{"id":7833,"date":"2024-07-06T09:52:16","date_gmt":"2024-07-06T13:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/?p=7833"},"modified":"2024-07-15T21:45:47","modified_gmt":"2024-07-16T01:45:47","slug":"inside-out-2-sheds-light-on-common-teenage-struggles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/?p=7833","title":{"rendered":"Inside Out 2 Sheds Light on Common Teenage Struggles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ria Beri \u201827
\n<\/span>EE <\/span><\/i>Staff Writer<\/span><\/p>\n

Warning: This article contains spoilers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Released to theaters on June 14, Inside Out 2<\/em> has already distinguished itself by becoming the first movie of 2024 to gross over $1 billion. The well-received film is a sequel to the original Inside Out movie (2015) and follows rising freshman Riley Andersen as she sets out to make her school\u2019s varsity ice hockey team and fit in with its elder players. The film series frequently portrays the inside of Riley\u2019s head, which contains characters that represent each emotion.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the start of the movie, Riley\u2019s excellent performance in an ice hockey game earns her an invitation to a tryout camp for the high school\u2019s state champion team, the Fire Hawks. Being the mere freshmen that they are, Riley and her best friends, Bree and Grace – who have qualified as well, are beyond ecstatic. However, the night before the camp, Riley faces her first puberty attack. She shouts at her mom, and her heartbeat soars as her mind combs through the countless scenarios that could take place at the camp, most of them ending in her failure and humiliation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Up until this point, Riley\u2019s mind had only five emotions: joy, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. During the attack, a group of workers come and update the emotion console inside of her mind. Following the upgrade, the characters observe that even the slightest touch to the console sends Riley into a full-blown fit. The next day, Bree and Grace inform Riley that they are moving away and will be unable to attend high school with her. Riley succumbs to yet another sea of gloom and the anxiety, embarrassment, envy, ennui, and nostalgia characters make their appearance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although an uncommon word, ennui is regularly seen in adolescents and describes \u201ca feeling of weariness, dissatisfaction, and boredom\u201d (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Embarrassment entails feeling ashamed of one\u2019s actions while envy is an expressed longing for and jealousy of another\u2019s traits or possessions. The most abundant emotion in the film, anxiety is \u201ccharacterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts, and physical changes like increased blood pressure\u201d (American Psychological Organization). Nostalgia makes just two appearances but denotes the mixed feeling of happiness and sadness that arises when one recalls pleasant past events; think, the phrase \u201cthe good old days\u201d. The presence of these emotions in teenagers can be linked to hormonal development, lack of confidence, criticism from peers, and a perceived loss of innocence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Knowing that she will not have Bree and Grace to keep her company if she makes the team, Riley sets out to befriend the older girls at the camp, starting with no one other than her idol, Valentina \u201cVal\u201d Ortiz. Val made the varsity team as a freshman, has set numerous state records, and is currently the senior captain. She quickly takes Riley under her wing, and Riley does her best to conform to the group and impress Val, even going so far as to dye her front strand of hair the same shade of red as her.<\/span><\/p>\n

As all of this happens, Riley\u2019s emotions, especially anxiety, go crazy inside of her head. The new, teenage emotions have put themselves in charge, banishing the youth emotions to the back of Riley\u2019s mind. Anxiety desperately attempts to reconstruct her personality and mold her into a person that the elder players would like, reasoning that \u201cit is not about who she is, it is about who she needs to be.\u201d Embarrassment also makes its first debut, and Riley begins to cringe at her every action and dialogue. Outside of this storybook form, these emotions have had and will continue to have the same destructive effect on millions of teenagers.<\/span><\/p>\n

The movie comes to an end with a scrimmage between the Fire Hawks and Bree and Grace\u2019s new team. The elder players inform Riley that a strong performance in the scrimmage is pivotal if she wants to make the varsity team. Riley learns that Val scored two goals in the scrimmage her freshman year, so she makes it her goal to score three.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Starting the moment that the buzzer goes off, Riley fights for and gains control of the puck. Refusing to pass to anyone, she swiftly scores two goals. Although these goals put Riley on track to reach her target, her teammates and coach begin to loathe her for her selfish plays. While trying to score her third goal, Riley ends up slamming into her old friend Grace and knocking her to the ground. She quickly skates to the bleachers and suffers a full-scale panic attack, fueled by no one other than the dreaded Anxiety.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>As the attack takes place, the film shifts to display the emotion console inside of Riley\u2019s mind. There, Anxiety is living up to her name and frantically operating the console, trying to ensure that the scrimmage goes perfectly and Riley continues scoring.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She senses Riley\u2019s panic and enters a state of hysteria herself, her orange color spinning around her. Riley\u2019s heartbeat continues to accelerate and she gasps for air as Anxiety maps out everything that could go wrong in the scrimmage. However, the movie does have a happy ending. Bree and Grace skate over and comfort Riley, causing her childhood emotions to return to the console. Riley steps back out on the ice, and this time plays as a better and more cooperative teammate. Impressed by her ameliorated sportsmanship, Coach Roberts gives her a spot on the varsity ice hockey team.<\/span><\/p>\n

Riley is all of us. As soon as we turn 13, it seems as if our innocence and joy have vanished through no fault of our own, leaving lethargy, body odor, and mood swings to take their place. Those who once fed us candy and sang to us now criticize our actions, appearance, and friends, making us wonder why we are so seemingly gross and unpleasant. In the movie, Joy reflects on Anxiety\u2019s dejected effect, admitting that she does not \u201cknow how to stop Anxiety. Maybe [she] can\u2019t. Maybe this is what happens when you grow up. You feel less joy.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While it would be easy to blame societal pressures for all of the negative emotions that we teenagers experience, it would not be entirely true. Even as the movie developed, Riley proceeded to drive herself to the brink of insanity to make the team despite no outside force telling her she needed to. I can definitely relate, and am sure that many of you can, to inner pressure like this. We are still children and naturally seek to gain the admiration of others, prompting us to push ourselves to answer every question correctly in school and score every goal possible on the field. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the film, this self motivation no doubt proved to be unhealthy at times. However, it also pushed Riley to be the best version of herself. The harsh truth is that Riley\u2019s childhood emotions alone were not enough to help her keep up with the new world of teenagehood. Anxiety was not the villain of the story but rather just another emotion that made Riley aware of what was happening and what needed to be done.<\/span><\/p>\n

In an interview, Director Kelsey Mann revealed that his hope for Inside Out 2<\/em> was \u201cto tell a story that made some teenagers’ lives that much easier.\u201d And that it did. By illustrating a girl whose new, adolescent feelings made her struggle at first but ultimately guided her to reach her goal, we are shown that emotions, pleasant or unpleasant, shape who we are. Inside Out 2<\/em> gave a proper perspective of what it means to be a teenager, teaching watchers of all ages that, while change can be scary, it is necessary.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ria Beri \u201827 EE Staff Writer Warning: This article contains spoilers. Released to theaters on June 14, Inside Out 2 has already distinguished itself by becoming the first movie of 2024 to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":7835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","category-opinions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7833"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7837,"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7833\/revisions\/7837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}