Animating Loss:

How Disney Pixar’s Up, Inside Out, and Coco work

as tools to introduce children to feelings of loss,
and healthy grieving- and coping mechanisms.

Maja Johansen

A Thesis Submitted to The Department of Literature, Area

Studies, and European Languages
University of Oslo

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the MA Degree in

English Literature
30 ECTS

Spring Term 2022

Abstract

This thesis analyses how animated movies are ideal tools for starting conversations with
children about feelings of loss, and how these movies can supply children with coping
mechanisms for dealing with these types of feelings. The study looks at the three animated
movies, Up, Inside Out and Coco, from Disney Pixar Animation Studios. The analysis of the
movies focuses on representations of loss in two categories: loss of identity, and loss of life.
The goal is to map out scenarios dealing with loss in the movies, and through the examples
show how they introduce children to difficult topics and how they can offer children ways to
process and cope.

I
Acknowledgments

Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor, Deborah Lynn Kitchen-Døderlein, for your
guidance and honest feedback throughout this writing process.

Also, a huge thanks to Håvard for answering all my questions in such detail, you have been a
tremendous help.

I would also like to thank Thea for the proof-reading and suggestions for improvements, and
for all your emotional support.

Furthermore, I would like to thank Disney Pixar for continuing to blow my mind with
amazing and heartbreaking movies.

Lastly, thank you Adrian, for being my pillar of strength in every aspect of life. Sorry for all
the drama.

II
 Table of Contents

Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................... I

Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................................................... II

Table of Contents........................................................................................................................................... III

Introduction.....................................................................................................................................................1

Review of the Literature ..................................................................................................................................... 3

Movies as tools ............................................................................................................................................. 3
Children´s coping mechanisms ...................................................................................................................... 9
Research on death in Disney- and Pixar movies ......................................................................................... 11

Chapter 2: Up.................................................................................................................................................14

Carl without Ellie .............................................................................................................................................. 15

Ellie´s death ...................................................................................................................................................... 17

The death of Charles Muntz ............................................................................................................................. 19

Chapter conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 20

Chapter 3: Inside Out .....................................................................................................................................22

Bing Bong ......................................................................................................................................................... 23

Riley.................................................................................................................................................................. 26

Joy and Sadness ............................................................................................................................................... 27

Chapter conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 29

Chapter 4: Coco .............................................................................................................................................30

Coco ................................................................................................................................................................. 31

Héctor .............................................................................................................................................................. 32

Ernesto de la Cruz ............................................................................................................................................ 33

Miguel .............................................................................................................................................................. 34

The Land of the Dead ....................................................................................................................................... 35

Chapter conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 37

Conclusion .....................................................................................................................................................39

Bibliography ..................................................................................................................................................42

Primary sources................................................................................................................................................ 42

Secondary sources ............................................................................................................................................ 42

III
 Introduction

Children today grow up surrounded by technology. Their first encounters with several topics
therefore happen on screen. For many children, these meetings occur through animation
movies, and in many parts of the world, these movies come from the popular Pixar
Animation Studios, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company. Since Disney Pixar´s release
of their first fully computer animated feature film, Toy Story (1995), the studio has released
numerous animated movies aimed at children, and they have achieved immense success in
doing so.1 Although other film studios have released popular animated children´s movies in
the same period, many children will have had their first encounters with several topics
watching animated movies created by the Disney Pixar Animation Studios. The focus of this
thesis will be how these types of animation movies function as tools for introducing children
to loss, and to grieving- and coping mechanisms.
This is an exploratory and descriptive study. Through the method of content analysis,
it will look at the three Disney Pixar animation movies, Up (2009), Inside Out (2015), and
Coco (2017), to establish how these movies introduce different feelings of loss to children,
and how they give guidance for how to deal with loss. These specific movies were chosen
due to their many scenarios dealing with different feelings of loss, as the thesis aims to show
how these types of animation movies are ideal tools for starting conversations with children
about difficult feelings and teaching them appropriate response patterns and grieving- and
coping mechanisms.
To focus the thesis, it is necessary to narrow the analysis down. To do this, the thesis
will focus on to two sub-categories of loss that are relevant and universal in the lives of
children.
The first category is the sense of loss children might experience as their identities
form or change due to different life experiences. One of the most challenging concepts to
explain and prepare a child for is the way that their personalities and identities change as they
grow older. When children develop and evolve in their personalities, it might lead to a sense
of losing parts of who they are. This loss-of-self-concept is something that happens to

1
“About Pixar Animation Studios: Our Story,” Pixar Animation Studios, accessed April 30, 2022, https://www.pixar.com/our-story-pixar.

1
everyone several times in life, and it is a difficult concept to explain to a child and for a child
to grasp. For children, the most relevant identity changes will be the change from young child
to adolescence, but movies can also introduce them to changes in life-situations and identity-
changes in the lives of people older than themselves. This type of loss is not necessarily seen
in a physical way, as the changes and the losses are based on what is happening to children´s
conception of themselves and their identities. Regardless, whether the changes are physical or
psychological, this thesis will focus on how these movies help children deal with, recognize,
and cope with these changes. To do this, the thesis will look at examples of these distinct
types of identity-loss in the three movies. Within this broader category, the thesis will
especially focus on identity-loss related to the transition from child to teenager, and the loss
of identity related to changes in one’s life, such as moving to a new place, leaving friends
behind, or changed interests.
The second broad category will be the different feelings of loss children might
experience due to death. The concept of death is difficult to explain to children. The concept
can be hard to grasp, as children often struggle with understanding big concepts like finality
and irreversibility. Furthermore, it is common for adults to want to shield children from pain,
and death. Though unavoidable, it is a subject often associated with pain and grief. Despite
this, children will at some point be exposed to death, and it is therefore an important concept
for them to understand. Whether the child has already been exposed to death or not, it is
important to give them tools to deal with the concept. Within this broader category of loss,
the focus will be on physical loss by looking at how death is depicted in different ways
through animation movies, and at how these movies describe the concept of death to children.
It will analyze how different scenarios in the movies give children ways to understand death
and give them ways to cope with feelings caused by death.
Chapters two, three, and four aim to build up the thesis question, with each chapter
focusing on one of the three movies. Chapter two analyzes Up, chapter three analyzes Inside
Out, and chapter four analyzes Coco. The three animation movies all have different
storylines, and they approach different themes. The analysis will not focus on finding similar
examples of loss in all the movies. Rather, the analysis will focus on finding different
feelings of loss from the two sub-categories of loss as described above. Examples from the
different movies approach the two categories of loss from different angles through different
scenarios. The different examples from the analyses will help build up the thesis question and
try to answer how these animation movies function as tools to help children deal with
feelings of loss and help them develop coping strategies.

2
Review of the Literature

This section will outline the literature that the thesis will utilize. The arguments from the
literature establish what examples are important to look for in the movies to see if they are
effective in teaching children about feelings of loss, about coping mechanisms, and about
response patterns. To establish which types of losses are difficult for children to grasp, and
how animated movies can help explain these losses, the thesis will use literature from three
different perspectives. The first perspective focuses on the common coping mechanisms of
children, the second looks at functions that movies can have as tools for teaching, and the
third perspective is on research done on depictions of death in Disney movies, to establish
what has been done in the field already. Combined, these three categories of literature will
shape the focus of the analysis and help establish what is important to look for in the movies.

Movies as tools

To understand how animation movies can help children cope with loss, it is necessary to get
some ideas of how movies effectively function as tools to help explain difficult feelings to
their audiences. The approaches presented in this section will help map out which features to
look for in the analysis to see if the animated movies in question function for helping children
cope with loss.
Graeme Turner´s book “Film as Social Practice” from 2006 argues that movies can be
used to influence their audience based on the cultural and social roles they show. He believes
that the audience holds a key role for how the movie is interpreted, and that movies work best
when they use different tools and approaches specifically aimed at reaching their target
audience with the story that they want to tell. These tools, he argues, are for instance
components like language, images, sound effects and the like, chosen to match the emotional
setting of specific scenes and give them more elaborate meanings. He claims that use of tools
and approaches like these are what makes movies ideal tools for conveying meaning and
explaining aspects of societies that are shared by large groups of people. From Turner’s view,
movies provide their audience with ways of making sense of the world and the societies that

3
they are a part of. Through the narratives of the movies, the viewers can locate evidence of
ways in which their culture makes sense of itself.2
George Comstock and Erica Scharrer (2012) claim that there are benefits to children
learning from television and film. While some claim that the rapid pace and distractions in
children´s movies make these movies ineffectual as learning tools, Comstock and Sharrer
argue the opposite. Their studies showed that young children improved both their vocabulary-
and their social skills after repeatedly watching children´s films and tv-shows. Furthermore,
they found that certain aspects were important for the learning process, and they reason that
one of the most crucial factors for whether children learn from movies is that they watch with
others. Also, they argue that what children learn from what they see on screen depends on
how much they watch, and who they watch with. Caregivers can shape what their children
learn from their screens when watching movies with them. Furthermore, if children are to
learn anything from the movies they watch, Comstock and Scharrer argue that children need
to be able to pay attention to the movie as it progresses.3 This agrees with Turner´s view, that
if the movie is to be successful as a teaching tool, it needs to be aware of who its audience is,
and how best to reach them.
David S. Bickham, Marie Evans Schmidt and Aletha C. Huston (2012) challenge the
common belief that television cannot function as a teaching tool because children watching
are considered passive and thus cannot learn from it. They argue that children do in fact learn
from the television they watch, and that when tv-shows and movies are produced with effects
that keep their target audience entertained and focused, like for instance humor and mood-
specific songs, they are ideal tools for learning. This depends on how the movie or tv-show
keeps their audience entertained and engaged by applying the right cinematic effects, which
echoes the views of both Turner, and Comstock and Scharrer. Through studies conducted of
children watching movies, Bickham, Schmidt, and Huston proclaim that the viewers
developed an understanding of what would happen based on similar depictions in other
movies they had seen. For example, certain types of sound effects, like melancholic music in
sad scenes, darker lighting, or abrupt scene transitions, mirrored similar scenes from previous
movies, and so the children learned to anticipate certain types of scenes. This proved an
ability to learn from the movies, and the active attention that the children had during
viewings thus helped them develop their understandings. Bickham, Schmidt, and Huston

2
Graeme Turner, Film as Social Practice (New York: Routledge, 2006), 58-60, 72-92, 4.
3
George Comstock and Erica Scharrer, “The Use of Television and Other Screen Media,” in Handbook of Children and the Media, ed.
Dorothy G. Singer and Jerome L. Singer (Los Angeles: SAGE publications, 2012), 17-19, 36-37.

4
further argue that by integrating slightly more complicated scenarios into familiar and fun
settings, movies can tutor young people about more complex topics because of the building
blocks that the children already possess. Furthermore, they claim that to work effectively,
movies must apply enough stimuli, such as sound, color, funny characters and locations, or
recognizable marks and symbols, to hold the children´s attention and get them invested in the
story. The level of stimuli applied needs to be balanced out to keep the focus of the viewers,
while not becoming too excessive. The storyline needs to be interesting and unpredictable
enough to keep the viewers entertained and engaged, but not be so complex or dramatic that
the viewers cannot keep up.4
Nina Huntemann and Michael Morgan (2012) argue that media of various kinds play
important roles for identity development in children and adolescents. Their view of movies
specifically, is that this media can introduce its audience to a range of topics. By presenting
them with broad and general approaches, movies make it possible for different people to
recognize themselves in the actions of the movie and to freely explore their own identities
within a safe frame. Huntemann and Morgan argue that the representations offered thus equip
viewers with a tool in which they can freely develop their sense of themselves in the world,
and the way that they prefer to deal with different experiences. Movies contain general
depictions of different scenarios that allow their viewers to assert their own views into the
action and collect individual meaning from them. Huntemann and Morgan also assert the
significant role movies can play for children as they are going through transitional phases in
life. They claim that when children move into the adolescent stages, their identity becomes
more their own and less dependent on parents and other authority figures. Finding one´s
identity thus sometimes happens in contradiction to the wishes and beliefs of parents. As
Huntemann and Morgan explain it: “Adolescents´ values and beliefs are becoming uniquely
their own, separate from and even contrary to the values of parents. In a broad variety of
ways, media contributes to this process.” Furthermore, media such as movies show different
perspectives that may be foreign to the people watching. This gives insight into the struggles,
views, and beliefs of people that are different from the people that they know.5
Richard Armstrong´s book, Mourning Films: A Critical Study of Loss and Grieving in
Cinema (2012), calls movies that deal with loss and grief processes “mourning films”, which

4
David S. Bickham, Marie Evans Schmidt and Aletha C. Huston, “Attention, Comprehension, and the Educational Influences of Television
and Other Electronic Media,” in Handbook of Children and the Media, ed. Dorothy G. Singer and Jerome L. Singer (Los Angeles: SAGE
publications, 2012), 116-118, 126, 117-118.
5
Nina Huntemann and Michael Morgan, “Media and Identity Development,” in Handbook of Children and the Media, ed. Dorothy G.
Singer and Jerome L. Singer (Los Angeles: SAGE publications, 2012), 306-308, 304, 306.

5
according to Armstrong are movies built up to show different layers of grieving processes,
which he argues supplies the movies´ viewers with healthy responses and deeper
understandings of difficult emotions. According to Armstrong, feelings related to death exists
as a fine balance between grieving for the dying and the fear of one’s own mortality. Dealing
with death is therefore as much concerned with the pain of the person dying, as the
realization that it could happen to anyone, and he argues that movies must be aware of this if
they are to be helpful in their depictions of death. Movies can visualize this in ways that in
real life would be difficult. With effects like slow-motion, retrospect, and time-loops, fitting
musical elements and so on, movies form a special bond with scenes of transition, and
Armstrong especially focuses on the positive aspects of movies´ use of magical elements for
depictions of difficult concepts. Armstrong sees the use of magical elements in movies
exclusively as a good thing, and he argues that the possibility to project what is not there
helps viewers form an image of their grief. By projecting dead people, the past, the present,
or the like, movies can make grief visible to its viewers. This perspective shows how movies
can depict certain situations in ways that reality cannot. Furthermore, Armstrong reasons that
when children are faced with the concept of death in their own lives, it will often be through
the death of older people. However, this is not always the case, and movies can be used to
make children understand that death is not just something that happens to old people.
Armstrong acknowledges that for parents, this might be a lesson that they wish to keep their
children from learning at an early age, but he underlines that it is an important aspect for
children to understand if they are to fully grasp the concept of death. As he puts it: “Perhaps,
in engaging with and exploring our feelings about material death and emotional loss, the
mourning film can offer a space for a dialogue around death and what it means to a society
which no longer engages in structured mourning.” Armstrong touches on the same reasoning
as Huntemann and Morgan, when he argues that movies give a universal depiction of
situations in which the viewers can integrate their personal views and experiences. Movies
can depict situations in which the grieving party finally ends up in the stage of acceptance,
and this road can take different routes, but as a tool the movies allow for different
interpretations and thus give all viewers a way to understand and cope.6
Patti M. Valkenburg and Sandra L. Calvert (2012) suggest a correlation between
children´s repeated exposure to educational films and their creative imaginations. They agree

6
Richard Armstrong, Mourning Films: A Critical Study of Loss and Grieving in Cinema (North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2012),
14, 41-43, 5, 109-111, 5, 109-111.

6
with the view of Bickham, Schmidt, and Huston in that positive and educational scenes in
movies will lead to an increase in the children´s creative imaginations, but they also argue
that repeated exposure to violence on screen will lead to a decrease in imaginative play. They
state that imagination plays a key role in children´s identity development, and as such,
movies are effective tools if used correctly. At the same time, some movies might have a
contradictory effect, such as movies that contain too much or too graphic violence, or that
represent alienating or intolerant views. Valkenburg and Calvert thus argue that movies, if
created with appropriate views, depictions, and scenarios, can supply children with more
resources for their imaginations, thus furthering their capability of imagining different
scenarios and evolving as people with more imagination. According to them, children are
dependent on their imaginations when developing their identities and finding their places in
the world. A large part of young children´s lives are made up of make-belief and pretending,
which helps children develop a way of processing and making sense of things that they
experience. Here Valkenburg and Calvert agree with Armstrong´s view that a movie´s ability
to use magical elements is a definite advantage, in that children often rely on imagination and
fantasy to make sense of their experiences.7
Ian Colman et al. (2014) analyze the rapid occurrences of deaths in animated
children´s movies. Based on children´s high level of screen time, they argue that rapid
exposure to deaths in these types of movies impacts the children watching. They agree with
Valkenburg and Calvert in that that exposure to rapid occurrences of deaths in animated
movies can be traumatic for children, especially if adults have not prepared them before
watching. Furthermore, Colman et al. argue that because children watch a lot of television,
and young children tend to repeat the same thing, repeated exposure to oftentimes dramatic
and brutal deaths can be traumatic or damaging for children, especially for young children
who might not yet understand death as a concept. However, they suggest that this could
instead have an educational effect with the help of guidance from caregivers, and if movies
model appropriate grieving processes. By using the movie as a basis for the conversation, it is
possible to build on what the child has understood from the movie, and to help them come to
terms with what they have seen. It is therefore their belief that movies function as ideal tools
for introducing children to the concept of death, so long as the movie is focused on depictions

7
Patti M. Valkenburg and Sandra L. Calvert, “Media and the Child´s Developing Imagination,” in Handbook of Children and the Media, ed.
Dorothy G. Singer and Jerome L. Singer (Los Angeles: SAGE publications, 2012), 157-159, 160-161, 164, 158-159.

7
that are pedagogical, not too violent or frightening, and that the scenes also contain grieving
patterns and responses to the deaths.8
Luke Hockley (2021) argues that movies can transport their viewers from one space
to another, a phenomenon which he calls “feeling film”. This transportation is not physical,
but emotional, as he claims that the connections viewers make with a movie can help them
create meaning and make sense of different situations. He explains that this is made possible
by the fact that the viewer can adopt another reality or mindset when they immerse
themselves in the plot of a movie, and that here, other rules are applied. Thus, like a dream,
movies blur the lines between reality and illusion. They alter the viewers´ perceptions, both
of themselves, and as a result, the world. Hockley explains how the viewers create meanings
in movies by connecting them to their own expectations, experiences, and interpretations, and
that the movies need to create scenarios that are general enough for different people to relate
to them, yet specific enough that it can relay the meaning that it wants. Hockley´s argument
is that for a movie to function as a tool, the viewers must create distinctions between their
own realities, and the imagined reality on the screen. He argues that this does not mean that
the viewer should separate the two, but that they must apply their own experiences and views
to the movie, while allowing for the make-belief scenarios in the movies to play out without
insisting that they all mirror events and logic from the real world.9
The literature presented in this section agrees that movies are ideal tools for teaching.
Several of them echo each other regarding how important it is for a movie to apply the
appropriate cinematic effects to convey their intended meanings, like sounds, lighting, and
colors that match the emotional settings of scenes. They argue that the use of these effects is
what enables movies to reach their target audience. Also, the literature focuses on the use of
magical elements in movies, and the important function that these effects seem to have when
teaching audiences about difficult concepts. The literature further points out that movies will
only function as teaching tools if they are aware of, and sensitive to, the needs of their
intended audience. Lastly, they argue that for children to learn from movies, adult
supervision is often required to make sure that children do not get confused by the lessons
that the movies are trying to teach. The arguments from the literature in this section will be
implemented in the analysis.

8
Ian Colman et al., “CARTOONS KILL: casualties in animated recreational theater in an objective observational new study of kids’
introduction to loss of life,” British Medical Journal 349, no. 8 (December 2014): 7185-86, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g7184.
9
Luke Hockley, “Feeling Film: Time, Space, and the Third Image,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology. Special Issue: Film as Cultural
Therapeutics (2021): 2, 7-9, 10-12, https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211018025.

8
Children´s coping mechanisms

To understand how the narratives of animated movies can help children understand and deal
with different feelings of loss, it is necessary to realize how children understand and cope
with these types of feelings in general.
Mary Anne Sedney´s article from 2002 uses studies of bereaved children in real life
and compares the findings of those studies with the patterns commonly found in the plot of
children´s movies to suggest how to best aid the children through the grieving process.
Sedney argues that for a child, the concept of death can easily be associated with
disappearance. To make the concept less frightening for children, she argues that it is
important to give the term other associations. She reasons that while a person´s death means
that the person is physically gone, it does not mean that everything that the person was in life
disappears along with them. Animated movies can, in Sedney´s view, portray the importance
of keeping someone´s memory alive, showing children that to remember a person even
though they are dead is an effective way to honor them. She further argues that bereaved
children often rely on connections to the deceased to cope with their loss. These connections
come in the forms of placing the deceased in a specific place, talking to the deceased,
keeping objects that belonged to the deceased, and in using memories of the deceased to
remain connected to them. She claims that the process of remaining connected to a dead
loved one helps children develop their own grieving processes and thus works as a grieving-
and coping technique for children to process their loss. Sedney agrees with Armstrong´s
argument that movies can use magical elements to better explain difficult subjects to
children. She claims that these tendencies are common and important for bereaved children,
but she also points out the potentially harmful effects of portraying them in children´s
movies. She argues that using magic features could relay wrong impressions of people
returning from death, and she therefore focuses on the importance of adult supervision and
explanation to make sure that this is not what the child takes away from these scenes.10
Clarissa Willis (2002) gives advice for caregivers dealing with children that have
experienced loss and who are exhibiting signs of grieving. Her argument is that there are
many distinct factors that determine how children cope with and understand their loss. She
further argues that for children dealing with grief in any form, it is common with confusing
emotions, and thus, for caregivers it is important to help the child understand and accept all

10
Mary Anne Sedney, “Maintaining Connections in Children´s Grief Narratives in Popular Film,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 72,
no. 2 (2002): 279-284, 280, https://doi.org/10.1037//0002-9432.72.2.279.

9
emotions, rather than to prioritize certain emotions over others. She argues that awareness of
a child´s developmental level based on their age is especially important. Her concrete advice
is to be open and honest when dealing with bereaved children, and she warns against hiding
information, refusing to answer directly, or attempting to shield children by using
euphemisms.11
Melissa Allen Heath et al.´s article from 2008 suggests resources for assisting
children with grief in different forms. Their approach agrees with Willis in that the most
important part of the consoling process is to understand the child´s mindset and
developmental level, and thus help children cope with their feelings. They argue that while it
is understandable and common for adults to want to shield their children from grief and loss,
this explains why talking about these feelings with children may be difficult for many. As
such, they argue that movies are beneficial as tools to help get the conversation about grief
and loss going, as movies can approach these topics in less direct and more creative ways.12
Paddy Cronin Favazza and Leslie J. Munson (2010) give advice as to how best to
assist children through experiences of grief and loss. They concur with Willis, and Heath et
al., regarding the importance of understanding the different response patterns based on
children´s ages and experiences. Favazza and Munson point out that younger children often
see reality and experiences based solely on what they can see, and therefore loss might be
difficult to understand in more vague terms. As such, they argue for the importance of being
aware of the child in the consoling process, and to adapt the assistance offered based on their
individuality. Furthermore, Favazza and Munson also agree with Willis, and Heath et al., in
that it is important to not protect too much when guiding children through grief and loss, and
to instead be straight forward and open in communication.13
The literature on children´s coping mechanisms is mostly focused on consoling
children, and how children often react to loss. The arguments are however easily adapted into
the analyses of the movies, as they give guidelines as to what these movies should be aiming
to teach children. The literature is focused on how children perceive difficult concepts, such
as loss and death, and how they can be helped through this process in effective ways.
Furthermore, the literature looks at processes commonly found in children dealing with loss

11
Clarissa A. Willis, “The Grieving Process in Children: Strategies for Understanding, Educating, and Reconciling Children’s Perceptions
of Death,” Early Childhood Education Journal 29, no. 4 (2002): 221-225, https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015125422643.
12
Melissa Allen Heath et al., “Coping With Grief: Guidelines and Resources for Assisting Children,” Intervention in school and clinic 43,
no.5 (May 2008): 259-63, https://doi.org/10.1177/1053451208314493.
13
Paddy Cronin Favazza and Leslie J. Munson, “Loss and Grief in Young Children,” Young Exceptional Children 13, no. 2 (March 2010):
87-94, https://doi.org/10.1177/1096250609356883.

10
and bereavement, and as such, they can give instructions as to what animated movies should
be aiming for when functioning as tools, and therefore, what the analysis should look for. By
implementing the focus areas like honesty, openness, developmental levels, and focusing on
diverse feelings, this perspective can give some direction as to what the animated movies
should aim at if they are to help children through this process.

Research on death in Disney- and Pixar movies

The final bulk of literature looks at articles written about depictions of deaths in different
Disney- and Pixar movies. These articles shed light on previous studies regarding loss of life
in Disney- and Pixar movies, and the approaches that the movies have taken to this. The
articles thus give a framework for aspects to look for in the analysis for this thesis.
Meredith Cox, Erin Garrett, and James A. Graham conducted a study in 2005 with the
goal of understanding why so many Disney movies contain deaths. They argue that young
children usually have not developed an understanding of what death is, and therefore do not
see death as permanent and have not yet understood that death is inevitable, which makes
their understanding of the term vague and incomplete. Cox, Garrett, and Graham argue that
Disney movies can help children develop an understanding of death, and that this is one of
the reasons why so many of the movies contain different instances of death. Furthermore,
from the studies of the deaths, they found that the movies show a troubling pattern in that
when antagonists die in these movies it is often seen as justified, or not commented on at all.
This can, according to them, give children the wrong impression if not treated correctly. The
movies need to use appropriately constructed death-scenes if they want to avoid giving the
impression that some people deserve to die. The examples do however underline the
importance of making moral choices, and not doing terrible things for personal gain, and
while the antagonists may not have deserved death, the movies does show bad people being
punished for their actions, and that actions have consequences.14
James A. Graham, Hope Yuhas and Jessica L. Roman (2018) build on the work done
by Cox et al. to show how death depictions and the portrayal of coping mechanisms in
Disney- and Pixar movies have changed over the past 14 years, by comparing more recent
movies to the older Disney movies that Cox et al. analyzed. In addition to the focus areas of

14
Meredith Cox, Erin Garrett, and James A. Graham, “Death in Disney Films: Implications for Children´s Understanding of Death,” Omega
50, no. 4 (2005): 267-268, 272, 277-279, https://doi-org.ezproxy.uio.no/10.2190/Q5VL-KLF7-060F-W69V.

11
the study done by Cox et al., this study also looked at the coping mechanisms deployed in the
movies. The newer movies did not contain reversible deaths, which they argue is a good thing
as this removes any confusion that children may have regarding the finality and reversibility
of death. Their reasoning is that reversing a character´s death might cause confusion as to
whether this is possible in real life. More recent movies had fewer purposeful deaths, which
they argue is a good thing, as this indicates that the newer movies are moving away from
death scenes that might inadvertently portray murder as justified in certain situations, such as
in the murder of an antagonist that has done bad things. Instead, the newer movies had
accidental deaths that introduced more common causes of death, which they found to be more
beneficial and productive for the children watching, as it introduces death in more ordinary
terms, like death of old people. They found that newer movies showed more coping
mechanisms through different characters. These coping mechanisms modelled diverse ways
of dealing with loss, which they argue show the potential educational value of these movies.15
Kelly Tenzek and Bonnie Nickels (2019) argue that death scenes in Pixar and Disney
movies open for discussions regarding end-of-life situations with the children that watch
them. They claim that these topics can be difficult to discuss as they are often laden with
taboo and unease, and that these movies can be ideal tools to approach these subjects and
make them less difficult to talk about. Tenzek and Nickels argue that these types of movies
are ideal as teaching tools and conversation starters, as they allow for emotional submersion
and yet “free the viewer from immediate responsibility or consequence”. They explain that
the creative freedom that movies have in creating entirely new worlds is what allows the
viewers to look at, and be introduced to, difficult topics without having to connect them to
their own life directly. Thus, they conclude that if used correctly and with awareness of
shortcomings and confusion areas, movies can be a good conversation-starter regarding end-
of-life topics, but that the filmmakers must be aware in the creation process not to convey
unintended meanings to the children.16
The literature from this section give insight into common patterns of death scenes in
Disney- and Pixar movies, while arguing for positive aspects and approaches that these
scenes take. These approaches will work as guidelines for the analysis, as the articles

15
James A. Graham, Hope Yuhas and Jessica L. Roman, “Death and Coping Mechanisms in Animated Disney Movies: A Content Analysis
of Disney Films (1937-2003) and Disney/Pixar Films (2003-2016),” Social sciences 7, no.10 (2018): 199,
https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci7100199.
16
Kelly E. Tenzek and Bonnie M. Nickels, “End-of-Life in Disney and Pixar Films: An Opportunity for Engaging in Difficult
Conversation,” Omega – Journal of Death and Dying 80, no. 1 (2019): 50-52, 52, 52-53, https://doi.org/10.1177/0030222817726258.

12
highlight aspects to look for, and the positive attributes that these movies can have for
presenting children to different death scenes.

13
 Chapter 2: Up

Up is an animated movie released by Pixar Animation Studios in collaboration with Walt

Disney Pictures in 2009. It is an adventure comedy intended for families, and despite having
a PG rating due to some “light peril- and action scenes” the movie is, according to the
Internet Movie Database (IMDB), appropriate for most audiences.17
The storyline of Up starts with the introduction of a boy named Carl Fredricksen.
Despite his shy and hesitant personality, young Carl is a wild adventurer at heart. His biggest
dream is to follow in the footsteps of his idol, the brave and popular adventurer Charles
Muntz. When young Carl meets a fierce and outgoing girl named Ellie, who is also revealed
to be a huge fan of Muntz, the two young adventurers form an instantaneous bond. The two
of them fall in love and spend the rest of Ellie´s life together. After a short retrospective
opening scene, where Ellie and Carl´s life together is shown, the movie takes us to Carl’s
current situation. The now 78-year-old Carl has become withdrawn and cranky after Ellie´s
death. Real-estate developers are closing in on his house from every side, but he refuses to
sell, despite having been offered fantastic prices. After an incident involving Carl hitting a
worker with a cane after the worker accidentally damages Carl and Ellie’s mailbox, Carl is
ordered by the state to move to a care-facility. To avoid this fate, Carl decides to follow his
and Ellie´s lifelong dream to move to a place called Paradise Falls, and he also decides to
take their home with him. He achieves this by attaching it to thousands of helium balloons
and flying away with it. By an unfortunate coincidence, a young wilderness explorer, Russell,
accidentally joins the journey, forcing Carl to adjust his plans. Unforeseen developments, like
meeting talking dogs and magical birds, and a surprise discovery of the infamous Charles
Muntz at Paradise Falls, alter Carl’s perfect plan. To get Russell safely home, and to move on
in his life, Carl finally realizes that he must leave his and Ellie’s dream behind, and instead
make new plans of his own.18
Up is ideal for the focus of this thesis, with its approaches to different life-altering
scenarios, many of which dealing with feelings of loss in different forms. Most notable is
Ellie’s death which introduces the audience to death already from the beginning.
Furthermore, Up has instances of changing life situations and feelings of loss, for instance

17
“Up: Parents Guide,” IMDB, accessed March 13, 2022, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049413/parentalguide.
18
Pete Docter and Bob Peterson, Up (2009: Los Angeles: Pixar Animation Studios & Walt Disney Pictures), [movie].

14
through Carl’s personal journey, where he moves through the stages of grief, coping with
Ellie being gone, and eventually discovering that he must move on with his life to be happy.

Carl without Ellie

Carl´s loss when Ellie dies is twofold. He both physically loses Ellie, and he loses the huge
part of his identity that Ellie was responsible for. Carl spent nearly his entire life with Ellie,
and his identity is therefore closely connected to, and influenced by her. This connection is
shown in the opening scene of the movie. The scene uses several time-jumps to show how
Carl and Ellie meet, fall in love, get married, build their house, make plans, see their plans
both succeed and fail, grow old, and then finally, how Ellie dies. This entire synopsis of their
life together only lasts 11 minutes. Despite the short duration, this scene carries a great
emotional impact, and it presents both Ellie and Carl in detail. Ellie´s outgoing and
adventurous personality slowly makes Carl less shy and more open, and he allows for her
brave approach to things to rub off on him, like when he accidentally leaves his handprint in
paint on their mailbox. Carl is shown to be shocked and embarrassed at his clumsy mistake,
but Ellie quickly dips her hand in the paint bucket and leaves her handprint right underneath
Carl´s on the mailbox. This scene is short and uncomplicated, and yet it gives the audience
insight into the characters of Ellie and Carl, without the two of them ever saying a word.
This retrospective opening scene shows the audience how Carl and Ellie have built
their life together, how they shared every dream, every set-back, every sadness, and every
happiness, and that their identities are therefore closely intertwined. This could be recognized
as familiar patterns for many of the children watching, as they might recognize similar
patterns in couples that they know, like parents or grandparents. Additionally, this scene
makes it possible even for quite young children to understand Carl and Ellie´s bond, and that
it must be sad if one of them dies. This agrees with the argument of Bickham, Schmidt, and
Huston, in that movies can introduce children to more complex topics by explaining them
through more familiar settings and building blocks.19 When Ellie dies, it distorts Carl´s entire
reality, as he now must find out what his identity is without her. Despite his difficulties
accepting this loss, Carl continues the path that the two of them had started together, as he
decides to fulfill their lifelong dream of moving to Paradise Falls, even bringing their house
along by using balloons. This action shows Carl refusing to leave Ellie behind, even though

19
Bickham, Schmidt and Huston, “Attention, Comprehension, and Educational Influences,” 126.

15
she is dead. The house becomes a symbol representing Ellie for Carl, and his determination to
bring the house to Paradise Falls shows how he is not willing to let go of Ellie and their
shared dreams. Through this action, Up shows children ways people can act when they lose
someone close to them. Carl goes through a long and hard grieving process, clinging to
objects and dreams representing Ellie, as he is having a tough time letting go. This is also
shown in the incident with the mailbox, when Carl hits the man who accidentally damages it.
Carl is usually a sweet and careful person, but the mailbox has become a representation of
Ellie for him, and when it is damaged, Carl reacts from grief. This approach agrees with
Sedney´s view of how children deal with loss, substantiating her argument that children often
rely on connections to the dead person, objects related to them, the possibility of continuing
to talk to the dead person, connecting the deceased to specific places, and using memories to
remain connected.20 Up shows Carl doing all these things, and thus shows children possible
techniques for getting through the mourning process and dealing with the loss of a loved one.
Carl finally manages to let go of Ellie when he gets their house to Paradise Falls. In this
scene, Carl is looking through Ellie´s Travel Book, which she gave to him in the hospital
right before she died. Ellie wrote in her Travel Book from she was a young girl, up until her
last moments. As Carl is flipping through the scenes of the book, he is surprised at the
development of Ellie´s entries. The beginning of the book shows the dreams of young Ellie,
her biggest dream being someday going to Paradise Falls. Up until this moment, Carl
believed that this had been Ellie´s dream until the day she died, and his wish to get their
house to Paradise Falls was in part because he felt guilty that Ellie had never reached her
dream. As Carl gets to Ellie´s later entries in the Travel Book, he discovers that her dreams
have changed along the way. Ellie´s newer dreams show her and Carl doing everyday things
and being happy. The final page contains a message from Ellie to Carl, saying “Thanks for
the adventure – now go have a new one! Love Ellie.”21 Carl realizes that while he believed
Ellie had died without getting to experience her greatest dream, Ellie had discovered that her
dream was the life she was living with Carl. Through Ellie´s note, Carl realizes that Ellie
wanted him to go on living after her death, and he symbolically leaves Ellie behind by
leaving all their belongings at Paradise Falls, and he goes on towards living his life without
her. This is a sad scene in the sense that Ellie is gone, but it becomes a beautiful scene as Carl
thinks back on their life and feels happy about it. He remembers Ellie, but through her wish

20
Sedney, “Maintaining Connections,” 279-284.
21
Docter and Peterson, Up, [01:13:06].

16
for him to move on he can accept that he must keep on living and find his identity without
her. In this, the movie shows a healthy step in the grieving-process and makes it clear that
while it is okay to be sad about someone dying, it is also okay to keep on living. Here, one
can see an example of a grieving party ending up in the stage of acceptance, a claim made by
Armstrong to be one of the important features displayed in a mourning film. He states that the
job of such a film is to show that there are many paths through the grieving process, and it
should always depict healthy coping mechanisms to its viewers.22 Carl´s acceptance shows
that despite it being sad when someone dies, it is alright to be happy about the life that they
lived before they died. Their death does not erase those happy memories.

Ellie´s death

Even though Ellie is just alive for the first 11 minutes of Up, her life and death play key roles
throughout the movie. Through the brief opening scene, the audience get to know Ellie from
an early age all the way to her last moments. Ellie dies an old woman in a hospital bed, which
will be familiar to many of the children watching, as the death of grandparents or other old
relatives are common first encounters with death for them. Conversations about death can be
difficult to start with children, and how to approach the subject is therefore important. Here,
Willis suggests that open and honest communication is the most important thing for helping
children understand death.23 Furthermore, Heath et al. argues that while it is understandable
that caregivers find it difficult to expose children to death, it is important not to shy away
from the subject, as this could lead to children to fear it instead of trying to understand it.24
From this, Ellie´s death is arguably a great approach to introducing children to death.
The rendition of Carl and Ellie’s life in the opening scene contains little dialogue,
instead, the scene is set to the theme song of the movie. The song starts of in a normal pace,
then escalates to a rapid and festive pace as the scenes from Carl and Ellie´s life as young
people are shown. Towards the end of the scene, the song slows and becomes calmer and
more serious, which accompanies the parts of the scene where Ellie has gotten old, and she is
getting weaker and sicker. When the scene jumps from Carl sitting with Ellie in the hospital,
and over to Carl sitting alone in the church at Ellie´s funeral, the music is slowed down. This
use of the music helps children understand that something serious is happening in the end of

22
Armstrong, “Mourning Films,” 109-111.
23
Willis, “The Grieving Process in Children,” 224-225.
24
Heath et al. “Coping with Grief,” 259-63.

17
the scene. It foreshadows Ellie´s death to the audience, and makes the scene feel sad. This
sadness is further emphasized by the use of colors throughout the scene. The part before
Ellie´s time in hospital is filled with intense colors, but when the song slows down towards
the end, the colors become fewer and darker. This also tells the children that this part of the
scene is more serious than the rest of the opening scene. The use of music and colors agrees
with Bickham, Schmidt, and Huston´s argument that movies need to use the right kind of
stimuli to get their messages across and keep the children focused and connected to the
setting. Armstrong´s argument that certain effects might make scenes of transitional phases in
life easier to understand also applies here. He argues that the use of effects, for instance color
and music, lets the viewers form a bond with a scene, and that this can help them understand
the loss or transition that they are witnessing.25 Lastly, Turner suggests that movies´ use of
components like sound effects, music, and lighting is what allows movies to reach their
targeted audience. He claims that this allows movies to explain emotions through drawing
parallels to real-time events and social conventions.26 The use of stimuli suggested here lets
children learn what the movies are trying to teach, which supports the use of the colors and
music in Ellie´s death-scene and makes it an ideal scene for explaining death to children.
While it could be argued that showing death in this way could scare the children by
making them afraid of death, as is warned by Valkenburg and Calvert,27 Ellie´s death scene
shows a normal death. According to Favazza and Munson, it is important not to protect
children too much, and to be straightforward and open in communication when introducing
children to the concept of death.28 This means showing things the way they are, and not cover
them up or avoid them. Children must get to see the realities, not be shielded from them,
which is what Ellie´s death-scene does. The scene conveys the sadness of someone dying and
shows this as a normal reaction. By creating a sad and serious feeling around Ellie´s death,
the movie shows the children a reaction pattern for losing someone and introduces them to
feelings that might arise when death occurs.
Furthermore, Ellie´s death signals the permanence of death, which is a point that Cox,
Garrett, and Graham argue is one of the aspects children have a challenging time grasping
when it comes to death. They claim that this confusion is caused by the fact that children
often find it difficult to understand that something is final and permanent.29 In Up, even

25
Armstrong, “Mourning Films,” 41-43, 109-111.
26
Turner, Film as Social Practice, 72-79.
27
Valkenburg and Calvert, “Media and the Child´s Developing Imagination,” 160-164.
28
Favazza and Munson, “Loss and Grief in Young Children,” 87-94.
29
Cox, Garrett, and Graham, “Death in Disney Films,”267-268.

18
though Carl continues talking to Ellie throughout the movie, she is never seen again after her
death scene in the beginning. This shows the children that when someone dies, they do not
come back. As such, the movie gives the children a definition to connect to the death term, as
it shows that death is permanent, and it illustrates this to children by showing that Ellie does
not return.

The death of Charles Muntz

The death of Up´s antagonist, Charles Muntz, shows a different death than Ellie´s. The
famous explorer Charles Muntz, who was Carl and Ellie’s biggest hero in their childhoods,
has turned bad while living at Paradise Falls. Years before, Muntz was discredited by
scientists after presenting a skeleton of a mythical bird, which Muntz nicknamed the monster
of Paradise Falls. The scientists believed the skeleton to be fake, and to restore his honor,
Muntz returned to Paradise Falls to find a live specimen of the bird. His intense, and thus far
unsuccessful, hunt has turned Muntz bitter and mean. These character traits suggest to the
viewers how they should feel about Muntz, as they suggest that he is a bad guy. When Carl
and Russell travel to Paradise Falls, they encounter one of the birds. Russell bonds with her
instantly and names her Kevin, and she starts to follow them around. Carl and Russell attempt
to save the bird from Muntz, and he violently chases after them. The chase is made up of
intense scenes with dramatic music and a lot of action. Muntz attacks Carl with a sword and
kicks him to the ground, while Carl only has his walking stick to defend himself. The
dramatic effects and violence in this scene could, according to Valkenburg and Calvert,
inhibit learning as it will be scary for some children. It does, however, show Muntz as a bad
person, and so it paints a picture of the morality of the man.30 The scene is made less scary
and more comical when Muntz has managed to pin Carl to the ground. Muntz says “Any last
words, Fredricksen? Come on! Spit it out!”31 and Carl responds by spitting his dentures in
Muntz´s face, and he manages to escape. This is a laughable scene for children, which helps
dampen some of the scariness of Muntz´s violence. Turner argues that use of components like
these is what makes movies ideal for teaching, as the components can be matched to the
emotional setting of the scene to underline appropriate reactions, or they could be used to
make scenes less scary so that the message comes through.32 In the continued chase, Muntz

30
Valkenburg and Calvert, “Media and the Child´s Developing Imagination,” 160-164.
31
Docter and Peterson, Up, [01:20:59].
32
Turner, Film as Social Practice, 58-60, 72-92, 4.

19
shoots at Russell and Kevin, and when he jumps out a window while chasing them, he falls to
his death. Carl is shown to be shocked by Muntz’ death. Because of how these scenes are
built up, using dramatic effects and violence, this death is however made to feel justified.
Muntz´s death is entirely his own fault, as it shows Muntz doing terrible things and ending up
suffering the consequences. Although the appropriate consequences for doing terrible things
does not necessarily entail death, the scene models to children that actions have
consequences. This depiction agrees with the patterns found in more recent movies, by
Graham, Yuhas, and Roman, as it does not show the death of the antagonist as intentional or
celebrated, but rather as an accidental result of the antagonist´s own moral decisions.33
Furthermore, it shows an instance of death that is not as normal as the death of old loved
ones, like the death of Ellie. This scene thus gives children another interpretation of death as
a term, and it addresses loss of life from another angle.

Chapter conclusion

Although Up contains magical elements, the movie´s instances of loss are scenarios that can
happen in real life. Through Ellie´s death, children are introduced to death in its most
ordinary form. While sad, this death is quite an accurate display of what inevitably happens
to people when they get old. Death in this form is the way most children will have their first
encounter with the term, and Up helps prepare children for this reality. The movie´s use of
elements like comedy, music, and colors creates scenes that introduce children to death and
loss in varied ways, which sets the scene for children to ask questions, and for grown-ups to
answer questions about these feelings. Through Carl´s journey, children are introduced to
different grieving processes, as he struggles to adjust to his new identity without Ellie. Carl´s
initial reaction to Ellie´s death is denial and anger. For the children watching, this shows that
there are several ways to react to loss, and that those stages are important in the grieving
process. For instance, it shows that it is common and alright to feel sad about death, and that
they are allowed to grieve and go through the motions. Furthermore, the movie portrays
healthy coping mechanisms when Carl is finally able to let go, thus giving children guidelines
for different grieving processes.
Carl´s emotional journey also includes him having to discover his new identity
without Ellie. As Ellie was a big part of Carl´s identity when she was alive, Carl goes through

33
Graham, Yuhas and Roman, “Death and Coping Mechanisms,” 199.

20
a significant identity loss when she dies. His revelation from the Travel Book showed him
that Ellie wanted him to live on without her, which enabled him to let go and find his new
identity. Presenting this entire process in Up shows children the difficult emotions connected
to changes in identity, and the sad feelings that can accompany identity losses, for instance if
someone close to them dies. At the same time, this process shows ways of dealing with these
losses.
Finally, the death of Muntz shows the death of a person who is depicted as unlikable
and mean. Muntz´s death, which is a result of his own immoral choices, introduces children
to another way to understand the concept of death. This scene shows that actions have
consequences, and that sometimes, people die because of their own actions. This aspect of
death requires adult guidance to ensure that children do not interpret Muntz´s death in a way
that suggests certain people deserve to die. However, it gives children another way to
understand death.

21
 Chapter 3: Inside Out

The animation movie Inside Out was released in 2015. Like Up, this movie is an adventure-
comedy produced by Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Pictures, and it is labelled by
IMDB as a family-movie appropriate for most ages, but rated PG for some “mild thematic
elements and some action.”34
The story of Inside Out unfolds across two parallel and intertwined storylines. The
story’s main protagonist is an 11-year-old girl named Riley. Her life is turned upside down
when her father gets a new job, resulting in her family having to move from Minnesota to
San Francisco. The move takes Riley away from everything she knows, as she must leave her
friends, her school, her childhood-home, and her hockey-team. In addition, this move
happens when Riley is in a transitional phase in life, developing out of childhood and into
puberty. To show how Riley deals with her feelings, the movie utilizes a second storyline,
which unfolds inside of Riley’s head. In Headquarters, the control center where all of Riley’s
decisions are made, the audience is introduced to Riley’s five Core Emotions: Joy, Fear,
Anger, Disgust and Sadness. These five characters work together to guide Riley through
every decision, both big and small. Joy is the unofficial leader of the emotions, and she takes
immense pride in Riley’s memories being primarily joyful ones. Joy tries to keep the other
emotions at bay, as she believes Riley will live her best life if her memories and experiences
are as joyful as they can be. Joy especially tries to keep Sadness away from Riley, and this
turns catastrophic when Sadness tries to touch Riley’s Core Memories. The Core Memories,
which in the movie are captured in bright glowing orbs, define Riley’s personality. All her
Core Memories are bright yellow, which is Joy’s color. When Sadness tries to touch the Core
Memories Joy tries to stop her, which accidentally gets Sadness and Joy pulled out of
Headquarters, along with Riley’s Core Memories. They are sucked out of Headquarters and
sent to Long Term Memory, the place where Riley’s memories are sent to get stored and
categorized. The three other emotions, Fear, Anger, and Disgust are now left alone to help
Riley through all the difficult scenarios facing her in her new life. During Joy and Sadness’
race against the clock to get the Core Emotions back to Headquarters, they run into
interesting characters, and they must maneuver through different challenges and tasks
together. Their journey makes Joy realize just how important the other emotions, especially

34
“Inside Out: Parents Guide,” IMDB, accessed March 13, 2022, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2096673/parentalguide.

22
Sadness, are for Riley’s well-being, and the movie ends with all the emotions finally working
together.35
The challenging landscape of puberty and growing up is the focus of Inside Out. This
makes it ideal for analyzing how movies can introduce children to difficult feelings. The
movie deals with the loss of friends, stability, identity, and childhood, and through the Core
Emotions in Riley’s head, it attempts to explain the difficult emotions involved in these types
of losses, using cognitive psychology. Inside Out also depicts the concept of death and of
identity loss through the character Bing Bong, who is Riley’s childhood imaginary friend. His
death becomes a combined symbol both of death itself, and of the “death” of childhood.

Bing Bong

Through Bing Bong, the movie puts Riley’s younger childhood inside a walking and talking
character. Joy and Sadness meet Bing Bong in Long Term Memory, where Joy recognizes
Bing Bong as Riley’s imaginary friend from childhood. He is, according to himself “mostly
cotton candy, but shape-wise, part cat, part elephant, part dolphin,”36 and he was made up by
Riley when she was three years old. Bing Bong was Riley’s favorite playmate for a long
time, but when the viewers first meet him in the movie, he is walking around feeling lonely in
Long Term Memory, collecting the orbs of his favorite moments with Riley in a bottomless
bag. This indicates to the viewer that Riley no longer imagines Bing Bong, as she no longer
plays with imaginary friends. This has left Bing Bong to his own devices as he moves around
in Long Term desperately clinging to his memories of Riley as a little girl. In addition to his
unusual crossbreed, there are other traits to Bing Bong´ that indicates him being created by
Riley when she was young. For instance, he cries candy, and he is illiterate even though he
believes he can spell and read. He also does not think about consequences very often and he
acts based solely on his wishes and preferences, which ends up getting him, Joy, and Sadness
into trouble several times in the movie. These childlike character traits make Bing Bong a
funny and relatable character that appeals to younger children by giving them something to
relate to. For slightly older children, Bing Bong gives them something to reminisce about
regarding their own childhoods. This makes Bing Bong ideal for symbolizing feelings of loss
while being aware of children’s developmental stages, which speaks to the argument of

35
Pete Docter and Ronnie Del Carmen, Inside Out (2015: Emeryville: Pixar Animation Studios & Walt Disney Pictures), [movie].
36
Docter and Del Carmen, Inside Out, [00:39:10].

23
Willis, and of Heath et al., when they underline the importance of awareness of the child´s
developmental level when guiding children through difficult emotions.37 Bing Bong seems
unaware of the fact that Riley has grown up and that she probably will not play with him
again. He is still hanging on to the dream the two of them had when they played together, of
one day going to the moon in a magic rocket. Bing Bong is however faced with this reality
when his magic rocket is pushed into Riley’s Memory Dump. The Memory Dump is a large
pit at the edge of Long Term, where the memory orbs containing Riley´s forgotten memories
are dumped, never to return. This loss of the rocket is, both for Bing Bong and all the
children watching, an actual loss. As argued by Favazza and Munson, younger children often
respond only to what they can see, as loss for them is difficult to understand in more vague
terms38. When Bing Bong realizes that Riley is not going to play with him anymore, shown in
the movie as him losing the rocket, this is symbolic of Riley´s identity having changed from
the little girl that used to play with Bing Bong. Bing Bong is the representation of Riley’s
childhood identity and when Riley forgets about him, this means she has lost the part of her
identity that involved Bing Bong, meaning that her childhood-self is lost. This is explained to
children by making Bing Bong into a character, rather than trying to explain the concept of a
changing identity in more vague terms. Identity is difficult to explain, but this scene tries to
show the loss of identity through Riley and Bing Bong´s friendship being is over. Where
young children can relate to the sadness of losing Bing Bong’s rocket down the Dump, or by
Riley and Bing Bong’s friendship being over, older children may relate to the sadness of not
being a young child anymore.
Other than representing identity loss and end of childhood, Bing Bong also represents
loss of life. When Bing Bong and Joy accidentally falls into the Memory Dump, they try to
escape using the rocket. Bing Bong realizes that he is weighing them down, and he sacrifices
himself to get Joy back to Riley. Even though he knows this means the end for him, Bing
Bong is so happy when he sees Joy make it back to Long Term. He jumps around cheering
and calls up to Joy with tears in his eyes, asking her to “take her to the moon for me!
Okay?”39 just as he is fading away. This scene is as sad as it is beautiful, as Bing Bong, who
is the embodiment of Riley as a child, sacrifices his life to ensure Riley´s continued joy in
life. For the younger children, this emotional impact comes from the fact that Bing Bong is a
fun and relatable character that dies. For slightly older children, the emotional impact of parts

37
Willis, “The Grieving Process in Children,” 221-223; Heath et al. “Coping with Grief,” 259-263.
38
Favazza and Munson, “Loss and Grief in Young Children,” 87-92.
39
Docter and Del Carmen, Inside Out, [01:13:02].

24
of Riley’s childhood dying through Bing Bong will be more apparent. This agrees with
Hockley´s argument that for children to make sense of difficult concepts in movies, they must
be able to relate them to their own personal experiences.40 Furthermore, the views of both
Turner, and Comstock and Scharrer apply, in that movies must adapt their depictions based
on the maturity levels and ages of their intended audiences, to make sure that they understand
what the movies are trying to say.41 Bing Bong´s death scene reaches children of different
ages in different ways, and thus helps them understand the concept of death regardless of
how old they are.
When Bing Bong dies, he fades away until he is completely gone. Even though Joy
managed to escape the Dump, this was an exception to the rule, as Sadness has pointed out
that nothing ever comes back from the dump. This is emphasized by the memory orbs in the
dump, as they have all turned grey and are one by one disappearing in clouds of dust. When
Bing Bong disappears, it is therefore made clear that he is not coming back and that his death
is permanent. Bing Bong’s death scene underscores the permanence of death and show an
appropriate response pattern, as Joy is tearfully saying goodbye to him from Long Term. As
Cox, Garrett, and Graham argue, young children often have trouble with seeing death as
permanent, and movies can help with making the permanence of death more understandable
and less vague.42 This is what Bing Bong´s death scene can show children. Furthermore, Bing
Bong´s death shows children an appropriate reaction to someone dying. Joy is sad that he
disappears, but at the same time she promises to carry him with her as she accepts his
challenge to try and take Riley to the moon for him. This scene shows an example of keeping
someone’s memory alive, which, as Sedney argues, is an important step for children when
dealing with death, and in making the concept slightly less scary and sad.43 The scene
underlines that even though someone dies and cannot come back, they can be remembered
and honored in the lives of the people they were close to. Bing Bong’s death scene thus has
quite the emotional impact and shows the movie’s ability to convey complex and sad life-
experiences to children.
Bing Bong´s death is also an example of how magic elements contribute to explain
difficult concepts to children. As Armstrong points out, magic elements can help show the
viewers loss through scenarios that are not possible in real life, and thus better create an

40
Hockley, “Feeling Film,” 7-9, 10-12.
41
Turner, Film as Social Practice, 72-79; Comstock and Scharrer, "The Use of Television,” 36-37.
42
Cox, Garrett, and Graham, “Death in Disney Films,” 267-268.
43
Sedney, “Maintaining Connections,” 279-284.

25
image of the grief that accompanies the loss.44 Bing Bong’s death would not have been
possible in the real world, as he is an imaginary character that exists solely inside of Riley’s
head. Without the magic world in her head, the movie could not have shown Bing Bong or
his death, and the symbolism surrounding his character would not have been possible.
Valkenburg and Calvert further emphasize the positive effects of using magical elements in
movies to appeal to children´s imaginations, as children often rely on imagination and fantasy
to make sense of difficult emotions.45 The use of magical elements lets children use their
imaginations to form a bond with the scene and create an interpretation of death through Bing
Bong.

Riley

Inside Out explains the confusing process of identity development in the transition between
child and teenager through Riley´s journey. Huntemann and Morgan argue that movies are
ideal tools for helping children deal with the difficult transition of figuring out their identities
on their own, in that movies can create scenarios that help children explore this within safe
frames.46 For many children, the transition from child to teenager will be a relatable subject,
and movies can help them get a better understanding of confusing feelings they might be
experiencing in their own lives. In Inside Out, Riley´s move from her old home, and her
transition into puberty, shows her going through different identity crises and losses. She must
figure out how to be a teenager at the same time as she has lost all the things that have been
familiar to her since she was a baby, like her home, her friends, her school, and her hobbies.
These are all complex and difficult emotions to explain to children, but Inside Out has found
a way to explain them in more visual ways. By depicting Riley´s Core Emotions as the
individual characters inside her head, the movie shows different emotional reactions to
Riley’s experiences, as characters discussing how best to approach a problem. The Core
Emotions use the Control Panel, which is a board of buttons that control Riley’s reactions,
words, and ideas, and the Core Emotions decide which buttons to push in any given situation.
They seldom agree, and this shows children that one experience can lead to many emotional
reactions, and that choosing which emotion to listen to is not always easy. This movie thus

44
Armstrong, Mourning Films, 41-43, 109-111.
45
Valkenburg and Calvert, "Media and the Child´s Developing Imagination," 158-159.
46
Huntemann and Morgan, "Media and Identity Development," 304-308.

26
introduces children to different emotions in a way that they can see, which can help them get
a better understanding of their own feelings. Thus, the movie does as Willis suggests, as it
helps children understand that all their emotions are important, and that for children to be
able to cope with difficult experiences, they must learn to listen to all their emotions.47 When
Riley thinks of what she has lost from her life back home, or when she is sad about certain
parts of her childhood being over, the Core Emotions all try to decide how she should best
handle these thoughts, but they often end up making wrong decisions, and Riley ends up
feeling lost. This makes it more understandable for children why Riley has a tough time
facing unfamiliar situations in her new life. This way, the movie shows the complexities of
adolescence, and the difficult choices and emotions that are common when going through
these kinds of identity changes, but in ways that are understandable for children of all ages.
They show that it is normal to be confused and uncertain, and why one might respond badly
when feelings get confusing. This shows the movie’s ability to guide children, and to give
them coping-mechanisms and ways to understand difficult emotions that might appear when
faced with loss and change.

Joy and Sadness

Riley´s identity losses, both connected to her move away from her former home and relating
to her growing up and leaving her childhood behind, are types of identity losses that will be
familiar to many children. They are, however, difficult concepts to explain, but by showing
Riley´s emotional responses through the world inside her head, Inside Out has found a way to
conceptualize these losses to the viewers. To explain how this works, Hockley´s argument
becomes relevant. He believes that movies can transport viewers from one space to another,
and that through the different rules that apply to movies, they can explain more difficult
concepts, and give viewers a way to interpret their emotions in comparison to the ones on
screen.48 This is what Inside Out does when it explains Riley´s identity loss and identity
development through her Core Emotions, mainly through Sadness and Joy.
Joy´s desperate attempts to influence as many of Riley’s reactions as possible, shows
the problem of focusing too much solely on positive emotions. Joy´s intentions are good, as
she believes that Riley will live her best life if her memories are as joyful as possible, and this

47
Willis, “The Grieving Process in Children,” 221-225.
48
Hockley, “Feeling Film,” 2, 7-9, 10-12.

27
has worked out well this far in Riley’s life. Riley, however, is getting older. She is starting to
deal with more complex and difficult experiences, and Joy always taking the lead is not
getting the same results as it used to. Joy’s wish to keep Sadness away from Riley is what
gets them thrown out of Riley’s Headquarters, but it takes a while for Joy to realize that she
has been wrong to keep Sadness at bay. Through the movie’s evolving plotline, Sadness ends
up saving the moment on several occasions. For instance, when Bing Bong loses his rocket
down into the dump, Sadness helps him talk about the sadness he is experiencing. Joy’s first
impulse is to stop Sadness, as she believes allowing himself to feel sad will make it worse for
Bing Bong. To her surprise, Bing Bong talks about the sad feelings as he is crying, he hugs
Sadness while he cries, and afterward he declares that he feels much better. Joy is faced with
the realization that Sadness plays a significant role just like her, and she starts to understand
that by keeping Sadness away from Riley she might have been inadvertently hurting her. In
one of the final scenes of the movie when Joy and Sadness are back at Headquarters, Riley is
making the decision to run away and go back to her old home. Joy tells Sadness that she
should take control of the Control Panel, as “Riley needs you”.49 Sadness convinces Riley to
go back to her parents, and Riley can finally tell her parents about being sad about the move.
Riley´s parents then understand how Riley has been feeling, and this helps all of them
express their shared sadness about the losses caused by the move, which in turn helps them
all feel better. Sadness then involves all the other Core Emotions, and together they guide
Riley to better responses. Willis argues that this should be the focus when guiding children
through various kinds of losses, as they will be dealing with confusing feelings, thus, the aim
should be to help the child understand all their feelings, and not just focusing on certain
ones.50 Through Joy’s realization, the movie shows the viewers how important all their
emotions are, and how to focus only on one emotion while ignoring others can hurt them.
Furthermore, it shows the importance of the feelings that are considered bad, like sadness or
anger, and how these feelings are important and should not be suppressed. This also shows
the more complex feelings that start to affect Riley as she develops toward being a teenager,
and the confusing feelings of loss that can affect children when they are growing up, or when
they are faced with big life-changes. Riley´s world is getting bigger, and she must deal with
bigger decisions. At the same time, she is getting to experience more, she is evolving as a
person, and her identity is becoming more complex. These are all parts of growing up, and

49
Docter and Del Carmen, Inside Out, [01:19:10].
50
Willis, “The Grieving Process in Children,” 221-225.

28
the movie explains this in an understandable and relatable way. Through the characters of this
movie, the children watching have specific characters to relate their emotions to. This can
make it easier for them to talk about emotions that feel too heavy or uncertain.

Chapter conclusion

Inside Out deals with different forms of identity losses and losses of life. Through the
complexity of Bing Bong as a character, the movie has found a way to show the loss and
complicated feelings related to the end of childhood and the identity loss it can cause. Bing
Bong´s death also gives children ways to understand the concept of death, as his death is
shown to be permanent. Through Joy´s reaction to his death, the scene shows response
patterns and ways to grieve, and it shows that it is okay to be sad when someone dies. This
way, the movie supplies children with coping mechanisms to deal with death and loss.
Furthermore, Riley´s identity changes due to her loss of childhood, and her loss of the
familiar, show children common reactions and feelings associated with these types of identity
changes. The movie gives children ways of understanding difficult emotions that they might
be dealing with, and by placing these feelings inside the different characters in Riley´s head,
it gives a visual way to interpret and understand these emotions. It also communicates to
children that when their identities are changing and evolving, it requires them getting
comfortable with their different emotions, not just the happy ones. For children, it is
important to learn that sad emotions are just as important and legitimate as happy ones, and
that all emotions serve a purpose for dealing with difficult experiences and feelings of loss.
Inside Out has found a way to explain this using the Core Emotions and their individual
character traits.

29
 Chapter 4: Coco

Like the two other movies, Coco is an animated adventure-comedy released by Pixar
Animation Studios and Walt Disney Pictures. It was released in 2017 and it is rated by IMDB
as PG due to mild thematic elements but considered appropriate for most viewers.51
Coco tells the story of a young boy named Miguel. Despite his family’s generations
long ban on music, Miguel wishes more than anything to become a world-famous musician,
just like his idol, the legendary musician Ernesto de la Cruz. After arguing with his family
about him joining a talent competition, Miguel is accidentally transported to the Land of the
Dead during the holiday of Día de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead). To get back to the
Land of the Living, Miguel must get the blessing of one of his relatives in the Land of the
Dead. When they inform him that they will only give him their blessing if he promises to
give up music, Miguel decides to find his (great-great) grandfather, who he believes to be
Ernesto de la Cruz, and ask for his blessing instead. During his quest to find his grandfather,
Miguel meets Héctor, a charismatic trickster who is trying to cross over to the Land of the
Living for the celebration. Miguel learns that Héctor cannot cross over because his picture is
not on anyone’s Ofrenda, a type of altar where people put up pictures of their loved ones to
remember them and keep them alive in their memories. Miguel and Héctor make a deal that
Héctor will help Miguel meet De la Cruz, and in return, Miguel will bring Héctor’s picture
back to the Land of the Living and put it up at Miguel’s family Ofrenda. The two of them
meet people who, like Héctor, are in the process of being forgotten by everyone that knew
them in life, and because of this are disappearing from the Land of the Dead as well. Miguel
and Héctor go on to compete in a music competition to win a meeting with De la Cruz, but
after finally meeting him in person, Miguel learns that his idol is not the man he thought he
was. This makes Miguel question his own identity and his dream of becoming a musician, as
this dream was inspired by De la Cruz. Héctor, who is revealed to be Coco´s father and
Miguel´s real (great-great) grandfather, is shown to be the real musical talent. Hector,
however, put his family before his music, and through Héctor, Miguel finds a new hero with
other priorities. The movie ends with Miguel playing his guitar and singing with his family,

51
“Coco: Parents Guide,” IMDB, accessed March 13, 2022, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2380307/parentalguide.

30
which shows that he has found his identity by combining his love of music and the love for
his family.52
This movie shows the Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead, and how those
who practice this tradition believe that death and the afterlife work. This depiction of death
shows the audience one way they might think of death and dying. Furthermore, the journey
that Miguel finds himself on, both literally and spiritually, comments on the development of
one’s personality, and the losses and experiences that shape them. Lastly, the death of the
title character, Coco, brings the entire plot of the movie together, and shows the death of a
character after the viewers have gotten to know her a little. Coco is not an active participant
in the story, but as Miguel´s great-grandmother, she becomes central as the reason for their
family´s ban on music becomes clear.

Coco

Despite her being the title character of this movie, Coco is barely involved as an active
participant in the plotline. Coco is Miguel´s great-grandmother. She is old and frail, spending
her days sitting in a wheelchair in her room. As the movie progresses, Coco is revealed to be
Héctor´s daughter, and that Miguel´s family´s ban on music stems from them mistakenly
believing that Héctor left his family to pursue his dream to become a musician. Through the
evolving plotline, Coco becomes the link that ties the living and the dead parts of Miguel´s
family together. When Coco dies, it shows the death of an old person at the end of a long life.
Here Armstrong´s argument is relevant again. He points out that the death of older people is
the way that most children will be introduced to death, and that movies thus can introduce
them to the concept through recognizable situations.53 Coco’s death also portrays death as a
process of moving from the Land of the Living to the Land of the Dead. In this way, the
movie found a way to show one way of interpreting what happens when a person dies. Coco
is shown arriving in the Land of the Dead, where she is reunited with her parents. This makes
death a little less scary, and it could be seen as an example of Tenzek and Nickels’ argument
that movies are ideal for starting end-of-life conversations with children.54 These
conversations can be difficult to start, but through examples like Coco´s death, it gives
children a starting point for dealing with the death of a loved one.

52
Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina, Coco (2017: Emeryville: Pixar Animation Studios & Walt Disney Pictures), [movie].
53
Armstrong, “Mourning Films,” 109-111.
54
Tenzek and Nickels, “End-of-Life in Disney and Pixar Films,” 50-52.

31
Héctor

Héctor´s death in Coco is dramatic, and yet it depicts a realistic way of how someone might
die at the hands of others. While this is not the happiest fact to teach to a child, it does show
how sometimes terrible things happen to people. Héctor´s death scene is made especially sad
when it is revealed that Héctor was planning to return to Coco and Imelda and leaving his
music behind for them. His singing partner, Ernesto de la Cruz, poisons Héctor before he has
the chance to return to his family, and so they believe that Héctor abandoned them for his
singing career. This death may be a bit too violent for a movie aimed at children, as it depicts
cold-blooded murder. As Colman et al. argue, rapid exposure to violent deaths such as this
one can prohibit children’s learning, as it may scare them. However, the same scenes could
work as teaching tools so long as there are adults present to explain.55 While it could be
argued that this scene is unnecessarily violent, it could at the same time be that it instructs
children about realities of life.
In the Land of the Dead, Héctor is in the process of disappearing completely. He
explains that this is what happens when someone is forgotten by the last person that
remembers them in the Land of the Living. For Héctor, the last person that remembers him is
Coco, who is now getting old and forgetful. Héctor has episodes where he flashes away,
which he explains happens because Coco sometimes remembers him, and sometimes she
does not. According to Sedney, children often confuse death with disappearance, and so these
scenes could make sense for younger viewers when they are trying to understand the concept
of death. When Miguel brings Héctor´s memory back with him to the land of the living,
Héctor stops disappearing in the land if the dead. To children, this can help them believe that
their dead loved ones have not simply disappeared, but that they are happy somewhere else.
This can make death less sad and easier to cope with. Furthermore, these scenes focus on the
coping mechanism mentioned by Sedney, of children holding on to items of the deceased and
remembering them after they have died.56 This is illustrated in the movie through the
Ofrenda. This altar with pictures of family members that have died symbolizes remembering
the dead and keeping objects that represent them. Being on the Ofrenda is what allows the
dead to visit the Land of the Living, thus further emphasizing the positive ramifications of
coping with death in this way.

55
Colman et al., “CARTOONS KILL,” 7185-7186.
56
Sedney, “Maintaining Connections,” 279, 279-284.

32
Ernesto de la Cruz

The antagonist in Coco, who is revealed to be music legend Ernesto De la Cruz, dies two
times during the movie. The first time he dies, the viewers are not yet aware that he is the
antagonist. Through a rendition given by Miguel, the movie shows how De la Cruz was killed
in an accident where a giant bell fell on him during one of his performances. Even though
this scene is made comical, as the bell is accidentally loosened by one of the stage workers,
the crowds are in shock and deeply saddened by the sudden death of their hero. This shows
the viewers an appropriate reaction to such a sudden and violent death, as it shows his fans
mourning him and putting up pictures, candles, and tributes at alters to show their respects.
As De la Cruz is still considered a good guy at this point in the movie, it also shows how
people can react to the deaths of people who they consider decent.
The depiction of De la Cruz’s death takes an interesting turn when it is revealed that
he was really a bad guy who poisoned Miguel’s real grandfather. When this is revealed, De la
Cruz’s fans turn on him, and in an accident like the one from his life in the Land of the
Living, he is “killed” again in the Land of the Dead, as another giant bell falls on him. As De
la Cruz is already dead, he cannot really die again, but the mirrored rendition of his death
from The Land of the Living sends the same message when he is crushed by the bell in The
Land of the Dead. This time, the audience responds with applause and cheers. This agrees
with Cox, Garrett, and Graham´s findings in movies, of the pattern of antagonist´s deaths
seen as justified and celebrated. They argue that this can lead to movies giving children the
wrong impression that some people deserve to die, and they therefore stress the importance of
guidance from adults in ensuring that children do not misunderstand these types of death
scenes. De la Cruz´s second death scene is, however, somewhat justified by the fact that the
last thing De la Cruz does before his fans turns on him is to throw Miguel from the top of a
building to stop him from revealing the truth about the poisoning. The murder attempt is
caught on tape and broadcasted to an entire arena of De la Cruz´s fans. Thus, as Cox, Garrett,
And Graham point out, the scene shows that bad actions do not pay off, especially not
violence and murder, and people who attack others could end up getting hurt themselves.57
De la Cruz´s death therefore brings morality and consequences into the death term, which
gives children another way to interpret death.

57
Cox, Garrett, and Graham, “Death in Disney Films,” 277-278.

33
Miguel

Coco shows an example of how identity traits sometimes clash with family values. Miguel´s
love of guitar playing is in direct violation with his family´s ban on music, which makes it
problematic for Miguel to reveal his full identity to his family. He must choose between
following his dream of becoming a musician, or to abide by his family’s rules. Miguel’s
family does not respond well to discovering his hidden wish of becoming a musician, and this
prompts Miguel to make decisions that takes him to the Land of the Dead. Miguel´s journey
leads him to realize that his family is what is most important to him. However, when he
decides to give up music for good, his family realize that they are asking Miguel to give up
his talent and a big part of who he is, and they realize that they have been wrong. This
revelation gives the viewers good tools for embracing their own identity traits, even if they
are unsure of how they will be received by their family. Furthermore, it gives guidelines for
how to see things from someone else’s perspective and learning to deal with prejudices that
others might have. In Miguel’s situation, the trait that his family finds unacceptable is his
love of music. His dilemma shows how animated movies can approach the theme of being
different from one’s own family, and reactions that might arise from sharing these traits.
Here, Huntemann and Morgan´s argument is relevant, as they argue that children moving into
adolescence often find themselves in situations where their identity clashes with their
families’ values. Having to deny parts of one´s identity can thus lead to identity loss.
Similarly, if one´s family choses to not accept the identity trait that is different, the person
might experience loss in the sense of family ties and the sense of belonging.58 Coco gives
children guidelines for explaining differences to their families, at the same time as it gives
adults insight into differences that might be affecting children, and it could give adults
insights into their own reactions.
In addition to the disagreement with his family regarding music, Miguel also comes to
question his love of music for another reason. When his idol, De la Cruz, is revealed to be a
murderer and a thief, this shows Miguel losing his childhood hero. This loss causes Miguel to
regret having chosen music over his family, as his wish to become a musician was based on
the respect and admiration that he had for De la Cruz. Thus, Coco shows an example of how
identity is sometimes connected to other people, and how realizing that those people are not
who they appeared to be can cause a sense of loss. However, Miguel finds a new hero in his

58
Huntemann and Morgan, "Media and Identity Development," 304-308.

34
grandfather, Héctor, when it is revealed that Héctor was the true musical genius behind De la
Cruz´s famous songs. Héctor did, in contradiction to De la Cruz, put his family before his
music. Miguel thus finds a new hero with a more moral character, and he adapts his own
identity accordingly. This is shown in the final scene of the movie when Miguel is playing
the guitar and singing to his family, as it shows Miguel living a life like the one his
grandfather wanted. Here, we can look to Comstock and Scharrer´s argument of the
importance of children watching the movies with others.59 To fully comprehend the process
that Miguel goes through with his family, children may need guidance from grown-ups when
watching. This way, the communication regarding confusing identity developments gets
more nuanced and understandable.

The Land of the Dead

In Coco, death is depicted using magic through the Land of the Dead, which in this movie is
the place where people end up when they die. The people in the Land of the Dead walk
around as skeletons, but they are living lives like the lives of the living. In this way, the
movie gives the children a conceivable way of thinking of people that have died, as they can
imagine them living new lives in another world. Armstrong’s argument for use of magic
outlines the benefits of representing death like this, as he argues that using magic allows
movies to project images of grief in more understandable terms. For instance, by projecting
dead people, movies can make grief visible to its viewers.60 This agrees with the
representation of death through the people in the Land of the Dead, as it gives the children a
way to deal with feelings of grief related to death. Through picturing dead people moving on
to someplace new, death seems less scary. This is also achieved by the way that the Land of
the Dead is portrayed in the movie. This entire world is shown in numerous, bright colors,
and there are elements like glowing flower petals and shiny lights all around. This brings up
Bickham, Schmidt, and Huston´s argument about movies using stimuli to connect with the
viewers, as it makes the Land of the Dead seem joyful and beautiful.61
Furthermore, Favazza and Munson argue that younger children rely on what they can
see, and difficult concepts explained in vague terms are harder for them to understand.62

59
Comstock and Scharrer, "The Use of Television,” 17-19, 36-37.
60
Armstrong, Mourning Films, 109-111.
61
Bickham, Schmidt, and Huston, "Attention, Comprehension, and the Educational Influences,” 117-118.
62
Favazza and Munson, “Loss and Grief in Young Children,” 87-94.

35
Through the Land of the Dead, Coco gives a visual way to interpret death, and children get a
way to explain the concept to themselves in a way that is easier for them to interpret. While
children cannot see this happen in real life, they can find solace in believing that loved ones
who have died are now happy somewhere else. Their imaginations also allow for them to
accept the Land of the Dead as a possibility for what happens to people when they die, which
gives them tools for dealing with death. Here we can look to Valkenburg and Calvert´s
argument that magical elements in movies can help children understand difficult concepts,
because children often rely on imagination and fantasy to make sense of their experiences.63
In the movie, the people from the Land of the Dead can visit the Land of the Living during
the holiday of the Day of the Dead. On this day they get to check up on their family
members, even though the people in the Land of the Living cannot see them. This gives
children another way of thinking of the dead, as they can imagine their deceased loved ones
watching over them and checking up on how they are doing. Although these approaches may
give children ways to understand and think about death, it is important to make sure that the
children understand what they are seeing. Colman et al. recommends guidance from
caregivers to navigate through confusion, and clear up misunderstandings in these
situations.64 Thus, with the guidance of caregivers, this scene can introduce children to a
difficult concept like death and give them definitions to add to what death is.
Furthermore, the Land of the Dead is used to broach the subject of age and death.
When Miguel is transported to the Land of the Dead, he sees dead people of all ages walking
around. The larger part of the population in the Land of the Dead are elderly people, yet there
are also middle-aged people, children, and even babies in strollers. The age of the people in
the Land of the Dead is proved to represent the age the people were when they died, when
Miguel’s great-grandmother, Coco, dies at the end of the movie. Coco is shown in the land of
the dead as the old woman that she was when she died. She is reunited with her parents, and
her father, who was middle-aged when he died, is still middle aged when they meet again.
Thus, the movie show that people of all ages have died in the Land of the Living and been
transported to the afterlife in the Land of the Dead. Armstrong argues that for films to be able
to teach about death, they need to have focus on the concept of age. He argues that dealing
with death is as much about mourning the person that dies as it is about the fear of one´s own
mortality. He further emphasizes the importance of communicating this to children without

63
Valkenburg and Calvert, "Media and the Child´s Developing Imagination," 158-159.
64
Colman et al., “CARTOONS KILL,” 7185-7186.

36
scaring them.65 The fact that death can happen to people of all ages can easily scare children,
but that does not change the fact that it can. For children to get an understanding of the death
term, it is therefore important for them to understand that while people are usually old when
they die, this is not always the fact. Coco has approached this in a gentle way through the
dead people in the Land of the Dead. This enables children to get a better understanding of
the death term.

Chapter conclusion

Through Coco’s death, the movie shows the death of an old person, and the ways that her
family remembers her and honors her memory after she is gone. This gives children coping
mechanisms for dealing with deaths of old people, which is the first encounter many children
will have with death. Héctor’s death deals with morality, the possibility of terrible things
happening, and how to react and cope with that. The last character deaths are the two times
De la Cruz dies, and the different responses and grieving patterns that occur based on how
people viewed him before his deaths. This again brings the question of morality into the mix,
and it helps give children other ways to view the death concept and how to deal with feelings
related to people dying because of their own actions.
The definition of the death term is approached from different angles in the movie,
which gives children ways to form a definition and an understanding of death. Coco explains
the concept of death as permanent through showing that the characters that die do not come
back to the Land of the Living. The concept of permanence is made less scary by showing the
dead characters in the Land of the Dead. This offers children the coping mechanism of
picturing that their dead loved ones are not gone, but happy someplace else. This coping
mechanism can also legitimize the process of keeping someone alive in memory, which is a
coping mechanism that can work well for children. The use of magic makes this depiction
possible, by utilizing the Land of the Dead and the people that live there. This further
contributes to children’s understanding of death, as the people of different ages in the Land of
the Dead are of all ages. This approach opens for starting a conversation with children about
mortality and the possibility of dying. However, all these aspects can be difficult to
understand for children as they are watching the movie, and caregivers should therefore

65
Armstrong, Mourning Films, 109-111.

37
watch the movie with children to answer their questions and make sure they do not
misunderstand what the movie is showing.
Miguel’s personal journey in the movie introduces children to a sense of identity loss.
Miguel’s love of music creates friction with his family and threatens to damage his
relationship with them. This shows children how difficult feelings of loss can accompany the
process of identity development. When children move towards adolescence, they develop and
evolve in their own personalities, and this sometimes happen in contradiction to parents’
beliefs and worldviews. The process of going against one’s family can be scary. Through
Miguel’s journey, the children get an example of how to deal with feelings of change and loss
in their identity and how they can talk to their families about it.

38
 Conclusion

Where some people argue that the high level of media exposure that children grow up with
today is a bad thing, others argue that the same media can work as a positive influence for
children. As Bickham, Schmidt, and Huston put it: “Television through its form and content
is capable of drawing children into its programming, teaching them age-specific messages,
and affecting their lives long after its screen has gone black.”66 This is the view adopted by
this thesis, as it aims to show how animation movies are ideal tools for introducing children
to feelings of loss, and in helping them form grieving- and coping mechanisms to deal with
these losses. To show how animation movies serve this function, this thesis performed a
content analysis of the three animation movies, Up, Inside Out, and Coco.
The analysis focused on loss in two categories, namely loss of identity, and loss of
life, as both these categories are relevant in the lives of children. The analysis looked at
examples from both categories of loss in all three movies, and the coping mechanisms and
reactions that are depicted in response to the losses. These examples showed ways that
animation movies can introduce children to feelings of loss, and as such, make these concepts
easier to comprehend.
Both categories of loss were represented in all movies. First, in the category of
identity loss, the analysis found examples of loss of childhood-identity caused by the
transition to adolescence, loss of identity through the death of a life-partner, identity-clashing
with family values which led to questions about identity, and identity loss caused by moving
to a new place. Second, in the category of loss of life, the analysis found character deaths that
depicted deaths of both older and younger people, people of questionable morality, and
deaths of imaginary characters. Also, in the category of death, the analysis found different
ways that the concept of death itself was described, for instance by presenting the concept of
finality, and the question of age, thus giving children ways to understand and interpret the
concept.
Furthermore, the analysis found examples of grieving mechanisms and response
patterns that accompanied the losses in the movies. These grieving mechanisms included
early stages of grief responses, such as denial and anger. Other grieving mechanisms depicted
showed dealing with death through keeping the memory of the deceased alive, holding on to

66
Bickham, Schmidt and Huston, "Attention, Comprehension and Educational Influences," 133.

39
objects that belonged to them, and continuing talking to them after they had died. Finally,
several of the grieving patterns ended up in a state of acceptance.
The examples of loss from the movies were especially effective in their
communication due to their use of different kinds of stimuli. With the use of different
cinematic effects to enhance and underscore the emotional setting of scenes, movies can
portray feelings to children in ways that would be difficult to describe using words. For
instance, in the duration of 11 minutes, the opening scene of Up uses elements like time-
jumps, colors, and mood specific music to show Carl and Ellie´s entire life together. This
creates an emotional bond to the two characters, and it sets the scene for when Ellie dies in
the end of the scene. Stimuli like bright colors and happy, fast-paced music creates a happy
and energetic feeling during the first part of the scene, where Ellie and Carl´s life up until
Ellie gets sick is shown. When Ellie falls ill in the last parts of the scene, stimuli like darker
colors and slow, ominous music is used. These uses of stimuli are used to reach the target
audience, namely children. Through the characters on screen, the children can experience the
sensation of loss that Carl feels when he loses Ellie. The music and the colors set the scene
for how to feel when she dies. This is one of the examples from the analysis which shows
how the movies use stimuli to tutor children about emotions that are difficult to describe in
words.
Another element that the movies often utilized to explain the loss in their scenes, was
the use of magic. One of the examples from the analyses where this worked especially well,
was in the character of Bing Bong from Inside Out. Bing Bong represents both identity loss,
as he shows the end of childhood, and loss of life, as he dies in the movie. Bing Bong
combines the childish and silly, as he is a magical creature in a fantasy world, with the
sincere and real, being a representation of loss and change. What his character teaches
children is only possible because of the movies ability to use magic features, and thus, he is a
great example of how magic can be used in animation movies as a tool to explain feelings of
loss to children.
Where this thesis has been focused specifically on animation movies explaining the
category of loss to children, further academic research on this field could be suggested. This
analysis focused on loss in two specific categories, but there are numerous others that could
be researched to show how animation movies are ideal tools for teaching children. Other
movies could be studied, and other approaches and tools could be analyzed. The three movies
could for instance be further analyzed by conducting studies of children watching the movies
and analyzing how they react to certain scenes and what they understand from them. Another

40
possibility is to examine the feeling of loss related to identity more thoroughly, and how the
examples from the movies help children cope with other identity related issues, for example
sexuality. Rather than only focusing on children, one could also analyze how caregivers
respond and plan to carry on the conversation in these situations. Research on this field could
thus help establish how and if animation movies are ideal tools for teaching children about all
topics, and what is required of them to do so.
Animated movies allow children to emerge themselves in the action, to experience
and learn from what the people on screen are experiencing, and at the same time, be
entertained. Through their creative licenses, animation movies can thus serve as guidelines
and structure for children´s world views and their place in the world. These types of movies
hold a special place in the hearts and minds of many children in recent times, and thus, they
hold an ideal position for reaching children and guiding them through tough times, as they
combine entertainment with educational themes. The conclusion of this thesis is that
animated movies can indeed function as teaching tools and conversation starters about
feelings of loss, if they are created with a focus on children´s coping mechanisms, and if the
caregivers in children´s lives actively participate in continuing the conversation. However, it
is important to note that while animated movies are ideal for starting the thought process
about concepts of loss, they do not replace the need for discussions and conversations with
caregivers, or other ways of coping. This thesis does not argue that animation movies remove
the need for other ways of processing these types of feelings, but that they are one effective
way that children can be introduced to them. Thus, animation movies work as tools for
starting the conversation of loss with children, but they cannot be expected to finish them as
well.

41
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