It’s definitely cool to hate on The Emoji Movie. And, like, I get why. When I first heard that that it was being made, my reaction was pretty much equal parts: a) I can’t believe that’s an actual thing b) of course that’s an actual thing c) what a shameless attempt to pander to “kids these days” that is probably going to make someone a ton of money and d) couldn’t they at least pretend to come up with an actual name for it?
And my past-self was not alone. The Emoji Movie currently has a 9% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and there was a while when it seemed certain like it was going to land at the somehow-slightly-more-dignified 0%. There have been copious articles and blogs and Tweets panning it, calling it a sign of the death of culture or “soul-crushing” or the end of the world or the worst thing since unsliced bread or whatever other histrionic cliché you want to insert in there.
But the movie itself, it turns out, actually isn’t bad. (I watched it in a couple of installments over the past couple of days - because I had to rent it for the fifth-grade class at my school, who earned a hot-chocolate-and-snacks-and-a-movie party for bringing in the most donations for a food drive that I was in charge of - and doing so was kind of a long and tedious and complicated process, which involved signing up for a membership at my local movie-rental store, because yes, there are places where those do still exist and play a non-negligible role in the local community, and so I figured I might as well get my three-dollars-and-fifty-cents worth - and besides I kind of wanted to see what it was all about, anyway.)
Plot-wise, it’s basically just Inside Out’s poor, underdeveloped cousin, with the inner workings of the human psyche replaced with the inner workings of a cell phone. (And arguably those two things are rapidly becoming indistinguishable, anyway.) And there are some clever jokes and examples of wordplay interspersed with the more gimmicky aspects of it. My favorite bit was probably the elderly emoticon who gets knocked down by one of the younger emojis and then exclaims, “My colon!” (The fifth-graders, on the other hand, seemed to prefer the poop emojis chanting, “We’re number two! We’re number two!”)
But besides all that, The Emoji Movie is an excellent vehicle for exploring the existentialist philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir.
Simone de Beauvoir is probably most famous for her feminist writing these days – or, sadly and ironically, mentioned only as a footnote to her partner Jean-Paul Sartre – but she is also the writer of what I would currently maintain is the best work of philosophy ever written, The Ethics of Ambiguity. I can’t do it justice here, of course, but Beauvoir basically makes the claim that to be human is to be in a perpetual state of ambiguity. We are not essentially anything – a profession, a member of a religion or a political movement, a moral or immoral person, or even a man or a woman. Rather, these are all merely identities that we adopt through the choices that we make. Though there are certainly people who try to escape the ambiguity of their condition by trying to define themselves by one (or more) of these identities – and Beauvoir has a lot of negative things to say about such people – their fundamental nature remains ambiguous. Our essence is to have no essence.
Enter Gene, the protagonist of The Emoji Movie. (I have yet to figure out if there is anything significant about his name. It’s not a pun, as far as I can determine, and the connection to genetics does not seem particularly fruitful to explore.) Gene is supposed to be a “meh” emoji like his parents – an emoji that only experiences and expresses disinterest and boredom – but he actually experiences the full spectrum of emotions. Because of this, he is labelled a “malfunction” and cast out of emoji society. And you can probably fill in the gaps from there – wacky sidekick, love interest, impending doom, adventure, learning to accept himself in the end.
Nothing about this is particularly groundbreaking, of course. It’s a kids’ movie about learning to be true to yourself. Which is pretty much just redundant. (I think it was Jeopardy champ and Twitter all-star Ken Jennings who once Tweeted, “Are there any kids’ movies out there about being true to yourself?” – a joke that was lost on a lot of his followers, who gave him earnest responses. Sadly, it was a couple of years ago and I don’t feel like getting lost in the labyrinth of Twitter to find it.)
But what makes the “believe-in-yourself” message of The Emoji Movie different (and more existentialist) than those of all the other movies, is that Gene does not really want to be something else. It’s not that the forces of society want him to be a “meh” and he would rather be a “smile” or an “angry face” or even a “high-five.” Gene wants to be what he fundamentally is – what we all are, according to Beauvoir – nothing, essentially. He wants to retain the freedom of ambiguity. He wants to be able to be express and project different identities based upon - well, based upon nothing at all. That's the whole point.
And – spoiler alert (though I’d be fascinated to meet the person who both wants to avoid spoilers for The Emoji Movie and has bothered to read this far) – it is Gene’s ability to manifest many emotions at once that ultimately saves the day. Because Alex, the kid-whose-phone-all-these-characters-are-living-inside is also fundamentally ambiguous: when he is around the girl he likes, he feels so many different feelings at once that they could never be expressed in a single emoji. So he decides to utilize Gene, and in that same moment decides not to erase everything on his phone. (Yeah, that part of the movie is a little bit contrived. I’ll grant the naysayers that.)
So Gene is an existentialist hero right up there with Mersault from The Stranger and Roquentin from Nausea. His willingness to embrace the ambiguity - or, if you prefer Camus to Beauvoir, the absurdity - of his existence rather than flee from it makes him worthy of our admiration. But things get a little bit more murky when you consider the larger world of The Emoji Movie. It’s not quite clear if every emoji is like Gene or if he actually is different. Towards the end of the movie, it is revealed that Gene’s father, Mel Meh, experiences other emotions but has been hiding them. He, too, is fundamentally ambiguous, but has tried to forsake his nature. He has tried to define himself by his identity as a “meh,” for which Simone de Beauvoir would scorn him.
But as for the other emojis – like Gene’s mother, Mary (and here I find the Biblical connotations of the name to be just as useless as the scientific ones mentioned earlier) – the issue is never really addressed. And that makes a pretty big difference. Because if every other emoji is truly nothing but his or her nature, then this is not an existentialist movie at all. Indeed, that would make for a movie with some truly worrying implications. If only the protagonist and his father can experience more than one emotional state, are the others really characters at all? Or are they merely automatons, prisoners of their genetic makeup? Is there no such thing as freedom in this world? (Except for two characters, which is actually weirder than if there was no freedom at all.)
And my past-self was not alone. The Emoji Movie currently has a 9% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and there was a while when it seemed certain like it was going to land at the somehow-slightly-more-dignified 0%. There have been copious articles and blogs and Tweets panning it, calling it a sign of the death of culture or “soul-crushing” or the end of the world or the worst thing since unsliced bread or whatever other histrionic cliché you want to insert in there.
 |
| Yes, Patrick Stewart does the voice of the poop emoji. |
Plot-wise, it’s basically just Inside Out’s poor, underdeveloped cousin, with the inner workings of the human psyche replaced with the inner workings of a cell phone. (And arguably those two things are rapidly becoming indistinguishable, anyway.) And there are some clever jokes and examples of wordplay interspersed with the more gimmicky aspects of it. My favorite bit was probably the elderly emoticon who gets knocked down by one of the younger emojis and then exclaims, “My colon!” (The fifth-graders, on the other hand, seemed to prefer the poop emojis chanting, “We’re number two! We’re number two!”)
But besides all that, The Emoji Movie is an excellent vehicle for exploring the existentialist philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir.
Simone de Beauvoir is probably most famous for her feminist writing these days – or, sadly and ironically, mentioned only as a footnote to her partner Jean-Paul Sartre – but she is also the writer of what I would currently maintain is the best work of philosophy ever written, The Ethics of Ambiguity. I can’t do it justice here, of course, but Beauvoir basically makes the claim that to be human is to be in a perpetual state of ambiguity. We are not essentially anything – a profession, a member of a religion or a political movement, a moral or immoral person, or even a man or a woman. Rather, these are all merely identities that we adopt through the choices that we make. Though there are certainly people who try to escape the ambiguity of their condition by trying to define themselves by one (or more) of these identities – and Beauvoir has a lot of negative things to say about such people – their fundamental nature remains ambiguous. Our essence is to have no essence.
 |
| Everything about her is so FRENCH |
Nothing about this is particularly groundbreaking, of course. It’s a kids’ movie about learning to be true to yourself. Which is pretty much just redundant. (I think it was Jeopardy champ and Twitter all-star Ken Jennings who once Tweeted, “Are there any kids’ movies out there about being true to yourself?” – a joke that was lost on a lot of his followers, who gave him earnest responses. Sadly, it was a couple of years ago and I don’t feel like getting lost in the labyrinth of Twitter to find it.)
But what makes the “believe-in-yourself” message of The Emoji Movie different (and more existentialist) than those of all the other movies, is that Gene does not really want to be something else. It’s not that the forces of society want him to be a “meh” and he would rather be a “smile” or an “angry face” or even a “high-five.” Gene wants to be what he fundamentally is – what we all are, according to Beauvoir – nothing, essentially. He wants to retain the freedom of ambiguity. He wants to be able to be express and project different identities based upon - well, based upon nothing at all. That's the whole point.
And – spoiler alert (though I’d be fascinated to meet the person who both wants to avoid spoilers for The Emoji Movie and has bothered to read this far) – it is Gene’s ability to manifest many emotions at once that ultimately saves the day. Because Alex, the kid-whose-phone-all-these-characters-are-living-inside is also fundamentally ambiguous: when he is around the girl he likes, he feels so many different feelings at once that they could never be expressed in a single emoji. So he decides to utilize Gene, and in that same moment decides not to erase everything on his phone. (Yeah, that part of the movie is a little bit contrived. I’ll grant the naysayers that.)
 |
Beauvoir would also have something to say about Jailbreak, the
princess-turned-hacker, but there's only so much time in a day.
|
So Gene is an existentialist hero right up there with Mersault from The Stranger and Roquentin from Nausea. His willingness to embrace the ambiguity - or, if you prefer Camus to Beauvoir, the absurdity - of his existence rather than flee from it makes him worthy of our admiration. But things get a little bit more murky when you consider the larger world of The Emoji Movie. It’s not quite clear if every emoji is like Gene or if he actually is different. Towards the end of the movie, it is revealed that Gene’s father, Mel Meh, experiences other emotions but has been hiding them. He, too, is fundamentally ambiguous, but has tried to forsake his nature. He has tried to define himself by his identity as a “meh,” for which Simone de Beauvoir would scorn him.
But as for the other emojis – like Gene’s mother, Mary (and here I find the Biblical connotations of the name to be just as useless as the scientific ones mentioned earlier) – the issue is never really addressed. And that makes a pretty big difference. Because if every other emoji is truly nothing but his or her nature, then this is not an existentialist movie at all. Indeed, that would make for a movie with some truly worrying implications. If only the protagonist and his father can experience more than one emotional state, are the others really characters at all? Or are they merely automatons, prisoners of their genetic makeup? Is there no such thing as freedom in this world? (Except for two characters, which is actually weirder than if there was no freedom at all.)
I think we have to believe that all of the emojis are like Gene – or, rather, like his father Mel, fundamentally ambiguous but able and willing to hide it. And the movie does give us some hint that this is the correct interpretation, through the movie’s main villain, Smiler. Smiler is a female, smiley-face emoji who, yes, is always smiling – but she definitely experiences anger and frustration and even a sort of sadistic pleasure as well as happiness. Her identity seems to be a performance - based upon her external appearance rather than her inner states, as is suggested by her name.
(This makes me come back to Inside Out – the character Joy, voiced by the fantastic Amy Poehler, definitely experiences more than just joy. But in Inside Out, it is much more clear that Joy is called that because she has a tendency to be happy, which is not incompatible with existentialist principles. Nor is Inside Out really about the personified-emotions-as-characters so much as it is about the way they impact their human, Riley. Which is perhaps part of the reason why Inside Out seems like the better movie.)
But if Smiler is any indication, then maybe all the emojis are fundamentally ambiguous in their nature, and the only difference is the degree to which they are willing to accept that. Moreover, there is a moral dimension to this: Gene is better than Smiler because he embraces his ambiguity. And that is precisely where Simone de Beauvoir takes the discussion as well. As she writes in The Ethics of Ambiguity: “Man must not attempt to dispel the ambiguity of his being but, on the contrary, accept the task of realizing it.”
Just replace “man” with “emoji” and it all falls into place.
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