A removal proposal for Joy from Disney/Pixar's Inside Out. In the pass, she has been added and removed to the PG category without permission several times since the article was added back in 2015, I'm making this to confirm to any users that Joy is not PG and to convince them to stop adding her to the category in the future.
What is the Work?[]
Inside Out is a fantastical film about an 11-year-old girl named Riley Andersen and her five emotions: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger. After Sadness interferes with Riley's first day of school after being told not to by the other emotions (Joy in particular) after recently moving to San Francisco, Joy becomes frustrated and tries to direct the core memory created by Sadness, Joy becomes frustrated and tries to divert the memory away from the central core, resulting in Joy and Sadness accidentally being vacuumed away in a chute where all memories of the day travel to.
Joy and Sadness try to return to the headquarters while the other three emotions try to maintain Riley until they return. Along the way, the two lost emotions meet Bing Bong, Riley's imaginary friend from early childhood, eventually after traveling through various hazards (such as Abstract Thought and Riley's Subconscious), the two emotions finally have a lead and take the Train of Thought to Headquarters, but when the second to last island collapses, the two emotions are left stranded, with Joy falling into the dump site with Bing Bong, as the two slowly begin to become forgotten.
Joy eventually returns to the surface at the sacrifice of Bing Bong, only to have a short amount of time to return to Headquarters as it begins to become consumed by a state of gloom (which was caused by Anger coming up with the idea of running away and taking a bus home to Minnesota. Joy finds Sadness and reconciles with her, before returning to Headquarters just as the bus is about to leave the station. With Joy's encouragement, Sadness manages to convince Riley to return home and confess to her parents that she misses Minnesota, to which Riley's parents share the same feelings and agree to readjust to life in their new home.
Afterwards, Riley's mind returns to normal and the collapsed islands are rebuilt and improved by various mind workers. Riley, who turns 12 at the end of the film, rejoins the new hockey team while the emotions return to their duties, complete with a new command module.
Why She does not Qualify[]
During the beginning of the film, Joy is shown to be very authoritative over the other four emotions. Even though she is the de facto leader, she tries to control Riley as though she "owns her"; this is supported by the fact that Joy is the oldest of the five emotions and that up until Riley and her family moved to San Francisco, most of Riley's memories were yellow, symbolizing happy emotions.
She is also shown to mistreat Sadness during the beginning of the film when the blue emotion interferes with Joy's actions with Riley and "ruins" her first day of school when she causes Riley to cry on her first day of school, resulting in an essential, unforgettable core memory that is sad to be created. Seeing that all core memories up until that point were in Joy's domain, the "happy" emotion gets frustrated with Sadness and tries to prevent there memory from being stored into the core, resulting in her and Sadness being vacuumed by a tube where the cores for the day travel to. If taken into account, it was technically Joy's fast as her behavior and actions led the two of them becoming lost in long-term memory.
This corrupting trait of hers comes to view just before the climax of the film, where after the Train of Thought collapses, the two emotions find a collapsing emotion tube that can return them back to Headquarters. After finding out that there was time for one of them to return back to headquarters. In doing so, Joy quickly brushes Sadness aside telling her that "Riley can live without you".
Final Verdict[]
Even though Joy ultimately reconciles with Sadness and realizes that Riley needs her after falling into the memory dump, these actions remain corrupting in her character, and thus explains why she doesn't deserve be placed under the Pure Good category.