From Screen To Canvas: Lessons From "Inside Out 2" In Art Therapy

Joy and the team contend with all-new emotions. PHOTO CREDIT: DISNEY/PIXAR

By The Red Pencil (Singapore)
Aug 01, 2024 4:22pm

(Minor plot spoilers from ‘Inside Out 2’ ahead)

“We keep the best and toss the rest."

Barely 10 minutes into Pixar’s latest film Inside Out 2, we’d be tempted to agree with Joy’s philosophy of only keeping the good memories, while tossing out the bad ones that don’t seem to benefit us in any way.

But by the end of the film’s hour-and-a-half runtime, you might find yourself reaching a very different conclusion.

In case you haven’t caught up with the Inside Out universe yet, our protagonist Joy makes her return in the sequel to the first film alongside Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust – all characters personifying core emotions in 14-year-old Riley Anderson, a teen girl just beginning to find her place in her new high school.

Chaos descends upon the emotions’ Headquarters, however, as various circumstances lead to the arrival of new emotions Anxiety, Embarrassment, Envy, and Ennui, who swiftly imprison the original five core emotions and assume control of Riley’s mind.

I’ll confess – I watched the film without having seen the original which released in 2015.

A grave crime, I know.

But I understand now why the Inside Out universe was able to move audiences so powerfully – some scenes feel like you’re staring at yourself in the mirror.

Here are three things I took away from it:

Like the original film, Inside Out 2 offers insight into the need to be able to recognise and identify our emotions.

The introduction of the new emotions in the movie gives filmgoers – especially younger audiences – even more names to what they could be feeling – I even had to Google what Ennui was before realizing, Hey, that kind of sounds familiar.

And being able to recognize and express those emotions? That’s also at the core of what art therapy is all about.

The creative process encourages individuals to explore and express their full range of emotions. One beneficiary’s story, for instance, likened himself to a sports car – amazingly fast, thrill-seeking – yet on the inside, he felt empty.

“Everyone is unique,” said Yen Chua, co-founder of Art Therapists’ Association Singapore.

“We express ourselves differently due to our upbringing, mental capacity, cultural backgrounds and language differences. Sometimes, when words fail or limit us, art can function as a common language that can help us express our thoughts and feelings.”

Through creative activities like drawing and painting, we can externalize these complexities, making them more tangible and easier to understand.

Inside Out 2 did great work in continuing the conversation about emotional wellbeing, and perhaps a future, third installation of the franchise will really expand our emotional vocabulary and introduce bigger, more complex feelings like Doubt, or Chagrin, or Self-Confidence.

But the feeling I’d like to see introduced most of all, is Hope.

“Maybe this is what happens when you grow up. You feel less joy.”

I had to mentally hit pause at Joy’s despondent statement for a moment.

I think we’ve all had times where we’ve felt the child we all once were – with that sense of joy and wonder – float further and further away as time goes by.

And perhaps we wonder if we’re changing too fast.

But change is a theme central to the process of art therapy. It’s what allows our beneficiaries to find their inner resilience, adapting and growing as they face challenges and transitions.

And the beauty of it is that change itself is tangibly captured, artwork by artwork.

Art therapist Calvin Pang shared with us his observations on the growth of beneficiaries through the creative process, noting how he was able to observe the progressive buildup through the canvases.

“Essentially, that is what art therapy is about. You want some level of physical documentation – physical way to track changes in the psyche,” explained the art therapist.

“When somebody adds something new; when somebody introduces something on the canvas; when they remove from the canvas – that itself all suggests some inner process going on.”

Change doesn’t always mean things go away. Perhaps sometimes we just need to change the way we look at it.

For much of Inside Out 2, we see Riley being controlled by whoever was at the helm of the emotional control panel in Headquarters.

In one particular moment in the film, the situation in Headquarters has devolved to the point where Anxiety has literally spun out of control, frantically pushing Riley to perform better in her hockey try-outs until she teeters on the verge of a panic attack.

It’s a painful scene to watch.

How many times have we had the same feeling of being so consumed by our thoughts that we freeze up, unable to do anything at all?

Or how many times have we felt ourselves boiling over with pent-up frustration?

The ideas of self-image and our sense of identity are huge themes in art therapy. We might often be tempted to think that being anxious, or being angry, is who we are.

But art therapy enables beneficiaries to understand who they are as a person uncoloured by any character traits.

It encourages them to think about how they feel about themselves and who they think they are through the creative process.

I really resonated with something one beneficiary shared: “Every emotion is like the four seasons of time. Most of the time I felt like it’s a winter time, but somehow I still have to experience a time with colours and a time with joy.”

Each emotion is a season in time we pass through, and seasons come and go.

Although Joy and Anxiety both thought they were doing what’s best for Riley and were trying to protect her, ultimately they learned they couldn’t decide who Riley was. Only she could choose who she was.

And the same goes for all of us.

At the end of the film, it’s no longer Anxiety, or Joy, or any of the other characters really who take charge at Headquarters for whatever situation they see fit.

It’s Riley who chooses them.

Sometimes we get downcast. Sometimes we flare up. Sometimes we make mistakes. But we get to choose how that impacts us.

Sure, we can be messy sometimes, and if we really had anthropomorphic characterisations of our emotions living in our heads, perhaps even they might think so too.

But that’s okay.