Pixar Personifies Personality and Paves the Way for My Book

Alliteration aside, I was happy to see the successful translation of personality traits in Pixar’s Inside Out. It is a triumph of story, character and metaphor and a dazzling piece of animation. It tells the story of Riley, an eleven year old girl, whose early life makes here a well-adjusted, authentic child. But as she approaches the confusing, contradictions of growing up she has conflicting feelings of alienation when uprooted and moved to a new city and school.

Her metaphorical anthropomorphic characters represent Anger, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Joy and are wonderfully portrayed by great comic actors. It has a wonderful message for kids – you are shaped by your feelings and don’t deny them.
The conflict of the movie comes when Riley is convinced she needs to be the happy child for her parents during a stressful time in their lives, denying her own feelings in favor of theirs. And therein lies the drama. It is what psychologist Alice Miller described in her book, The Drama of the Gifted Child. Pixar resolves this story in a wonderfully charming way and we can all relate to setting aside our needs for others.

I’m jazzed that the movie has come out at the same time I’m about to publish my book, The King of Average, because my book uses the same conceit. My hero James is an eleven year old boy who has a more acute case of the Gifted Child Syndrome.  He has been wounded by a narcissistic, cruel mother and he too befriends his metaphorical partners, Guilt in the form of Mayor Culpa, a talking scapegoat, Optimism in the person of Monsieur Roget ze ‘appy Frenchman and his partner Kiljoy, a professional pessimist. He is travelling the landscape of his psyche.

His self-esteem is so damaged that he’s convinced he’s as terrible as his mother tells him. Yet, as he rebels against that notion, he can only aspire to be not-so-terrible, but less-than-terrific, so he decides to become the most average person in the world. It propels him into a new world where Average is a Kingdom, and child-kings rule places like Accusia and Appathia.

With the success of Inside Out, I can’t wait to option the movie rights to The King of Average. Hey – It could happen…!