The global box office rewarded Pixar’s Inside Out 2 with $1 billion in ticket sales merely three weeks after its June 2024 release.

Despite being an American narrative, the focus on a teenager’s emotional psyche is a universal experience that tugs at people’s heartstrings and resonates with audiences beyond languages and borders.

However, Riley’s emotions, even the new and unpredictable ones, are far from comprehensive – especially when we take culture and regionality into account. So local brands and content creators are stepping in to fill the gaps.

Fandoms are attributing Riley’s emotions to their biases seen with fan edits of Filipino girl group BINI and Korean boy group SEVENTEEN.

On TikTok, Wong Fu Productions made a skit about Asian-American emotions, which include Disgrace, Familial Piety, Honor, and Generational Trauma.

Meanwhile, Filipino mall chain SM released graphic promos with a little ‘emotion math’ to illustrate Kilig, Praning, Budol, and OA (overacting) – Filipino emotions that don’t have direct English translations.

But why are some emotions more universal than others?

In a blog post for subscription-based video-on-demand platform Lingopie, Genine Torres looks at how language shifts the nuance and intensity of emotions.

“For example, the passionate flair of the Spanish language could make Joy sound even more exuberant,” Torres writes. “Then you have tonal languages like Mandarin Chinese, where precise inflections and cultural context behind emotional concepts could make Anger or Fear feel distinct from their English versions.”

This is thanks to what experts call the context of culture, which blends verbal and nonverbal cues with social markers such as collectivism, status, space, and gender.

These language contexts also affect how emotions are felt and expressed per culture: think of the mix of colours in Riley’s memories but with more subtle, almost imperceptible gradients.

Cultures that talk in ways teeming with subtlety and nuance are called ‘high-context’ as seen in Chinese or Spanish-speaking countries. They follow an ‘if you know, you know’ language vibe creating rapport and messages that need to be read between the lines.

Hence, the most iconic ads from these countries involve tons of emotional imagery and references.

Nike Brazil’s 2018 World Cup campaign was filled with local throwbacks and scenes of people playing in the streets. Meanwhile, an ad for the Chinese smartphone AGM relies on the tropes of Chinese dramas and slapstick comedy to promote the hi-tech and waterproof features of the phone.

On a grassroots level, this reliance on emotional subtlety can drive young people to suppress how they feel.

So, in an effort to fight back, young people in APAC are starting subversive online movements and demanding radical self-care from brands.

On the flip side of this, cultures that talk and write in direct, explicit ways are called ‘low-context’. The US and UK are part of this ‘say what you mean, mean what you say’ crowd which values individual expression and concise communication.

In online spaces, it can be easier for such communities to express how they feel through the use of language cues and emojis – something which hasn’t escaped the AI takeover as TikToker hirschtok generated concept images of Fun, Love, and Regret from AI.

What’s interesting, though, is Germany’s reaction to Inside Out 2.

Despite being ‘low context’, Germany’s creative way of mixing words to form new and nuanced ones differs from its Western counterparts.

In fact, according to Inside Out’s creator, one German emotion, Schadenfreude or ‘shameful happiness’ almost joined Anxiety, Envy, Ennui, and Embarrassment in the Pixar sequel.

While these gradients of emotion shed light on how different cultures process and express how they feel, there’s a more pressing issue which needs to be addressed: Gen Z’s worldwide are the most likely to have poor mental health.

Though simplistic to some, movies such as Inside Out 2 are necessary for the 53% of global Gen Zers who want brands to support mental health in culturally relevant ways.

As movies such as Inside Out 2 bridge the high and low cultural context divide, it's making space for language and emotional cues to transcend borders and is giving young people a vibrant way to truly express how they feel.