Classic Shorts Showcase: Reason and Emotion

Hello & welcome back to A Look at Disney. And today we are heading back to World War II to look at the short,  Reason and Emotion.  I was prompted to look at this short but the trailer for Pixar's Inside Out, which is a bit similar to the concept of this short.

The Plot

The premise of this short is pretty simple.  We go inside the mind of a man to see how reason and emotion need to work together. We start with him as a child but we then see him as an adult and see what can happen when emotion takes over.

And as the young child grows up, we see that Reason has taken the driver's seat as the narration put it.

But we see that Emotion has his urges as they pass by a young lady and Emotion takes the driver's seat and that doesn't end well. As we observe the female counterparts of Reason and Emotion and Reason wasn't too keen on  what  the male Emotion said to them.

It's a short sequence that shows how the opposite sex's reason and emotion work.   It's important but the next sequence is quite haunting as we see can only be described as media sensationalism.  As we see a man listening to the radio and there are visuals of what he is listening to and you see how it's getting to him.

This'll probably end up on my creepy non-villains list because it is just so eerie and this is where the short turns and shows us in Germany  how  Hitler had fed off emotion of the people to get them to listen to him.

 




And what's  interesting here is that  the more Hitler talks, the bigger Emotion gets. And at one point,  you even see Reason put in a concentration camp with Emotion guarding it.  This when the narration steps in and says that both Reason and Emotion need to work together with Reason being allowed to take the driver's seat.

And that's how the short ends.

Characters

Reason and Emotion

I found the depiction of Reason and Emotion to be interesting.   Reason is shown as a proper gentlemen that thinks things. through.  He is nicely dressed and wants to make sure that things go as they should.  Now compare that to Emotion, who is shown as big brute caveman. And as you can assume by his name, he prefers to act on emotion.  And the short  emphasizes how dangerous it is to only act on emotion.  You need reason but  from where I stand, you need to both to properly function.  

My Final Thoughts 

Overall I liked this short.  I thought it was a neat take on how one's mind works and why it is important to use both reason and emotion.  If your'e interested, I say check it out. Peace!