No, Inside Out is not saying fat people are sad
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Version 0 of 1. If the makers of the new Pixar film Inside Out thought they could get away without a massive body image row … well, it looks as if they have another think coming. This very enjoyable film is about the inner life of an 11-year-old girl, with emotions shown as characters presiding over her mind. But online parenting forums and psychology professionals are reportedly outraged that Sadness (voiced by Phyllis Smith) is shown as fat, frumpy and unattractive and Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler) is slim, pretty and smart. What is the film saying? That fat people are sad in every sense and thin people are great? Is this good for young women’s self-confidence? Erm, no. I think this is another example of how the hivemind of social media will find a way of jiu-jitsu-ing some new film or cultural product, turning its underdog-concern against it and wiping the smile off its face. For what it’s worth, I thought of Sadness and Joy as like Velma and Daphne from Scooby Doo, of equal importance in the long run. And Sadness achieves a moral authority that only melancholy confers. The Cecil of Narnia This month, the people of Minnesota are flocking to the downtown Orpheum theatre to see the Broadway production of The Lion King. And it will have a new and horrible relevance, now that their city is home to the most unpopular human being in the world: the notorious dentist Walter Palmer, who killed Cecil the Lion. The explosion of rage might not have been as deafening if the dentist had unlawfully bagged some less picturesque beast, like a rhino or a bighorn sheep. There is something unbearably poignant in the spectacle of a lion’s death, all that mythic nobility laid low. Mufasa’s death in The Lion King, betrayed by his hateful brother Scar, has lived in the minds of generations – I know it lives in mine – and the enduring poignancy of Mufasa’s fate has not made things any easier for Mr Palmer. But there is something else seething in the collective unconscious. How many online objectors read CS Lewis’s Narnia books in their formative years? In The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, the lion Aslan is a compelling spiritual leader who is tied up and killed by the evil Witch, only to rise again, and there is naturally no doubt who Aslan is supposed to be. Lion-hunting is pop-culturally dangerous. Debagged in Tesco Tesco is re-thinking its automated voice prompts at self-checkouts because shoppers find them too annoying. The store has cancelled the supremely irritating “unexpected item in bagging area”, which is the computer’s tactful way of saying that you have just popped something into your bag that you appear not to have got around to paying for. For me, the most oppressive phrase offers no useful information or advice: “Thank you for shopping at Tesco/Waitrose/wherever!” pointlessly sending you on your way, like a chatshow host. The most trying thing for me, however, would be the plastic bags , thin plastic membranes that you have to squidge between your finger and thumb so that they will open. Some people can do this very easily. Not me. I spend minute after minute fingering the bag, sweating, panicking, becoming pre-emptively outraged that people behind me are annoyed at the hold-up. Once when I was fruitlessly engaged on this bag non-opening, someone came up to me, and I barked: “I can do it myself thank you.” He was just collecting the umbrella he’d left behind. |