I hereby dedicate this post to my friend Wenzhi whom in addition to being a kick ass movie buddy since undergrad and just the most reliable human being in general, I, the most unreliable human being, missed a movie date with last night which was her birthday due to [wo]man-hunting for my mother in Kitchener-Waterloo for 3 hours.
Running kind out of mental energy to write as I spent way too much processing energy on understanding the details my pea-sized brain can grasp in the new Pixar movie "Inside Out", but here's trying to push through with some writing.
Once in a while I should probably write something normal or slightly more positive/uplifting. Therefore, I'd like to talk about the two very interesting movies we watched together over the course of last month this year. But after the movie today, I realized that without 'Sadness', there is very little emotional room and tranquility to process thoughts (always 'Joy'fully skipping around, no peace and quiet for thought). Thus, it's ironic that I am trying to write something happy because I am motivated by the impulse of strong feeling [which, according to the movie, is a synonym for sadness] triggered by the movie I just watched.
About four weeks ago, we watched Ted 2. My kind of joke movie. The storyline is pretty terrible, rigid romance and plot pitching together the comedy skits about porn, pot, teddy bear and the like. Pretty entertaining movie, though was not as refreshingly eccentric as the first movie. Though the storyline directly mocks a pretty hot social justice topic in our time (or so, of all time) of what it means to be human, dating since the beginning of human civilization - slaves, women, homosexuals, etc. and that really felt kind of like the sort of feel good movie I want to watch, having become increasingly more interested in social justice issues revolving feminism and empowering girls. It was a pretty easy going movie, easy to digest, and the best part is Ted's rebel life style that I much envy.
The second movie we watched today was Pixar's new movie Inside Out as mentioned above. This has to be this year's and Pixar's most raw, disturbing, and torturous movie I've ever seen. Oh man and this one was so intellectually challenging for me while as I watch and simultaneously trying to catch all the symbolisms in the movie. I don't know when it started that I started picking up fine details in movies (maybe after I started extensively writing and reading about a year ago), or perhaps just this movie is so explicit and crude about the turbulence of human emotions that there's so many things to pick up in it. Having watched this movie, especially at its bitter-sweet ending, I feel like my day's mood just darkened by a megafold. Every natural action of characters in an animated film you'd expect, when put in this film, just rings a thousand times louder. The resistance to change [growing up and moving to a new environment] caused angst is carried throughout the film as Joy consistently downplays Sadness' comments, trying to restore the emotions to its old ways. Death [of innocence] is so very explicitly pictured without any decoration from the vanishing of the imaginary friend. In the end, when the core memories consist of multiple colors, brings much sadness in the way that it portrays how helpless we are in determining how our mental development takes place and ultimately suggesting that our will power can only do its best to learn to cope and see the light amidst the darkness. Very cruel in the way that we must all face growing up and reality eventually and learn to cope with some form of sadness that is inevitable, an unidealistic truth of life. And lastly, the depiction of difference voices inside different characters' heads shows the dominant emotions in ourselves - the father's anger, the competitive natural drive of the male specie; the mother's sadness, the cooperative, reasonable, rational empathy of the female specie.
This movie is undoubtfully beyond my intelligence at the moment to fully grasp, and I haven't even mentioned the references to abstract ideas of the human mind yet.
I strongly suggest this movie for those who has strong mental capacity and can withstand a brutal stripping and torturing break down of your own emotions. It's a genuine intelligent horror movie and if you think you can sleep properly watching it, I highly recommend it.
Thinking about it, I told Wenzhi that the dominance of emotions in my head would be Anger > Joy > Sadness > Disgust > Fear.
Though, in my future role as a teacher for adolescents, perhaps there were two things that could use two major modifications, namely:
- My sketchy rebel-gangster inner self's enjoyment of Ted movie's kind of humor and teenage boy's fascination and envy for Ted's lifestyle should probably go down the drain, as the [Morgan Freeman] lawyer says "You could've been an inspiration" to Ted when he initially rejected to take on his case... I need to be an 'Inspiration' for students... or so, at least be a 'proper role model' for students.
- Maybe my emotions should line up in the order of Joy > Sadness > Fear > Disgust > Anger in a teacher persona. I should teach my students to be positive and happy. Though, they'll learn the inevitable existence of much Sadness in our life and have to be forced to learn to cope with it eventually. Whether it be pulling up genuine Joy to overcome it, or Fear-fully retreat back to their comfort zone, or put oneself under a facade out of Disgust is different for everyone. But for me, I have chosen Anger - to rebel and fight and live however I want and succumb to no one in the face of the all encompassing Sadness.
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