Why does Riley have male and female emotions? The other characters have only one gender

The premiere of ‘Intensely 2’ did not leave the audience indifferent. Since its premiere in theaters, the Pixar film has become a topic of discussion among fans, who have created memes about the characters or who seek to know every last detail of the plot, like the ones below.

Why are Riley’s emotions in ‘Inside Out’ male and female?

A detail that has not gone unnoticed by fans since the first film is the gender of the protagonist’s emotions, which, both due to their physical appearance and the voice attributed to them in the dubbing, can be identified as male or female. However, with the other characters, this is not the case. For example, Riley’s mother’s emotions are labeled as feminine and her father’s emotions are labeled as masculine.

This has led many to question the meaning of these designations and even develop theories to explain the variation.

The truth is that the answer came from 2015, when the first installment was released.

In an interview with “Empire,” the film’s director, Pete Docter, explained that assigning a gender to each of Riley’s emotions was something “intuitive.”

“I felt that Fury is very masculine, I don’t know why. And then part of that came down to the casting… Sadness felt more feminine, and Mindy Kaling (who voiced Disgust in English) as Disgust felt good,” she said.

In addition, he said at the time, the creative team decided that the main emotions, Joy and Sadness, were feminine because it was about a girl.

As to why this didn’t translate to other characters’ emotions, the answer is very simple: so that the audience can easily identify whose mind the film is diving into at any given moment. This also opened up an opportunity to add some humor to the film. This was explained in 2015 in ‘Cinemablend’.

Using the family dinner scene in that first film as an example, the director said, “To give it a comedic quality, we cut between 18 characters and four locations in that dinner scene, so we did something broader, something like SNL. “They all have obvious goofy mustaches or big red glasses, so it’s immediately clear to you: ‘It’s mum, it’s dad.’

Fan theories as to why Riley’s feelings are of different genders

Before Pete Docter explained the creative decisions behind the characters, fans had already developed their own theories.

Two were the most repeated online: that Riley’s male and female feelings could indicate her sexual identity as bisexual or bisexual, or that they would take on a definitive gender as the teenager grew and matured.

That last one resonated with John Lasseter himself, who was Pixar’s Chief Creative Officer when “Inside Out” premiered in 2015.

“I remember talking to John and he said, ‘Well, I thought you did because as adults we become less flexible in our ways.’ When you’re a kid, you can…anywhere possible,” Pete Docter told Cinemablend.

Let us know in the comments if you noticed the gender difference between Riley’s emotions and the rest of the characters in ‘Inside Out’.