SuperMechagodzilla posted:

Right, but then the actual problem: the film's literal message is that you should raise your child as as if she were a corporation. And vice-versa. It's corporate personhood taken to an extreme.

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

Right, but then the actual problem: the film's literal message is that you should raise your child as as if she were a corporation. And vice-versa. It's corporate personhood taken to an extreme.

Spatula City posted:

This is certainly how you've chosen to interpret it, but in the real world a lot of people have used it as an object lesson in how repressing sadness and trying to just be happy all the time is deeply unhealthy, and that sadness is a primary driver of empathy.

Hedrigall posted:

So Boss Baby is the sequel, got it

Hedrigall posted:

https://youtu.be/1JG6f5_37tg

Clip of the song "Gaston" from Beast '17

It's.... not very rousing.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

I like some of the ideas that went into this -- LaFou having to poke and prompt the other singers into their lines, and Gaston coming off a little more like a dandy than a brute is something you could make work even if it's a bit of a departure -- but yeah, as a whole, it's not doing much for me.

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

Right, but then the actual problem: the film's literal message is that you should raise your child as as if she were a corporation. And vice-versa. It's corporate personhood taken to an extreme.

21 Muns posted:

After seeing Inside Out I thought it'd be cool and good if Pixar made a movie called something like "Corporate Personhood" where the protagonists are personifications of (fictional) corporations. It'd be like Inside Out but in reverse. Probably would get a lot of people made because boo corporations hiss but as a fan of the concept of capitalism and a person who enjoys romanticizing corporations (like Disney, for example) I would enjoy it a lot if it were good

K. Waste posted:

a kiddie version of eXistenZ

IShallRiseAgain posted:

Ernest & Celestine ... mediocre at best.

starkebn posted:

Pixar: "What if we made a movie where a person's emotions were anthropomorphised characters in their head?"

some viewers: "It doesn't work like that! bleuuurgh!"

The Ayshkerbundy posted:

Hemingway To Go! posted:

Skreh

Hedrigall posted:

https://youtu.be/1JG6f5_37tg

Clip of the song "Gaston" from Beast '17

It's.... not very rousing.

Timeless Appeal posted:

The brilliance of Joy as a character is that she is both simultaneously mother and child. She is literally an aspect of Riley and also Riley's caretaker. Like The Giver, Inside Out is a fable on the necessity of pain to children who are often very averse to suffering or unfairness. But it also does the harder thing of teaching parents that if you're to accept that lesson for yourself that means letting your child suffer.

I think the idea of it being pro-corporate breaks down when you remember that the aesthetic isn't just reminiscent of a 50s corporate aesthetic, but also reminiscent of the Goofy shorts that constantly show Goofy trying to be what a modern man is supposed to be and failing.

Joy essentially does run Riley's emotions like a corporation trying to maximize profit (Happiness). But the end of the film is about accepting the less pleasant and less marketable Sadness. Treating yourself like a brand and trying to maximize what you're supposed to be is flawed. And that's what the film speaks against.

Like Ratatouille, I think you can also read into some metaphor about Pixar itself. Pixar exists as a part of Disney whose whole ethos is "Your dreams come true." But Pixar has literally made multiple movies about how that's not true (The Incredibles, Toy Story, Ratatouille, Monsters University). Pixar is literally part of the most saccharine corporation in the world, and they choose to make children cry. I think there is a read on Inside Out as being a meditation on why making children cry is necessary.

The Ayshkerbundy posted:

21 Muns posted:

After seeing Inside Out I thought it'd be cool and good if Pixar made a movie called something like "Corporate Personhood" where the protagonists are personifications of (fictional) corporations. It'd be like Inside Out but in reverse. Probably would get a lot of people made because boo corporations hiss but as a fan of the concept of capitalism and a person who enjoys romanticizing corporations (like Disney, for example) I would enjoy it a lot if it were good

K. Waste posted:

With the aside about Goofy, it behooves me to cite Father's Week-End: http://www.b99.tv/video/fathers-week-end/

Quite the contrary, this is not a short about how Goofy tries and fails to live up to the identity of the modern man. Rather, the short clarifies that the joke - as in Father's Day Off and Fathers Are People - is that modern man's sufferings are interpreted as ironic vindication of his sacred, patriarchal role.

With that in mind, let's un-package your accurate assertion that Pixar's films are quasi-autobiographical, and its relation to your less stable reading that the films speak against a 'maximalist,' corporate ideology. As with Hedrigall's assumption that Inside Out is about helping children deal with their emotions (as opposed to unemotional children's films?), that 'sadness isn't marketable' is not an observable trend in Disney's works. Disney films are not only replete with tragic and traumatic scenarios, but highly dependent upon them as informing the generic fulfillment of their characters' aspirational fantasies. This is a quality that Pixar shares with and draws upon from Disney's legacy; working towards the parallel ends of sublime, optimistic conclusions that, while they may go against certain expectations of the protagonist, are never disruptions of the 'just world.'

To write accurately about Inside Out, we have to contend with the fact that it presents a symbolic order that is at once explicitly inspired by corporate, managerial trappings, but in which there is explicitly no "profit" in conventional terms. Inspired by the capitalist culture into which they are conceived, they still fundamentally present capitalism without money. "Capital" is represented instead purely by the stable and continued functioning of the symbolic order.

So Joy's position as a manager is not 'to maximize profit.' Her position is to 'keep the peace,' which she interprets as necessarily requiring her to take a dictatorial role, marginalizing Sadness and the other emotions, and unilaterally determining the progress of the corporation-as-person. Further, the lesson that she learns is not that she needs to 'take the loss' by including Sadness in order to enhance quality of life. Rather, she learns that sharing managerial duties - the synergy of different managerial philosophies - is an inevitable and necessary part of ensuring that the corporation-as-person not only survives, but continues to grow. She learns that she was actually inhibiting maximalization of what Riley could be.

The essential deviation in our readings comes from what I feel is your erroneous perception that conventional, generic animated features avoid the depiction of suffering/sorrow/etc. in order to maximize profit; whereas I just think that most films are mediocre, but necessarily market these qualities just as deliberately and efficiently as they market the sublime ending. Pixar does not choose to make children cry any more or less than Disney does. The irony is that Pixar (now Disney Pixar) is valued for being more Disney than Disney.

Hedrigall posted:

I'm still watching Atlantis, I keep having to do other things so I only get through 20 minutes at a time.

A lot of the plot contrivances are annoying me (like how they magically speak every modern language despite being isolated for thousands of years, because something something root words?) but overall it's still a fun adventure!

This would make a reeeeeally good Uncharted-style game.

Oh, and wasn't there some controversy back in the day about this movie ripping off some anime, Kimba-style? I remember reading about it on the internet 1.0 soon after I saw this movie in the cinema.

Robindaybird posted:

A thing I keep saying when it's brought up, so much is crammed into the movie with it's huge cast that it could've been serviced better by making it a mini-series, but that's not something studios did at the time.

LeJackal posted:

pro-heteronormative propaganda.

Macaluso posted:

Is this a joke post

Hedrigall posted:

The real joke is the complete lack of LGBTQI representation in modern animated films

mycot posted:

Didn't Storks actually go out of its way to not be totally straight (despite the premise) by having one of the couples receiving babies be same-sex?

mycot posted:

Didn't Storks actually go out of its way to not be totally straight (despite the premise) by having one of the couples receiving babies be same-sex?

Magic Hate Ball posted:

im gonna cum dude keep going

Hedrigall posted:

Yeah true, I'm just joshin' y'all

K. Waste posted:

To reach climax, you merely need to ask yourself: Where is the "crying time" in Cars 2? A Bug's Life? WALL-E? The Incredibles?

What we've inadvertently come to in critically un-packaging Inside Out - because it is such a transparently honest film about storytelling and management philosophy - is that there is an entire meme about the perceived nuance and emotional depth of Pixar movies which is not supported by a consistent historical reading of the texts. Pixar does not 'want to make children cry' in order to enhance their quality of life. Pixar (or the abstract managers who are hired to coordinate the creative teams under them) are merely very adept at making conventional family cinema, and the extent to which they explore tragic themes and scenarios is motivated by the particular stories they want to tell.

And to that end, none of them resolve themselves in a manner that could even be described remotely as, like, melancholy. There is always the sublime realization of a just world which is largely indistinguishable from the already naive one in which the characters began.

Anecdotal British films such as Watership Down and Animal Farm illustrate succinctly the confrontation with trauma, mortality, and, most importantly, lack of materialist fulfillment which the Pixar meme selectively ignores. This isn't even a case of 'subversive vs. reactionary' films - both of those films are actually rather arch-reactionary. But at the same time, they are far more overt examples of precisely the kinds of stories (and aesthetics) that 'can't be made' in the contemporary climate which Disney-Pixar dominates, and which their major competitors won't even touch. The point of all Disney-Pixar movies - not just Inside Out - is that "sadness is good." But this is just a generic platitude, and part of an ideological fantasy.