MovieChat Forums > Inside Out (2015) Discussion > Gender diversity of Riley's emotions ver...

Gender diversity of Riley's emotions versus those of the adults

posted 8 years ago by jevicci
24 replies | jump to latest

All the adults' emotions match the gender of the person, whereas Riley has both male and female emotions. I wonder if this is an allusion to gender plasticity and the potential in us all for our psyches to end up identifying as a different gender than that of our physical bodies.

The adults are all fully-developed and their psyches have settled on a particular gender (in the cases shown, all cis). Riley, on the other hand, not being fully developed, has a mixture. If, for whatever reasons cause someone to be transgendered, Riley were to go that route, perhaps those female emotions would eventually turn male? The "normal" case being that eventually, for her, both Anger and Fear would become female as she developed into a cisgendered female?

This makes sense in that we see her starting out with more female emotions than male. This, combined with all the societal reinforcement and influences to be cisgendered, would make it more likely that she would go that route. However, in some minority of cases, other factors would bring about the opposite outcome or some other deviation from this "norm".

I'd actually be surprised if the filmmakers had this in mind, but it would add another level of psychological accuracy to their already extremely well-crafted metaphorical portrayal of emotional development...and why else would only she have multi-gendered emotions and none of the adults? I can't remember if any of the other kids' minds they dive into (the kid who dropped his water bottle, the "eye shadow" girl) also have multi-gendered emotions.

[–] mrmoo2001 8 years ago

Nah it's just Pixar being lazy. You will notice that all the fannyphobic boy and the eyeshadow girl had entirely male and female emotions respectively, and that the adult working at the pizza shop had multi-gendered emotions. On top of this you will see that the cat and dog had emotions that, colour aside (and I should think that anyone talking of gender identity and using terms like 'cis' should be well past the caring about anyone's colour) were totally identical.

Take them to the security kitchen!

[–] jevicci 8 years ago

Yeah, if the other two kids didn't have multi-gendered emotions then that blows my idea out of the water. One could maybe argue that some people are born with all emotions that match their physical gender and that was the case with these two, but that would obviously be clinging to the idea with nothing really to back it up.

[–] reaseltbim 8 years ago

the two male emotions were ANGER and FEAR

they were not good emotions, to me it felt like they were trying to imply that anger is something male humans have more of, that men are more prone to anger, I felt like Pixar was trying to say that anger is something that is more strongly in males

Remember the bus driver his head was ALL Anger, all of them were anger in different colors.

I Guess you could say the same about fear and analytical thinking or about not being risk taking. I thought it was a joke to make these two male.

(I did not see or feel any of this "cisgender" bull you are trying to bring in. she was just a baby when the emotions came out.... just a little baby. wtf

[–] reaseltbim 8 years ago

here it is from the trivia, I just read it. I was right in my previews post

When asked about the genders of the emotions, Pete Docter said, "It was intuitive. It felt to me like Anger's very masculine, I don't know why ... Sadness felt a little more feminine and Mindy Kaling as Disgust felt right ... with Mom and Dad, we skewed them all male and all female for a quick read, because you have to understand where we are, which is a little phony but hopefully people don't mind!"

[–] jevicci 8 years ago

we skewed them all male and all female for a quick read, because you have to understand where we are, which is a little phony but hopefully people don't mind

"A little phony"? I don't understand that. Sounds more like what mrmoo2001 said: lazy. But, yeah, this confirms that my idea was not the case, which doesn't surprise me.

I did not see or feel any of this "cisgender" bull you are trying to bring in. she was just a baby when the emotions came out.... just a little baby. wtf

It appears you didn't understand what I was suggesting. Please go back and read my original post a little more carefully. Or don't, since the question has now been answered :P

[–] reaseltbim 8 years ago

how can a baby be "cis"?

[–] jevicci 8 years ago

plitiby84:

how can a baby be "cis"?

The baby wasn't cis. But the child was shown to have both male and female emotions. What I was proposing was that this was done to indicate that we are born with aspects of both genders within us and, depending on how we develop over the course of our lives, a particular gender tends to dominate (or, in some cases, perhaps not, in the case of bisexuals). For the majority of people, the gender that dominates ends up matching their biology, but for some, the opposite occurs. Do you understand what I'm getting at?

[–] nomen_meltdown 8 years ago

Mentioning bisexuality seems, though, to conflate gender identity (ie. "do I feel like a male or a female, and does that agree with my anatomy- making me cisgendered- or disagree- making me trans?") with sexual orientation ("am I attracted to males, females, or both?"), when they're different variables. I thought your original argument was sound (actually my first impression was similar), but this was a bit of a misstep in defending it.

I'm an island- peopled by bards, scientists, judges, soldiers, artists, scholars & warrior-poets.

[–] jevicci 8 years ago

You're right. I used the wrong term. I meant to refer to some state between identifying completely as male or female. Is that even a thing? I'm not sure, but it seems to me that it could be. What would you call that? Bigendered? Pangendered?

[–] nomen_meltdown 8 years ago

I know "androgynous" is a term (waning in favour) for someone whose outward gender expression is ambiguous, but that's just appearances. To the best of my knowledge the preferred term for someone who feels, internally, that they're somewhere in between male and female is "gender-fluid." Which, yes, sounds like a bit of a dirty euphemism, but nevertheless...

Or, in certain Native American cultures I think they'd have used "two-spirited" (as in male and female spirits in one body), but that usage did tend to conflate gender with sexual orientation; like, men who were attracted to other men were understood to have a female spirit inclining them that way, 'co-habitating' with the body-aligned male spirit. Or something. It's been explained to me before, some time ago, but I don't want to presume to speak with too much authority on cultural beliefs that aren't my own.

I'm an island- peopled by bards, scientists, judges, soldiers, artists, scholars & warrior-poets.

[–] jevicci 8 years ago

"Gender-fluid" gives me the impression that their gender identity is in flux. I wonder if there's a term that refers to someone who has actually settled somewhere in the middle.

[–] nomen_meltdown 8 years ago

The only truly "settled" people are the dead ;)

I'm an island- peopled by bards, scientists, judges, soldiers, artists, scholars & warrior-poets.

[–] jevicci 8 years ago

Apparently I'm dead, then. Damn it!

[–] MechaLechaHighMechaHineyHineyHo 8 years ago

I'm pretty sure the filmmakers did not do any of this with gender identity in mind. It may have crossed their mind, but I don't think they kept to it. I just don't get the vibe that they were playing on any kind of identity politics or whatever you want to call it in this case. I am going to take a wild guess and say they are that way because the emotions are the main characters, thus more defined, and it is just more interesting and more fulfilling to have a diversity of genders, especially in a kid's movie marketed towards a unisex demographic. Even if the majority of the main characters are one sex over the other, to add in a couple or few of the other makes it feel more complete, and it is no more than a tactic made for wider audience appeal rather than the logic of "if this is a female, they must all be female". When developing the emotions/characters, they thought of which would be best fitting as a male, and anger was the conclusion, as it is more commonly thought of to be a masculine emotion (emphasis on the term "commonly thought of"), and fear is an emotion that isn't associated with sex/gender, and they figured they needed more than just one male among the many females to complete it, and they decided to go ahead and make the more universal emotion a male. That's just a guess.

 

Evil must be punished!

[–] jevicci 8 years ago

MechaLechaHighMechaHineyHineyHo:

I'm pretty sure the filmmakers did not do any of this with gender identity in mind.

Yeah, it's been confirmed that this wasn't the case by Pete Docter's quote above. However, based on what they show going on in Riley's head, I believe this would be completely plausible and, like I said, add yet another level of realism and depth to their already-rich symbolism and portrayal of human emotional development. In that sense, it's kind of a shame they didn't claim it.

[–] MechaLechaHighMechaHineyHineyHo 8 years ago

In that sense, it's kind of a shame they didn't claim it.

I see what you mean, but I just don't think it mattered that much, really. It didn't even cross my mind when i watched it, personally. Maybe just the way I look at things.

But, when working on film, one has to look at this from a business standpoint. The inclusion of male emotions obviously means they did what they did for gender diversity. If they took the most factual route rather and included strictly female emotions, meanwhile they are the main characters, it would stand a higher risk of appealing to girls. When one works on film, one big thing is to think about what works better in presentation. You can be as creative as you want, but you have to decide what would be more interesting, enjoyable, and fulfilling to the viewer. People out there want things to be realistic and to follow real life, but what they fail to realize is that sometimes you have to think not so much about the logical decision to make in your story, but the most effective. I mean, let's be honest: Real life is not exciting. We go to films to be entertained, not to re-enforce how boring real life is. Not that there isn't a boundary as to how far you can go, and also don't go too far the other way and do what is the least realistic no matter what.

That type of concept you bring up would be an interesting thing to think about, and I am sure Docter and his colleagues at Pixar would be fine with allowing you to consider this, and may not even deny the possibility, but the thing is, if that wasn't the intention, it would be phony of him to say "Yeah, that's precisely what it was." Docter is just being honest, really. And, if you ask me, I would rather be honest and allow people to entertain the possibility than outright lie about what i did. Personally, I think it keeps it more interesting if the creators did not decide to just outright put that in and then tell you that is objectively not the case, because then it ruins the fun of laying out theories because word of god (as they call it) says so.

 

Evil must be punished!

[–] jevicci 8 years ago

I agree that I would rather them be honest and not lie about it, but they could say something like, "Although that wasn't our intention when we decided to use both male and female emotions, this interpretation is in accord with theories of gender plasticity and is therefore valid." However, I can see them not wanting to get embroiled in this potentially-contentious and divisive subject.

[–] jevicci 8 years ago

Also, just to add to the confusion, it was recently brought to my attention that the father's "Joy" has breasts along with a moustache! I have no idea what the hell is up with that.

[–] raz-campbell 8 years ago

I think I know what's up with that:

Name one male who you've ever heard of, who is heterosexual and who doesn't associate breasts with joy...

As for the moustache, well, the thought behind that is... Uh oh... I have to go RIGHT NOW!!!! I don't even have time to finish (which is somewhat disingenuous, as I could clearly have finished my original line of thought in the time it took to write this, but still...) writing this senten

[–] jevicci 8 years ago

Haha! Good one!

[–] raz-campbell 8 years ago

:D :D :D

[–] Milkyway123 7 years ago

by jevicci »

Also, just to add to the confusion, it was recently brought to my attention that the father's "Joy" has breasts along with a moustache! I have no idea what the hell is up with that.

That's can't be. I just checked and triple checked: this is false.

[–] jevicci 7 years ago

Milkyway123:

That's can't be. I just checked and triple checked: this is false.

Check it out...

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/pixar/images/f/f3/Inside-Out-Father-Headquarters.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20141219005417

[–] Milkyway123 7 years ago

She was a tomboy - that's what sets her apart from all the rest of the characters. I think that explains it (even if the makers just wanted diverse characters to make it more fun).