Fun Mind talks about the challenge of growing up |

The Fun Mind animation brings delicious discoveries for children, young people and adults. But the main one is the attempt to understand the complexity of the mind and the functioning of the personality, through the personification of the voices that we all have within us. Some major voices were chosen by the screenwriter to be in the control panel of the human mind, they are: Anger, Disgust, Fear, Joy and Sadness.

Not by chance, Joy is ahead of the other emotions in controlling the mind of the protagonist of the film, the little girl Riley. After all, Alegria has spirit, initiative, is able to see the positive side of situations and sees herself as the guardian of the good memories of the pre-adolescent, who is about to see her life completely transformed.

Memories arise from the events, choices and emotions felt during the facts of life. Joy strives to ensure that Riley’s core memories, which structure her mind and underpin all of her other experiences, are not tainted by Sadness. For this reason, in a good part of the film, Joy tries to distance Sadness from memories, mainly the long-term ones and the base memories. With that, Sadness is seen even more discouraged, as she feels that her participation in Riley’s mind is always negative or null.

Conflicts of emotions in the film represent a passage to adolescence

And behold, an event promotes significant and structural changes in this situation: Riley’s parents decide to move to the city of San Francisco and the entire structure of memories and emotions of the 11-year-old girl collapses. The islands of personality begin to crumble: friends and family cease to be a positive reference, talent for hockey no longer finds a place of fulfillment, good humor and jokes no longer make sense. All of this is accompanied by an internal mess: Joy and Sadness are sucked out of Riley’s mind control tower in yet another moment of dispute for the preservation of memories. Without Joy and Sadness, the other emotions are confused and fearful in relation to the decisions of the command tower and the girl becomes depressed, without clarity of what she wants and what she feels. A beautiful metaphor of the transition from childhood to adolescence, used by director Peter Docter, who saw his own daughter experience strange and difficult situations at this point in her life.

A dangerous journey begins in search of assuming this mind control again. Trying to recover the knowledge that Riley has about herself and recover the sense of her personality, Joy and Sadness visit curious places such as the “Labirinto das Emoções”, the “Train of Thought” and the studio where dreams are recorded. On the other hand, they also know dark and difficult places of the mind, such as the “Subconscious” and the “Abyss of Oblivion”, while realizing that the islands of personality that sustain the girl’s mind succumb to chaos and fall one by one into this abyss. that sweeps away memories forever. Joy and Sadness find Riley’s Imaginary Friend along the way and the moment when he disappears for good along with the reformulations of maturity is the central point of the film. For adults, the disappearance of the Imaginary Friend, as a symbol of the end of childhood, is heartbreaking.

Parallel to Sadness and Joy’s pursuit of mind control, the girl Riley begins to act on the emotions that dominate her: anger, fear and disgust, and decides to run away from home, returning to Minnesota, her old city. Inside and outside the mind, one perceives a struggle against time, the search for some meaning to restructure the actions of the 11-year-old girl, before something definitive and dangerous happens to her.

Living means knowing how to deal with emotions

Almost at the end of hopes, Alegria manages to get out of the “Abyss of Oblivion”, from a song dictated by Friend Imaginário and has the great conciliatory and saving perception: one should not deny Sadness or any emotion. It was precisely in Riley’s moments of sadness that the other emotions arrived and that some of the girl’s base memories were structured. Joy understands at that moment that all emotions need to be experienced and integrated into experiences, and on this integration depends on the elaboration of meaning to continue living. Not only does one live with joy, but it can comfort the sad hours, give hope when one is afraid, or offer a different perspective on anger and disgust.

Not only does one live with joy, but it can comfort the sad hours, give hope when one is afraid, or offer a different perspective on anger and disgust.

The great insight of the character Alegria and the film Diversão Mente is that the meaning is given by acceptance and integration and not by denial, removal or forgetting. Thus, all emotions must be present for base memories to become solid and for Riley to deal with the challenges of maturity that require adaptation and transformation. To develop is, in fact, to integrate opposites, to build on what one lives, without throwing away pain as an experience of meaning. “Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed…”.

Passionate and colorful, Inside Out is a psychology lesson for all ages. And let the new challenges and labyrinths come.

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