Character Analysis
Joy is the emotional captain of the S. S. Riley. Like Nemo, Sparrow, and Kirk before her, she's at the helm in Headquarters, and it's her job to stay cool, calm, and collected, no matter what the life of Riley throws her way. (Or at least to seem that way.)
It's up to Joy to keep Riley's other emotions—Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust—in check. Or, at least she thinks it's her job to keep them in check. They have jobs to do, too, but if any of them tries to take over, Joy swivels the focus back to fun and being happy 24/7.
Joy to the Girl
To her credit, Joy's sunny leadership has led to a comfy, contented life for Riley thus far. Most of the memories she's created are happy ones, and as a result, Riley's islands of personality include Family, Friendship, Hockey, and Goofball, and not grim atolls like Vandalism, Rage, and Running with Scissors.
Joy is Riley's essential emotion. On Riley's first day at her new San Francisco school, Joy's in her element, bossing everybody around HQ, having planned the day right down to the minute to ensure that Riley has the best first day of school in the history of first days of school. Check it out:
JOY: Okay. First day of school. Very, very exciting! I was up late last night, figuring out a new plan. Here it is! Fear, I need a list of all the possible negative outcomes on the first day at a new school.
FEAR: Way ahead of you there. Does anybody know how to spell "meteor"?
JOY: Disgust. Make sure Riley stands out today. But also blends in.
DISGUST: When I'm through, Riley will look so good the other kids will look at their own outfits and barf.
JOY: Joy? (talking to herself) "Yes, Joy." You'll be in charge of the console, keeping Riley happy all day long. And may I add I love your dress? It's adorable." Oh, this old thing? Thank you so much. I love the way it twirls.
Despite all of Joy's planning, positivity, and assertiveness, Riley doesn't have the best first day of school in the history of first days of school. In fact, she has a terrible first day, and that's because she's starting to grow up.
Cue the ominous dun, dun, dunnn.
Joy's the leader of Riley's emotional pack at the beginning of Inside Out because Riley's a kid and your average kid is pretty stoked to be alive. Kids have almost zero responsibility, save brushing their teeth and not leaving their bike out in the driveway for Mom to run over when she gets home from Home Depot.
There are no bills to pay and somebody does their laundry and cooks all their meals for them. Occasionally, they may have to build a working volcano for science class or deal with the injustice of Brussel sprouts on their lunch tray (oh, the horror), but other than that, most kids are fortunate to have a thoroughly sweet deal compared to adults, and even teens.
As Riley gets older, more opinionated, and increasingly self-aware, though, Joy's job gets harder. When Riley's parents uproot the family and move to San Francisco, then Joy really has her work cut out for her. Here's an exchange where Joy tries, and fails, to rally the troops at HQ:
FEAR: There are at least 37 things for Riley to be scared of right now.
DISGUST: The smell alone is enough to make her gag.
ANGER: I can't believe Mom and Dad moved us here!
JOY: Look, I get it. You guys have concerns, but we've been through worse. Tell you what, let's make a list of all the things Riley should be happy about.
ANGER: Fine. Let's see. This house stinks. Our room stinks.
DISGUST: Pizza is weird here.
SADNESS: Our friends are back home.
FEAR: And all of our stuff is in the missing van!
JOY: Oh, come on. It could be worse.
DISGUST: Yeah, Joy. We could be lying on the dirty floor. In a bag.
Riley's other emotions each make valid points. For starters, Riley is lying on the dirty floor in a bag—more specifically, she's in her sleeping bag on the floor of her empty bedroom. It makes sense for Riley to be ticked off at the situation she's in. Still, Joy tries to maintain a positive focus, even if there's nothing very positive to focus on in that moment unless you get excited by dust bunnies.
Her Turtleneck-Loving Nemesis
When Riley breaks down in front of her classmates, suddenly remembering her time in Minnesota with sadness instead of glee, it's our first sign that childhood's slowly making its way into her rearview mirror—and that Joy's days in charge are numbered. There's a new sheriff in town and she's blue (both literally and figuratively), fond of turtlenecks, and likes to be dragged around by her ankle.
As Sadness starts interfering with Riley's memories, Joy makes it her mission to stop her. When Joy delegates those first-day-of-school tasks, Sadness's job is to stand in a circle that Joy drew on the Headquarters' floor.
Joy gives Sadness this made-up task to make sure she doesn't mess anything up. (Thanks for the vote of confidence, Joy!) It seems like the other emotions, but especially Joy, don't really know why Sadness is there in the first place.
Later, when Bing Bong loses his rocket ship and Sadness lets him vent, Joy tries to shut Sadness up.
SADNESS: I'm sorry they took your rocket. They took something that you loved. It's gone. Forever.
JOY: Sadness. Don't make him feel worse.
SADNESS: Sorry.
BING BONG: It's all I had left of Riley.
SADNESS: I bet you and Riley had great adventures.
BING BONG: Oh, they were wonderful. Once, we flew back in time. We had breakfast twice that day.
JOY: Sadness…
SADNESS: It sounds amazing. I bet Riley liked it.
BING BONG: She did. We were best friends.
SADNESS: Yeah, it's sad.
Bing Bong cries on Sadness's shoulder.
BING BONG: I'm okay now. Come on. The train station is this way.
Joy's straight-up shocked that Bing Bong feels better after his chat with Sadness. That's because she doesn't understand what's happening; she doesn't yet grasp the concept of empathy, or the ability to understand other people's feelings. (FWIW, Sadness doesn't, either.) When Bing Bong is bummed, Sadness knows exactly what he's going through because sorrow's her jam.
That understanding is a comfort to Bing Bong as he sheds a few tears—er, we mean pieces of candy—and tries to navigate his own grief. Joy, meanwhile, is emotionally confounded.
On their journey back to Headquarters, Joy tries to get Sadness to lighten up. Joy means well, but it's not her place to try to change Sadness. Trying to convince Sadness not to be, well, sad, would be like trying to convince Batman to stop responding to the Bat Signal, or to convince Robin to stop doing whatever it is that Robin does.
But since she's Joy, and all about that positivity, she never forfeits her mission. Take a look at this back-and-forth when Joy looks back fondly at one of Riley's Core Memories:
JOY: The hockey team showed up, and Mom and Dad were there cheering. Look at her, having fun and laughing. I love this one.
SADNESS: I love that one, too.
JOY: Atta girl! Now you're getting it!
SADNESS: Yeah. It was the day the Prairie Dogs lost the big playoff game. Riley missed the winning shot. She felt awful. She wanted to quit. Sorry. I went sad again, didn't I?
JOY: I'll tell you what. We can keep working on that when we get back. Okay?
SADNESS: Okay.
The irony here is that it's Joy who needs to do some work. She's the one who needs to recognize that, even though she's a total buzzkill, Sadness is a crucial part of the team who's only going to become more essential as Riley grows up and her feelings get more complicated.
You Take the Good, You Take the Bad…
Joy gets woke in the Memory Dump. Faced with the prospect of being stuck in there amongst Riley's faded memories forever, plus the possibility of Riley never being happy again, Joy breaks down and cries.
Whoa. That is very unlike her, what with her being Joy and all.
Then Joy picks up the happy hockey memory that Sadness was also fond of, and rewinds it a few seconds. She sees Riley by herself, looking upset, and Sadness's words replay in Joy's ears: "It was the day the Prairie Dogs lost the big playoff game. Riley missed the winning shot. She felt awful. She wanted to quit."
It's then that Joy realizes Riley's happiness in that moment was preceded by sadness. Her parents and teammates were cheering her up because she was super-bummed. They were showing Riley empathy, just like how Sadness showed Bing Bong empathy.
Once she has that breakthrough, Joy's got the strength she needs to make it back to Headquarters. She also has the smarts to relinquish some of her control and let Riley's other emotions step up—especially Sadness. Anger, Disgust, and Fear are stoked to have Joy back at HQ so she can fix things after Riley runs away.
But instead of coming up with a plan and taking the reins, like always, Joy trusts Sadness to fix things, much to the surprise of Disgust, Anger and Fear—and Sadness, too, for that matter. Sadness isn't confident that she can get the idea to run away out Riley's head, but Joy assures her that she can do it.
And she's right.
Joy's Division of Labor
Inside Out is a coming of age story: not just for Riley, but also for Joy. Joy discovers that she, too, is capable of feeling multiple emotions at once, like when she's stoked to escape the Memory Dump, but is gutted to leave Bing Bong behind to fade away at the same time.
When Joy hands the Core Memories over to Sadness, it shows just how much she's evolved. Sadness turns the golden, happy memories to blue, and Joy 2.0 barely bats an eyelash. Beginning-of-the-movie-Joy would've lost her pixie-dusted mind.
As multicolored memories start tumbling through HQ, Joy begins understanding that memories, just like emotions and carbohydrates, can be complex—and that all emotions have their usefulness.
In the end, Joy doesn't get deposed so much as she embraces emotional teamwork and governing by committee. Check out this exchange from the very end of the film, as Riley takes the ice with her new hockey team, the Foghorns:
JOY: Let's play some hockey! All right, Anger. Take it!
ANGER: Give us that puck or you're dead meat!
FEAR: On our left. On our left!
DISGUST: Let's just try not to get all smelly this time.
SADNESS: Mom and Dad are watching us fail.
ANGER: Not for long!
Joy's learned how to share the emotional wealth. Stationed behind the new, expanded control panel with her fellow emotions, Joy cedes the floor to Anger right away. She doesn't tell him what to do; she's letting him do what comes naturally (which, apparently, is the threat of puck-related violence).
While she once felt like she had to micromanage Riley's emotions, come up with detailed plans for success, and delegate tasks like the assistant manager at a Best Buy, now she's as a cool as a cucumber—you know, if cucumbers were capable of understanding that no feeling, not even joy, should be valued above or at the exclusion of others.
Joy's Timeline