memories are spheres of a certain colour, related to the main emotion inside of them. During the day, everything happening to Riley is processed through her emotions that take turns on the “console”, which is the way an emotion-character makes Riley feel something. Every time the console is operated, a sphere is generated with the same colour as the operator and piles up on shelves: the short-term memory. When Riley falls asleep, the emotions “working day” is done and all the memories are flushed to the long-term memory, a huge labyrinth of shelves from which, periodically, memories are discarded to the “Memory Dump”. The criterium is not super-clear, but it seems that the dump workers know if Riley doesn’t care anymore for a certain memory when it looks faded.

From the long-term memory, the spheres can be reclaimed by an Emotion from the control room, to make Riley relive the moment. But it can also pop up automatically, like when you have something rolling on your mind (an ad jingle, in the movie).

In the movie, it is also stated that more or less every memory meets its fate of fading out (apart from the obnoxious jingle) and when they fall to the dump, they can’t come back.

Emotions falling the Memory Dump

Thinking about this scene is hurting. Feelings falling in the dump are simply about to be forgotten! I tried to find the meaning of all this: Riley would become unable to feel joy, be happy again. The same goes for Sadness: while they are in the dump, Riley is neither happy nor sad. She is driven by anger and fear mostly. According to this depiction, it seems to be possible to forget an emotion, or “numb” it. This can be associated with trauma and may lead to severe issues like depression, derealization or depersonalization.

The most frequent cases, however, refer to physical traumas damaging portions of the brain and causing the impossibility to feel again. Like what happens in lobotomy. This leads me to the next topic of analysis.

Islands of Personality and Core Memories

When something really important happens, a particular type of memory is generated. Joy calls them Core Memories. they are glowing and end up in a holder from which a sort of powerline powers up an island, one for each core memory. These are the Islands of Personality and represent what our personality is made of.

For the 12 yo Riley it is friendship, honesty, goofball, family and hockey. All of them are powered up by happy memories, but the movie lets us understand that also other emotions may drive core memories.

Indeed, researchers found a correlation between personality traits and memory or, better, emotion-memory interactions. So, it is correct to say that we are made of our experiences (memories) and also, to a certain degree, we are in constant change.

This is because we are constantly accumulating new memories and letting older, less important ones fade out.

So the entire plot of Inside Out is, to me, a great fictionalization of the growth of a teenager! What we see as a disaster and an adventure of the protagonists (Joy and Sadness) is, indeed, a normal step in a kid’s life, and mind.

This evolution is natural but also shocking, even traumatizing for someone. And important events play the role of triggers in it, like Riley’s family moving from Minnesota to San Francisco.

Riley and her family getting honest about their feelings is the way to move on and rebuild what she lost

Riley experiences the loss of many islands, just to recover them in the end when she and her family finally get honest about their feelings, for example, the Family Island gets rebuilt and powered up again by the Melancholic (Joy+Sadness) memory of Riley reuniting with her family.

But she also gets new ones: like new interests and new traits she is developing as a teenager.

In particular, she gets a brand new Boy Band Island 😄. Fear hopes it’s temporary… I think it is! It’s hard to find boy band fans much older than a teenager… Suggesting somehow that the islands may change over time, maybe with less catastrophic emphasis as the person grows older.

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