By Melissa Whitworth//
Writers and filmmakers forever aim to represent the human experience, but it’s a near impossible task to visually depict the inner workings of the human brain. More so, to do it in an entertaining, box office-busting way, through animation and for an audience of children.
Perhaps the most visceral depiction of what anxiety and panic really feel like can be seen in movie theaters right now. “Inside Out 2,” which has brought in over $1.4 billion worldwide and is set to be Pixar’s most successful film yet, brings panic and the attendant maelstrom of emotions of adolescent life to reality in an astonishing way.
The “Inside Out” films, co-written by Meg LeFauve, cleverly personify human emotions, turning them into animated characters bickering over who should be in charge of Riley, the young girl and protagonist. Not only have the films been critical and commercial successes, but they have been praised as a tool desperately needed by children and teens at a time when adolescent mental health has never been in a worse place.
“I am drawing on this as a girl who was a teenager with anxiety back in the day when nobody talked about mental health at all, and also as a parent,” said LeFauve in an interview with The Recorder before a special screening at The Bedford Playhouse. The script was also written during the pandemic lockdown “when anxiety was very accessible to us,” she noted.
The action for both films takes place largely in the command center of Riley’s brain, where Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust battle over a Starship Enterprise-style control panel. The first film ended with a new button appearing on the console, labeled “puberty.” Enter Anxiety, Ennui, Embarrassment and Envy for the sequel.
“We started with the creative idea, which is Pete Docter [chief creative officer at Pixar] wanting to talk about anxiety because when he was a teenager that anxiety came on very strong,” explained LeFauve, who was nominated for an Oscar for the first film in 2015. The research started to focus on anxiety. “But it wasn’t just anxiety in general. It had to be anxiety in teens,” and specifically in teenage girls, she added.
Both films carry powerful messages, bravely aimed at children. One message is that sadness should not be avoided and repressed. A second is the role of anxiety in dominating all other emotions. Yet another is how children form a core belief system and sense of self. The animators drew the core beliefs as long, elastic beams of light.
LeFauve, who has more than a touch of Joy about her in person, has a new favorite character. “I really like Anger because a lot of girls aren’t allowed to be angry and I find that problematic,” she said. “Anger is just a way to put down a boundary. Yes, there’s ways to do it, but women should be allowed to be angry.” She also has had a soft spot for Sadness from the beginning of the series.
LeFauve turned to screenwriting after working as a producer for Jodie Foster for ten years. “I really learned a lot of storytelling from her and the way to approach a story. She’s an actress and a director: she wants to know thematically, what is this about? She used to call it, ‘What’s the big beautiful idea in here?’ And then she would build from there. So, if you wanted to pitch anything, you had to start with that emotional human condition,” she recalled.
By the end of “Inside Out 2,” Anxiety, a frazzled hyper-frenetic, orange, muppet-like character voiced by Maya Hawke, has taken over the control panel that operates Riley’s brain and no other emotions can take hold. One of the final scenes is a full-blown panic attack for Riley represented by a whirling hurricane of bright orange streaks. It is here that the film is so accurate in imagining what an attack might actually look like.
The filmmakers are not trying to claim deep mental health knowledge, LeFauve is quick to point out, although Pixar is known for conducting deep-dive research for its movie projects. Consulting on the film were two renowned mental health professionals, Dr. Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Dr. Lisa Damour, a clinical psychologist and author with a specialization in teen mental health.
“We’re not mental health experts, we have to be very careful about that,” cautioned LeFauve. “But we’re hoping maybe the movie at least gets you to start talking about it so you can decide your own path. As long as the movie connects to someone or a group, then you feel like as a writer, we did our jobs.”
Therapists are saying the film has fast become an invaluable tool for opening up the discussion about mental health.
Robbie Len is a licensed social worker with a private practice in Bedford Hills who has worked in family practice with many children and adolescents. He loves the concept of the “Inside Out” series, he said.
“Personifying anger, fear, disgust and joy helps kids, especially young kids, understand the sort of emotions that might be driving them to avoid something or to act out or to seek some comfort,” Len said. “That aspect of the movie gives kids something they can grasp onto that’s very theoretical, but when you see it represented on a screen, it’s actually very simple.”
LeFauve has been told by one therapist who works with autistic children that the films have a huge impact on their work.
“Especially for nonverbal kids,” she said. “They can now have something to talk about with them, but now they can talk in a more complex way with the older artistic teenagers, too. It’s just a quicker way to get to the conversation and that you can have a common language.”
At an awards ceremony in Los Angeles, a woman walked up to LeFauve and told her the film had made her job so much easier.
“And I said, ‘Oh, what do you do?’” LeFauve recalled. “And she said, ‘I am a psychiatrist that works for the city of Los Angeles. On the night of a trauma, after the police are done, I go in and talk to the children to try to help them. And now I can reach them so fast: your movie.’”
“Oh my God!” LeFauve exclaimed. “Who needs an Academy Award after that?”