In the latest trailer for Inside Out 2 (Intensely in Latin America) a peculiar character appeared who personified a concept that was very present on a cultural level, but still quite unknown on a psychological, purely emotional level. We talk about Nostalgia.
What was seen by most as a simple mocking appearance, for those studying emotion was not only a pleasant surprise, but also a great opportunity to bring emotion closer to the general public, especially the youngest.
The reality has turned out to be somewhat more modest; Nostalgia appears fleetingly in two scenes of the film and, despite the scientific advice that has been available, is characterized in a way that does not fully reflect the reality of the emotion according to the latest psychological studies.
The plot that develops Inside Out 2 It has to do with the appearance of complex or “sophisticated” emotions in the emotional system of the protagonist, Riley, who has just turned 13.
Anxiety, Shame, Envy and Ennui (boredom) abruptly appear in the control room to end up taking control of the teenager’s emotional life. Led by Anxiety, they send basic emotions to ostracism. They then have to fight to return to the control room, end Ansiedad’s tyranny and thus reestablish a certain stability and sense of identity.
But what are complex emotions? Well, we can define them as a subtype of emotions characterized by greater cognitive involvementwhich makes them less immediate and more subject to cultural and individual factors. They are not essential for survival, like basic emotions, but they are fundamental in our social performance, in interaction with others and in the formation of our identity.
It is true that in adolescence emotions tend to intensify and that in puberty a process of psychological and identity transition occurs that gives greater prominence to complex emotions, but the film can lead us to think that these do not play any role until then. . Contrary to this idea, it is enough to see in our daily lives very young children behaving with jealousy or envy, or with remorse for having acted badly. Thus, although it can be said that complex emotions are born later than basic onesare already present at ages as early as four years.
Furthermore, they do not appear abruptly in our emotional system, as the feature film may imply, but rather they coexist and need basic emotions. Our body does not have independent mechanisms for the different emotional categories, but the complex ones are expressed through the same channel prepared for basic emotions.
Among the complex emotions is nostalgia, which in the film is represented as a kind, adorable old woman. This image undoubtedly coincides with the review that has been made of nostalgia from psychology, placing it as an eminently positive emotiondespite the melancholic notes we may experience.
However, by presenting her as old, languishing and timid, with an outdated hairstyle and a dull colour, the creatives of Inside Out 2 They continue to fall into the classic association of nostalgia with old-fashionedness, with retrogradeness, as an emotion tending towards lethargy and immobilization, contrary to what recent psychological studies show.
Nostalgia wears a knitted shawl over a floral dress and slippers. But what draws the most attention are the white-framed glasses with pink lenses: is this an allusion to the fact that with nostalgia we tend to see everything “pink”? In that case it would be an excessive simplification. Like any complex emotion, nostalgia is guided by a constant flow of beliefs.Although at times it may seem that it tends to sweeten the past, the truth is that on many occasions we end up relativizing this thought, falling into a much more critical type of nostalgia.
But it’s not just her appearance. In the few seconds that Nostalgia is on screen, she interacts with the rest of the emotions. Her “those were the days” to refer to something that just happened can only be read from a comedy and irony perspective, since we know that the memories involved in nostalgia usually refer to moments that happened years ago, when we felt that something was desirable and at the same time unrecoverable.
More interesting is what the other emotions tell Nostalgia: to come back in 10 years, when Riley has lived through a couple of graduations and a friend’s wedding. Here the writers of the series are pointing in the right direction, because, although adolescence is a common content of nostalgic memories, evidence shows that it starts to be important around 18-20 years old and that we become more nostalgic as we get older.
Likewise, although any stimulus or memory can trigger our nostalgia, the truth is that big events, such as graduations or weddings of loved ones, are more likely to produce emotion.
It is no coincidence that Anxiety is the one who directly challenges Nostalgia and ends up throwing her out of the control room. Anxiety is an emotion concerned with threatening future scenarios that literally aims to “break with the past.” She denies it, knowing that it can frustrate her plans, since memories can affectively move Riley, calling on emotions that can help calm her anxiety. It is as if she knows that Nostalgia, despite her defenseless appearance, is capable of weakening her.
And this is precisely the reality that several studies draw, both at a psychological and cultural level. Nostalgia can be understood as a natural response to the anxiety that an accelerated present full of changes produces in usa kind of defense mechanism with which we revalue previous stages of life in order to continue looking to the future with a greater sense of control. Perhaps with Nostalgia everything would have been much easier inside Riley’s mind.
Source: The Conversation
