On June 4th the Disney Pixar hit “Inside Out” was released. It is a movie based on a young 11 year old girl that ends  up having to move away from the town she has known her whole life and is forced into the strange unknown. She does not make this journey with just her parents though, she makes it with those that govern the inner most workings of her mind. There are five characters that control her reactions to her everyday experiences, these characters are manifested as Joy, Anger, Fear, Disgust, and Sadness. Their main objective is to make memories for her and to assure that they are all Joy’s memories because that is how her happiness remains. Conflict arises and Joy, sadness, and the young girls core memories (her first hockey game, meeting her best friend, etc.) are no longer at “headquarters.”

Beyond headquarters with Joy, Sadness, and the core memories you visit Family Island, Honesty Island, Hockey Island, Friendship Island and Goofball Island, all of which are the result of her five core memories. Along the journey back to headquarters there are aisles of memories which you later find out are known as the archives for the young girl, Riley’s, long term memories. Along their adventure they come upon Riley’s old imaginary friend walking throughout long term as well. The three of them attempt to make their way back to headquarters to put an end to the destruction of Riley’s memories and emotions (due to the fact that Anger, Fear, And Disgust are the only one governing Riley’s actions and reactions). During their final realization of how to make it back, Joy (with the core memories) and the imaginary friend fall into the memories dump. The memory dump is where useless memories go to be forgotten over time (symbolizing short term memory).

I’m discussing this movie with all of you because for an animated children’s movie, it revealed a sundry amount of information about out emotions and also our memories. Long term memory is a system for permanently storing, managing, and retrieving information for later use. Items of information stored as long-term memory may be available for a lifetime and is illustrated exactly in the way within the movie. It also revealed that our “core memories” (i.e. wedding days, births, deaths, siblings) shift our personalities and share a greater connection than we realize. In reference to the memory dump, that is the physical manifestation of short term memory, which is the capacity for holding a small amount of information in mind in an active, readily available state for a short period of time, which explains why all memories in the dump eventually fade.

I highly suggest that everyone watch this movie, not only does it explain memory to children but it helps with the understanding of personalty and emotion. It ultimately tells us that it is if you aren’t always happy and even the sadder memories can be good ones.