Is Inside Out on-topic here?

Question

There are at this time two questions about Inside Out (one directly about it, one relating it to Toy Story):

Do Andy and Riley live in the same world?

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/93997/why-are-two-of-rileys-five-emotions-in-inside-out-male

How is this movie on-topic? To me it's off-topic: it's certainly not Sci Fi, and to me it's clearly not meant to be taken as literal Fantasy. The little dudes "living" inside people's heads are the metaphorical personification of actual emotions, and we are supposed to believe this is the actual world, just with a quirky way of giving the audience insight into other people's heads.

Answer 1

I'm going to say no. Wikipedia describes it as a "3D computer-animated comedy-drama" and IMDB categorises it as "Animation, Adventure, Comedy".

There's no specific reason to assume that the little people inside her head are literally there, as opposed to metaphorically.

The film's director backs up this assertion;

At the 2013 Siggraph convention, Pete Docter said the story was "one of the most challenging I've ever had to put together", because the film has to tell simultaneously what is happening to Riley and what is happening inside her mind.[33]

Docter has insisted the film's setting is independent from the biological, physical reality of the brain, and that it is rather set in the mind, with a more metaphysical, abstract viewpoint

Answer 2

The premise of the film appears to be "fantasy" only in the sense that it is not strictly realistic. However, if we define "fantasy" this way, almost everything can be considered on topic here.

The Simpsons are yellow and have 4 digits per hand. The baby is still a baby after 26 years of the show. The city of Springfield is said to border on Ohio, Nevada, Maine, and Kentucky (Ohio and Kentucky actually do share a border, but Nevada and Maine are hundreds of miles away from either). Homer has caused several nuclear meltdowns, but is still the safety inspector of a nuclear power plant. This is not realistic.

The old TV show Murder She Wrote was set in a small New England town, but someone was murdered there every week¹. The local police force was incapable of solving the crimes, and instead of hiring more detectives, they asked a local mystery writer to do their jobs for them - every week. The townspeople didn't have a problem with the incompetence of their police force, nor did they complain about having the highest per capita murder rate in the country. This is not realistic.

However, neither of these shows can be considered as true "fantasy". Wikipedia defines the fantasy genre as follows:

Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary plot element, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic and magical creatures are common.

The Oxford Dictionary largely agrees with this description:

A genre of imaginative fiction involving magic and adventure, especially in a setting other than the real world.

This definition would appear to suggest that neither The Simpsons, nor Murder She Wrote, nor Inside Out fit the criteria for fantasy.

It seems even less likely that Inside Out could be considered "science fiction". Again, Wikipedia defines the science fiction genre as follows:

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginative content such as futuristic settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, time travel, faster than light travel, parallel universes and extraterrestrial life. It usually eschews the supernatural, and unlike the related genre of fantasy, its imaginary elements are largely plausible within the scientifically established context of the story.

And again, the Oxford Dictionary largely agrees:

Fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or time travel and life on other planets.

Although Inside Out appears to include a fantastic conceit - i.e., the portrayal of emotions as actual, personified entities - it doesn't seem to fit either of the categories relevant to this site.

As the question has already been answered by several people, and those answers have attracted upvotes, it would be unfair to delete it out of spite, and thereby deprive users of well-earned reputation increases. The best option is clearly to migrate the questions to the Movies and Television SE site.

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¹ _{The show is set in the fictional town of Cabot Cove, which was based on Kennebunkport, Maine. Kennebunkport has a population of 3,500 people. The series lasted for 12 years, at 13 episodes per season, which would have killed off about 160 people, or nearly 5% of the population.}

Answer 3

If Inside Out is neither Science Fiction nor Fantasy, then logically neither is nolan-batman-trilogy, toy-story-2, sonic-the-hedgehog, kung-fu-panda, animal-farm, clockwork-orange and various others, none of which contain the hallmarks of either science fiction of fantasy as defined by @WadCheber in their answer.

I would argue that our collective acceptance of the above (particularly the nolan-batman-trilogy, which is as grounded in reality as a superhero film can get) should mean that we keep Inside Out (and by extension, most other Pixar films that can be said to contain fantastical elements) as on-topic.

Answer 4

While the director may have intended the people in her head to be metaphorical, that doesn't mean the viewers have to interpret it that way.

Authors (and directors) have their view of the works and the people that read/watch/listen to it hav theirs.

And it seems to me that viewers "feel" for the people in her head, and not just for her -- making them just as real as she is, and thus the film fits here at least as well as it does on Movies and TV.