The Scare Science behind Monster’s Inc.
Underneath this uncanny energy economy, the “Pixar Theory” rests in limbo.
The energy science beneath the Monsters, Inc. universe has taunted me for longer than I’d care to admit. It’s my white whale of blog topics, always on the horizon and yet impossibly out of grasp.
I’ve teased this fascination multiple times on my podcast, and (yes this is true) I even mentioned its perplexities in my Masters thesis on the topic of energy communication.
I’ve known for years — years! — that there’s a meaty discovery to be made behind the hilarious, colorful, inspirational Pixar curtain…and I think I’ve finally done it. “Scream science” adheres to the very same energy principles as our own reality, and by opening our eyes to these real-world physics while keeping an open mind towards science unique to Pixar’s story, we can begin to appreciate the Monsters’ universe in a new, profoundly comprehensive light.
And, yes, this indeed turns the current Pixar Theory on its head — you know, the viral unifying timeline that encompasses each installment of the Pixar film continuity, from Monsters, Inc. to Cars, WALL-E, The Incredibles, and everything in between. There’s much, much more to these connections than we’ve previously realized.
Get ready to open your eyes.
The rules for the energy economy of Monsters, Inc. are laid out quite brilliantly in the film’s opening moments — we meet characters like Sully, Mike, and crazy ol’ Mr. Waternoose in the midst of a “scare crisis” because, you see, this world derives power from the sound of children’s screams. Those screams, naturally, are harnessed from the human world by “scarers” who travel through doorway portals in order to frighten vulnerable young children, to which they are algorithmically assigned. These potent screams are then bottled up in big yellow canisters before being carted away and, presumably, used to make the world go ‘round.
Seriously elegant, and fun for the whole family to boot. Introductions aside, I hope you’re familiar with the rest of the Monsters cannon cause we’re about to go full-scream ahead. This film and its 2013 prequel give us just the right amount of detail to piece together a large swath of scare science, which through the right lens, lock so perfectly into place that we can answer dozens of major Monsters questions in one fell swoop:
Why are monsters afraid of children?
Why is laughter more powerful than screams?
And most importantly, Do monsters connect more profoundly to other films in the Pixar Universe?
Yes to all three.
I’m not the first pseudo-scientist that has tried to crack the logic behind scare energy, and much of that existing literature seems to orient around one key principle of the scream: Sound.
My early theories fell into this trap too; it’s an easy assumption to make, after all, since sound is a real type of energy that exists in our world — small bursts of pressure traveling through mediums like air or water to reach our ears. It’s not massive, but it is energy.
And as a power source, sound has been studied (largely theoretically) since the early 1900s, notably by Nikola Tesla as what he called “acoustic power.” Still, it’s a far way away from an actual source of energy we could use in our day-to-day lives. To quote a post from MIT:
“There is definitely energy contained in that sound…but the density of the energy is very low, and there is no way to capture it all.”
But in the Monsters universe, maybe they’ve cracked it. That’s what some bloggers and film theorists seem to suspect, given how much of the movie references “screams” as their dominant resource. When we look closer, though, it becomes clear that it’s not sound that the Monsters are collecting at all. The first clue comes actually in the very opening moments of the film, where we see technology in the Monsters’ world that is able to recreate the sound of children’s screams in a nearly perfect imitation. If they were looking for just “sound” they’d be able to find plenty of sources without risking travel to the human world.
Likewise, and more telling to the science at hand, consider for a moment the scream extractor — this suction device pulls scream energy directly out of the mouths of babes…using a vacuum seal! Sound doesn’t travel through a vacuum!! Busted.
But if not sound…then what’s our alternative?
When a scream event occurs, there’s an important phenomenon taking place in addition to the release of sound: Emotion. Normally this isn’t a quantifiable, “capturable” resource, but what if it were?
Such a phenomenon would help explain why the industry places so much emphasis on “carefully matching every child to their ideal monster to produce superior scream.” If the mechanism were dependent on merely acoustics, one would expect monsters to select kids with the largest lung capacity, not those easily frightened. In a similar vein, this would explain the robust history of scare academia showcased in Monsters University — if it were just noise that the monsters were after, then you wouldn’t expect libraries, institutions, and personal worth to be built around the psychology and manipulation of fear. Emotion is key, and the monsters know it.
Not to get too far ahead of ourselves, but this also explains why laughter can be a more powerful energy source, despite the fact that it’s clearly not a louder noise than a scream and certainly not ten-times as energetic. As to why the emotion is more potent, we’ll touch on that later.
But all this theory begs a pretty monstrous line of questioning: how can emotion be harnessed as energy in the first place? For that, we need a tiny bit of baseline knowledge of something called a concentration gradient, like what causes particles to flow from higher- to lower-density solutions. When a child screams (or laughs), he or she is producing a massive amount of emotional “stuff” that will have the tendency to flow towards areas where the concentration is lowest — in the case of the Monsters’ methodology, that flows from the human world straight through their doorway onto the scare floor.
Or, at least it would, if not for a collection canister placed at the gradient threshold. This canister then stores that energy to be transported in a very high concentration — this would be made possible by “emotion particles” that can exist in energized or de-energized states, very much like how our own bodies utilize a chemical called ATP, or how atoms enter “excited” states when exposed to the right radiation. Energy is energy.
Basically…it’s not implausible.
The concept of an “emotion gradient” as the means energy generation across the door threshold actually gives a tidy, somewhat elegant answer to the questions surrounding the scream crisis. Over decades — possibly centuries — of capturing, studying, manipulating, and releasing these emotion particles, the differential between the human and monster worlds has become weakened. It’s not to say that monsters don’t have emotions, but perhaps it’s not the same type of particle than the ones they harvest from humans. As the emotion differential lessens and the concentration gradient becomes weaker (simply a byproduct of their industrial lifestyle) then screams will generate less power.
And if this were the case, do you know what? Monsters would be pretty dang afraid of humans coming over into their reality!
All this science perfectly justifies the fear of a 23–19, the disaster scenario of an object (or child) coming through a doorway into the monster world. It’s not because these items are toxic — and actually the monsters would know this. After Mike and Sully took a high-profile trip to the human world in college, it must have been well-observed that there were no biological side-effects. The paranoia comes from an over-saturation of emotion particles in the monster world, which would therefore hasten the already-existing scare crisis even further.
Oh, and this also explains why laughter would be a more powerful energy source — it’s not because the laugh is inherently more energized, but it’s simply a different flavor of particle that hasn’t yet laced the monster side of reality. The differential is so much more potent that it can be harnessed that much more easily, generating a vastly greater degree of power. At least for now.
However…
This entire thesis hinges on the idea of an emotion particle produced in moments of heightened feelings, both positive and negative, and that can exist in an “energized state.” And alas, nowhere in the Monsters canon is something like this ever mentioned.
…BUT IT IS IN INSIDE OUT!!
To many, this 2015 animated film seems like a stand-alone adventure through the mind of a child as she copes with the emotions joy, fear, sadness, and everything in between. In many respects, it’s probably healthy to stop the analysis there — but not if we’re looking for the final puzzle-piece in understanding the significance of scare science.
Now, I’m not the first to make this connection between the two films — the ties between Inside Out and Monsters, Inc. have been picked apart at length already, and it’s even been hypothesized before that emotions could be the power source used in monster society. What I haven’t seen, though, is how this small idea can explain so many mysteries of the Monsters canon with such a simple and elegantly straightforward concept as a concentration gradient made of emotion particles. It’s all right there in the text, and collectively, we’re inching closer and closer to truth.
As we finally begin to catch our collective breaths, I want to slow ourselves down and think about why this is all…significant, and a worthwhile way to spend ten minutes reading an article.
Mysteries are tempting. That’s actually the driving force behind scientific inquiry; if there’s a mechanism in the universe that we don’t understand…well, we should at least try.
Current attempts at cracking the “Pixar Theory” feel clumsy. Standing arguments about the integration of Monsters, Inc. include all sorts of guesswork, ranging from time travel to the bubonic plague, and I yearn for something simpler, not because I think this is important knowledge for the human race to share, but because the process behind splicing through evidence in animated movies makes us better prepared to tackle the real questions that matter. We as a society still have hundreds — thousands — of mysteries that need to be solved in the real world; let’s train ourselves to think critically about that world using the assets and audiences we have available.
Sometimes, that happens on a weird science blog that talks about movies.
To wrap up, I want to end by circling back one last time to the idea of the 23–19, which deserves to be examined a bit more deeply.
The monsters, shown to be amazingly proficient in academia and engineering, seem to understand that it’s not just a human that could carry emotion particles through to the monster world, but everyday objects as well. Heck, they went ballistic over a sock, presumably under the notion that particulates on its surface would dampen their emotion gradient and the ability to generate power.
So, an everyday object can become saturated with emotion particles — microscopic matter that carries a vast amount of energy potential.
Is it possible…
Are these living toys the creation of childhood objects becoming so immersed in emotion particulates that they achieve sentience? Is that what monsters truly fear crossing over into their world?
And, who knows…Perhaps this same natural phenomenon is what grants sentience to cars, or has its roots in ancient ritualistic magic. Is it possible this inkling of insight begins us on a competing Pixar Theory quest to unify the films in a newer, more streamlined narrative?
There is much, much more to be unraveled by looking at the science lacing the backbone of the Pixar Universe. Any clue, any mystery, is worth pursuing if it helps us see the world with more clarity and confidence — even for worlds built in frivolity and fiction.
Sometimes, that’s even cooler.
