Source 1: Inside Out

Source 2: Big Mouth

The form of intelligence I have chosen to focus on is Emotional Intelligence. Kanjilal and Vijayalakshmi (2019) define Emotional intelligence as a person’s ability to engage in “self-control, the ability to identify one’s own and other's emotions, and to manage the emotions of others in an effective manner”. As youth depression, ADHD and sucide rates have continued to skyrocket over the past decade, society has begun to take an increased interest in the role emotional intelligence plays in personal well-being; particularly amongst youth. Over this same time period, there has been a notable rise in movies and television shows including Inside Out, Big Mouth and Feeling Red focusing on promoting public conversation surrounding emotional intelligence. Ali (2017) theorizes that the rise of pop culture centering around emotional development may help children's development of emotional intelligence by normalizing discussions about personal feelings and encouraging them to under and embrace their own emotions. The most famous example of movies discussing emotional intelligence is Inside Out in which a young girl’s five primary emotions (joy, sadness, anger, fear and disgust) react to events the protagonist experiences throughout her day. In the first source, the Joy emotion explains the role each of our emotions plays in determining how we respond to various situations. In a later scene where Joy ignores to acknowledge the importance of accepting one's sadness, the young character reacts negatively, exclaiming that she does not understand her feelings. The portrayal of Sadness reinforces and simultaneously challenges the dominant belief in society that sadness is universally negative and is not considered as an acceptable emotional response in most situations(Kanjilal & Vijayalakshmi, 2019). Similar examples of this are visible in the source 2 which depicts a scene from the show Big Mouth where the main character, unable to process her emotions, falls into a deep depression. Films and shows such as these which center around emotional intelligence have massive potential to support individuals emotional maturity and well being by providing visual classifiers for feelings which are often difficult to vocalize. This activity may be particularly useful in the forms of self-analysis and therapy,  “If the client experiences difficulty in personalizing his or her thoughts or behaviors at the different ranges, utilize the Inside Out (Rivera & Doctor, 2015) characters to provide a parallel, for example, “How can you tell when Sadness is very upset?”(Ali, 2017). A potential weakness of the use of films and tv to develop emotional intelligence is possinbility that is that individuals may develop an overreliance to forms of social media to tell them how to react in various situations and actually lose the ability to listen to their own bodies. 

Sources:

Ali, S. (2017). Inside Out and counseling: Creative interventions to facilitate emotional intelligence. Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, 12(3), 377–387. https://doi.org/10.1080/15401383.2016.1275995

Kanjilal, Rajlakshmi & Vijayalakshmi, P. (2019). Disney’s Inside Out: Insights on Emotions and Emotional Intelligence. 7. 1513-1523.